Great Family Lore Addendums

A section related to the work on the Great Families of the Switchboard, this one devoted to family-related proposals.

Scope

The contents of this document can be read much like addendum to the much larger family document they build off of. Rather than rewriting every family document whenever a major bit of canon is added to them, it is far more reasonable to simply have them here, as additional information and detail on matters related to the family.

In some cases - though it will be greatly avoided as much as possible - there may be conflicts between the contents of a family proposal and the family document. In those circumstances, the family addendum - by virtue of being the most recent - should take precedence. That being said, grievous breaks in parity will be rectified sooner rather than later.

General Addendums

Addendums non-specific to any family in the Switchboard, instead speaking more broadly on matters concerning them.

Concept: The Social Implications of the Strider Protocol

The Strider Protocol has namely two social effects on those who wield it; it isolates them, and it allows them for living ‘faster’. The nature of the Strider Protocol as an isolationist force is inherent to the fact it allows placing vast distances between the user and others, and placing these vast distances is incentivized by the nature of the Switchboard as a place filled with adventure. Despite the fact that the armillary stars upon which the Strider Protocol depends also gradually kills its practitioners, it is a death slow enough as to be accepted as inevitable as death itself already is.

The second aspect, living faster, has the effect of ‘slimming down’ the nature of the Strider’s social interactions. Striders are very much subject to the adage of rolling stones gathering no moss. A Strider can be in twenty different cities in a day, and sleep under a different star each day of a week, and while these are all experiences and the sum of them is indeed something decently ‘large’, they are lacking in a depth that comes only from slowing down, pausing, taking time to grow roots in a context and form connections with those present in these contexts. Striders find themselves living and running alongside other Striders mainly, because only Striders can keep up with each other, and the only connections that can be formed are ones that, when the context is adjusted for speed, what is observed changes from someone moving faster than a relatively static world, to a slow world that can’t keep up with someone relatively static. Striders form their bonds at thousands of kilometers an hour, and so are constrained often to only forming somewhat lasting friendships and bonds with other Striders.

That being said, the consequence of living faster means that Striders are naturally constrained to doing things that fall within the bands of ‘living faster’. They are encouraged - compelled almost - to pursue only things that demand usage of the Strider Protocol in their pursuit. Traversing the stars, travelling to far-flung sectors of the Switchboard, exploring planets, chasing rumors and ‘x’s on the map in hope some great reward such as artifacts or Teks or ritual schema - power in any and all forms - awaits them at the end of it. Testing mettle in fighting the multifarious threats that dot the skies. Proving the sheer depth of their strength in kache krashing operations against the mighty vaults. Striders pursue things, power and accolades. It helps to ask what is a ‘win condition’ for a Strider. What is a social victory for a wielder of the Strider Protocol?

An answer to that is found in the intricacies surrounding titles. By living and acting in the Switchboard, traversers of it build repute and rumor, and these two things translate into physical, tangible power. They weave themselves into the grand tapestry of the Switchboard’s tales. They are yet another chisel-blow on the marble slate of the Switchboard’s history. Performing feats as a Strider earns the adoration of other Striders - social victory. Striders’ social victories do not rest on actually strong social bonds, but rather Striders are reminiscent of real-world celebrities who almost feed off of the adoration of an amorphous blob of people defined only by number and what unites them - their adoration for the person who serves as the subject matter.

Striders then live as thrill-seekers. The Strider Protocol facilitates that. A Strider is able to look skywards and knows from the tales told by those who came before that what exists out there to be seized for themselves is nigh unlimited. There will always be more frontiers to explore, more Teks to wield, more relics to find and forge, more rituals to discover or draft and perfect, more great beasts to slay, more rogue Striders to pursue, more powerful vaults to raid and vault minds to topple. There will always be more, more, more. And so the Strider is never content, driven constantly to go faster, farther and pursue more, at the expense of any and all that can’t keep up.

We see this in the existence of Strider jumpships as described in SB_Technology. The endlessly nomadic lifestyle practically forbids the existence of any kind of home that is not only slightly less mobile if not just as mobile as the nomad who owns it, and as such, most dedicated Striders live out of their jumpships, outfitted with amenities for living but overall serving as highly practical and utilitarian extensions of the Strider themselves. Jumpships do not play by the rules of the Strider Protocol, and so what they sacrifice in pure speed they make up for in carrying cargo, going equivalent distances far more safely, and serving ultimately as a forward base for a Strider’s operations. The lifestyle of living out of ships on foreign worlds is again, a resultant of the isolationist nature of the Strider Protocol.

The thrill-seeker mindset is further reinforced by the prohibitively short lifespan of active Striders. The rhetoric is fairly simple in that with so much promise given by the stars above, and the only barrier for accessing it already dispensed with, it would be criminal, indefensible, unforgiveable, to not pursue it in earnest. Doing everything there is to do, experiencing everything there is to experience, all this and then going ever further to find the ‘and then some’ that’s not outrightly promised, but written in the metaphorical fine print. And even though the pursuit of the things meant to add meaning to a short life is what results in the short life in the first place, further rhetoric argues that a long life isn’t necessarily a meaningful or enjoyable one. And while this is true, this line of thinking is skewed by the fact that Striders as a whole do not know how to live as anything other than Striders, and this is due to the fact that the Strider Protocol cultivates a cult around it where those who possess it are seen as ‘more’ and those without it - the Grounded - are seen as less.

The tenets of this cult are simple; the life lived by the Grounded is torturous. It is slow. It is colorless. It is lacking in grand cosmic purpose the way the life of a Strider’s does in its service to the current. Their ‘achievements’ are minute and pastoral. They lack power and the means to change anything. They lack the ability to contend with higher things. They - most of all and worst of all - do not pursue legacy the way Striders do; they do not aim to carve as deep a cut in the marble slate of the Switchboard as Striders do. They do not aim to subsist in some manner beyond the years they are allotted, and to the cult of the Strider Protocol, that is sin. The insistence on parleying with the ‘slow’ - the weak, the sick, the unintelligent, the undriven - is seen as sin. To take actions that tie one down - start families, businesses, organizations - is seen as sin. The Strider Protocol fanatic cannot conceive of the existence of value in things it views as small, slow and simplistic. The Strider Protocol fanatic abhors the idea of doing anything that could serve as some sort of binding opposing their endless pursuit of power and experiences across the Switchboard.

These fanatics naturally find a home in the Spyndl Academy, in which mere years of training sets them up with like-minded persons that they are able to run alongside and compete with as they see fit. As Operators, purpose is given - bestowed upon them - by a cabal of veteran Striders with aims of their own they pursue. A path towards greatness is lain out; serve the Academy, fight, learn and explore, and the skills and knowledge obtained translates to accolades and more power. Your name will never stop being uttered in the hallowed halls. Your actions will breathe drive and mission into thousands others to come behind you. You will exist even after death in a manner that matters. The Academy adopts an almost anti-family stance; spouses are hinderances, children even more so. If you absolutely have to, do the Conjugation, and preferably with another Strider or Academy Operator so that the resulting descendant is fairly capable of fending for themselves. Do nothing that restricts the ability to chase and chase. Never stop. Never settle. Never pursue anything that seems to demand stillness. The only thing that should stop you is death.

And so we can then ask ourselves a final question, what is the shape of a wielder of the Strider Protocol? Ravenously hungry. Its hands and feet are alabaster-white from processions of drinking from the Wellsprings. Between its fingers, under its skin, in its hands - is terrible power and control over the world around it. It moves fast - incredibly so - in any and all contexts. Like an idol in an abandoned shrine, it is incredibly lone in its existence, even if there are many like it. It is a paragon, an emblem of some terrifying doctrine, that makes deities out of ordinary, starry-eyed, dreaming men. It is anti-human and yet terribly human in some perverted way. It burns bright and yet cold, and it dies like a distant star. And from its corpse do newborns like it arise, vocal in what their paragon represented, often violent, but always steadfast.

The Strider Protocol inculcates in its users a strange kind of human inhumanity, a form of hedonism and masochism, a cocktail of harnessable dysfunction that sees Striders become as blank-faced, apathetic gods, who’s fervid discontentment-driven pursuits inevitably cool into a passivity born out of the eventual realization that nothing in the depths of infinity seem interesting enough to chase, or the next height to achieve is so cripplingly high as to break the spirit of all those even considering it. And so the Strider is left with his accolades to rest upon, which are only as relevant as others determine they are. And then they begin a slow, grating rot, a solitary, slow slipping into death as their lattice gradually fails. The shame of it keeps them from making themselves visible, and so very few see how the loftiest Striders die, the information simply reaching them by some means, and rumor taking over, fabricating a tale of defeat at the hands of the truly most tyrannical of the Switchboard’s terrors. And that inspires Strider minds to be as them. And the cycle begins anew.

Concept: Grounded Philosophy

As it stands, the primary source of narrative conflict in the Switchboard is that of a difference in philosophy between Striders and Grounded. Analyzing the Strider Protocol and its social effects gives a fairly solid idea of the ‘philosophy’ of Striders, most particularly an analysis of how possessing the Strider Protocol and living as it compels one to to do serves to shape a Strider’s perspective on the Switchboard.

We can then begin analysis of the other side of the fence, that of the Grounded and their philosophy. Because just as Striders look down on the Grounded, the Grounded in many ways look down on Striders. And while one would assume that the power and utility of the Strider Protocol would provide a dimension to human experience that makes all other shapes of experience lacking it to appear inferior, deeper inquiry into the subject reveals the many glaring flaws and cracks in Strider philosophy, through which less than savory aspects of human character are accentuated.

The Grounded’s philosophy is formed primarily as a reaction to what has been dubbed ‘Strider Inhumanity’. It seeks to analyze every aspect of the philosophy created by the existence of the Strider Protocol and dismiss them in some regard. In short, it is an anti or counter-philosophy.

It begins with the abject isolationism created by the Strider Protocol. Striders are lonely. Even when they manage to forge friendships, these friendships are rarely ever permanent due to the ease with which Striders can create distance from each other, and the various reasons why they may choose to do so. The Strider Protocol - and more specifically, the Academy - are seen as fostering and adopting anti-relationships stances where Striders are incentivized to not form ‘ties’ with others as the only serve to tie them down. The anti-family and even anti-natalist stance of the Academy is greatly criticized for this, as Grounded philosophy argues that ‘things’ - plunder from the sky, accolades, straight power - cannot take the place of people.

Not necessarily as a counter-doctrinal method, but definitely running counter to Strider logics, the Grounded value families and descendants. The Grounded see their social victory in the form of parents, spouses and children. What the Grounded value are people and relationships with them, which they view as more tangible, longer lasting - more valuable - than what Striders value.

It ties nicely then into the Grounded living slower lives that Striders. Striders rarely have homes. They have places they were born, and places they may frequent, and places that if they found themselves battered and on the verge of death, that’s where they know they’d find people ready to help them, but rarely do Striders have homes that are physical places populated by people. Striders are nomads, and thus anything that is a home to them is something that comes along with them. For many, that’s their jumpship. The Grounded do not live this way, and actively criticize it for forgoing the essential concept of roots. Striders do not build things that last. Or build things at all. They arrive and stay only as long as it is comfortable, or practical, or absolutely necessary, and on the first opportunity they are rocketing off again. And in this lack of slowness do they not pause to appreciate the finer things that exist in a given context. As an analogy, imagine trying to judge a city based on how it looks as you pass through it on a fast-moving train. It becomes indecipherable blur, and the conclusion you may draw is that it is merely color melded together that swiftly grows dull. But the Grounded, who live slowly and methodically, also live appreciatively. They grow to value the smaller things and the large things, as opposed to Striders who only value the larger things due to them maintaining some semblance of decipherability even when observing at speed.

Striders are further criticized for not building. Striders are not cultivators or builders. They do not take the time to plant things, nurture them and watch them grow. They are not patient enough to stick through the time-demanding nature of creative processes. When Striders do ‘build’, their creations are glaringly utilitarian, prioritizing the extraction of maximum utility. When they are done with what they build, they are designed to collapse swiftly and rot or be packed and folded away for reuse elsewhere, leaving the general ‘proof’ that a Strider was once present being either emptiness or ruin. Because Striders do not attach value to places, they are not driven to further improve those places, leading the Grounded to argue that a universe filled with Striders alone would be filled with nothing but outposts, radio towers, large academy complexes and jumpship fueling stations, all in various states of disrepair. It is the Grounded who build; grand, beautiful cities, works of art and architecture that last years, buildings that drip with history and serve to nurture and shelter the future. The only thing Striders build up is themselves.

Leading further into the criticism of Striders as ‘ontologically selfish’. They are incapable of acting without personal incentive or the assurance of it. Striders take out of principle; the Switchboard exists to be taken from and added onto the self. Interpersonal dealings that exist among the Grounded simply do not exist similarly among Striders, and while the Grounded frequently give out of the goodness of heart or understanding that others may need some thing more than they do, Striders are rarely driven to act similarly, seeing every small thing as earned through considerable strife - as theirs, as a part of them like a limb - and simply not something to easily part with. A sort of exception to this is Striders who lead or train other Striders, who naturally will pass down things they are no longer using to those behind them, but this is absolutely not exclusive to Striders.

Striders are also argued as to be incapable of ‘simple’ fun. Fun to Striders is necessarily grand. It is tackling beasts or exploring dangerous locales or contending with higher powers. Fun for the Grounded is simpler things; cards and picnics and board games and cookouts and simple strolls or sports or community gatherings. It results in Striders being unable to enjoy anything that doesn’t cause adrenaline spikes, or demand full utlization of the mind and body and every single skill and power they possess. A Strider is placed in an empty cubical room with no distractions or challenges demanding something from them - and they swiftly turn mad, unable to be left without something to do for too long. The Grounded describe Striders as borderline children.

And these criticisms go further. Striders are never content. They are overtly proud. A considerable number of them are incapable of resolving conflict through any means other than violence. They are destructively competitive with themselves and each other. They do not understand leisure as anything other than doing slightly easier work. They are chemical fiends, and anything that can be described as a ‘softer’ or more ‘relaxing’ experience for Striders is facilitated by altering substances. It’s talked about in particular how the short lives of Striders is a driving force behind the ways they think.

Two final major criticisms though, are that of legacy and becoming Slow. The Grounded decry Strider legacies as hollow. A Strider amasses enough things to fill warehouses and enough accolades to fill libraries, and in their passing they are returned to the Current. But all that is left of them is objects and records. Nothing that lives or breathes. The Grounded argue that true legacy is in the form of descendants - children - that take up the feats of their ancestors and continue their tales with their own. Striders do indeed inspire the next generation of Striders, but they often all go on to pursue unrelated things. Striders who start things rarely finish them, and it is uncommon for a Strider to arise and live in a manner that drives change through the wider Strider population.

The second of the last criticisms is that of becoming Slow. Striders who lose their Strider Protocol are broken beyond repair, and the compulsion to suddenly live in manners they never have before - or worse, actively despised - results in deeply wounded subjects that swiftly descend down paths of fiery destructiveness or cold depression. Observed in many cases is suicidal ideation, that sees many Striders viewing death as preferable to living a life where they can no longer fly. The Grounded see this as a final proof of the dysfunction created by the Strider Protocol.

Concept: The Praxis Clash

The resultant of the opposing philosophical vectors is a unified search for meaning and purpose. Where we see an effect of the differing philosophies is in those who seek to meaning from the other side. Many Grounded see the recruitment posters placed by the Academy and feel a hunger to escape the drudgery of simplicity to chase the stars. And a fair many Striders see the families of the Grounded in the rare moments they spend standing still, and feel a yearning for such a lifestyle.

But the pressure created by fanatics and the easily-led on both sides create a considerable opposing force that demands compliance and living in line. To admit that a rival doctrine has merit is to weaken one’s own, and so there is tangible incentive in preserving frigid dealings if not outright animosity with the other side. Institutions like the Academy need its Striders and Operators to remain ever steadfast, and institutions like the Ex-Strider Outreach Initiative only see success in a Switchboard where Strider manners of thinking are actively dissuaded.

And in this do we have the grounds for a praxis clash. The conflict of the Switchboard exists in constant rivalry between manners of living, in a bid to prove that one is philosophically superior to the other.

The Fel-Arcad - Addendums

Addendums concerning the Fel-Arcad.

The Order of the Undersol

There exists a discrepancy, a disconnect of sorts among the Fel-Arcad, particularly as regards the administrative structure of the arcologies within which they have come to dwell. This disconnect emerges as a result of the inability to wholly define the place, purpose and thus powers of the Craun Tenders and the Craun Soleri.

In the before-times, the Craun Soleri served both purposes; building and overseeing the arcology as well as the people within it. But as it became apparent that the skillsets needed to warp replichrome and lead people were considerably different from one another, and Soleri as a whole - with time - seemed to be becoming more and more eccentric in their zealotry around the arcologies - often to the detriment of every other thing imaginable, it thus became necessary to divide powers, and thus confer the authority to administrate people upon a newly-formed body.

However, it became difficult to define what truly were the edges and extents of the Tenders’ and the Soleri’s power, as the Fel-Arcad as a people - by design - live in such deep interconnection with the arcologies they dwell within that any decision taken by one would inadvertently, inescapably affect the other. For the Craun Tenders, this was expected and justifiable; the logics of governance doctrine by which they operated defined that choosing the well-being of the Fel-Arcad peoples over the physical structure they dwelt within was almost always the objectively correct decision.

The Soleri, however, disagreed. In perhaps a gradual warping of their original purpose that would come to be studied by many who would curiously disappear in the workings of obtaining any conclusive deductions, the Soleri came to view the preservation of the arcologies - the physical structure - as their highest charge, rather than service to the Fel-Arcad peoples, believing that upholding and propagating the arcologies and their derivate doctrine would serve the function of protecting and serving the Fel-Arcad by proxy. And with the Craun Tenders seizing much of their power and now acting above them in hierarchy, they sought to reclaim a grasp on affairs, while minimizing the damage that would have to be caused to obtain it, as well as avoid betraying their intentions.

And thus - learning, perhaps, from their Rosenthalist ideological cousins - they took on the mantle of subterfuge and the blades of deceit, and formed the Order of the Undersol; a Soleri-aligned faction that would work to protect the sanctity of the arcologies from the Fel-Arcad that threatened them, and the Craun Tenders that protected those Fel-Arcad in their ‘ignorance’. This aim is achieved through - primarily - the establishment of a covert, arcology-wide surveillance substructure that actively and passively monitors all Fel-Arcad within an arcology, maintaining comprehensive profiles on each. These profiles are fed into purpose-built algorithms that then compute along a slide-rule of compatibility; a numerical measure of how well one can dwell in the arcology environment.

In a sense, they build and operate surveillance states.

Should certain Fel-Arcad be identified that are viewable as threats to the arcology structure, the Order of the Undersol works towards their elimination. Preferring to avoid outright - even if covert - murder, their major strategies are ‘re-acclimatization’ and exile. The latter is fairly simple, in that the Undersol works towards finding a means to dismiss the subject entirely from the arcology. The methods under this are - expectedly - hardly the cleanest, ranging from falsifying information, to framing a subject, to outright psychological warfare to instill a fear of the arcology environment, and thus a need to flee it.

It is the former, re-acclimatization, that is the Undersol’s specialty. The Soleri - in all this - understand better than anyone that the arcology model succeeds only with maximal cooperation, from as many Fel-Arcad as possible. Thus they are incentivized to, rather than dismiss subjects they find problematic, instead divide them into groups, with one group being those that would respond well to what is fundamentally psychological warfare strategies. Primarily, they work with three aims in mind;

• Foster pro-arcology and pro-Fel sentiment.
• Cultivate fear, distrust and general ill-will towards the outside world.
• Coerce the formation of ‘ties’ to the arcology, such as unions or long-term careers.

The latter is perhaps their most insidious, in that their primary stratagem is extensive manipulation of a subject and other parties around them, to cultivate relationships between those who wish to leave an arcology, and others. Because eventually, the Soleri realized that the greatest danger to the arcology wasn’t unknowing or even deliberate saboteurs, nor the Craun Tenders that inadvertently enabled them; it was those who grew disillusioned with the arcologies and sought another path outside. These are the primary targets of the Order of the Undersol; ordinary Fel who dare suspect that a better lot awaits them beyond the walls of the arcologies.

Commanded by the pocketed hand of the Soleri, the Order of the Undersol works in the shadows, monitoring the affairs of all Fel-Arcad, under the singular charge that as few as possible are allowed to leave the arcologies, lest the entire institution be undermined, and the mechanics of praxis see the Soleri fade into obscurity. It is the simple fact that the demise of the Soleri and by extension, the craft of arcology building, would most likely lead to the widespread demise of the Fel-Arcad people - that is the final justification for the actions of the Soleri and the Undersol; nothing greater, ironically, than the mere need to survive.

The Canon of the Rosenthalists

The Rosenthalists have a number of ideas and doctrines ascribed to them, that set them apart - often rather starkly - from their Nadiran Fel-Arcad cousins. At the most elementary, and perhaps what sets them apart the most from other Fel, is their belief that the descend directly from Arcad Rosen, the foremost of the Arcad at the time, and later Fel-Arcad. While the Rosenthalists believe that the other Fel-Arcad did indeed also descend from the other Arcad that existed at the time, they claim direct descendance from Rosen himself.

And why in particular they espouse their supremacist doctrine is due to Arcad Rosen having taken a Danseer as a partner. Their union is believed to have yielded three children of Arcad and Danseer heritage, leading them to concluded that - on pure calcic basis - they had possibly the strongest calcic backbone at the time, combining the power of the Danseers with the proficiency of the Arcad.

From those three children - Aavar, Roslet and Hiorti - the Rosenthalist trace the three of their great Courts; the Roslettes, the Aavarosi and the Hiortros, and to a large extent, every Rosenthalist by birth traces their descendance from one of these three.

In the earliest days of the dawning era of the Third Kin, following the differentiation into what would become the Great Families of today, Rosen’s descendants - spurned on by their Danseer heritage, as it’s been theorized - did indeed attempt to lead the then-Arcad by first cultivating names for themselves in battle, much like the Danseer Skydancers they both lauded and claimed heritage with, and then working to convince the Fel-Arcad to support them in their lofty ambitions for dominance over the Dancirah, in much the same way as - again - the Danseers practiced. However, their aims and methods ran afoul of their father, Arcad Rosen, and the Arcad of the time who had already been majorly swayed by Rosen’s manners of thinking. For this reason, the three faded into relative obscurity, instead being relegated to merely the spearheads of the Arcad war effort, and eventually leading the Mind Hunts in the fifth - final - offensive.

It was not long after this that the Refrain struck, and brought about the fall of the Arcad into the now Fel. It was also around this time, or at least some bit earlier, that the document known as the Redsight was penned by Arcad Rosen, and it would later form the core of much of Rosenthalist thought. It is unknown why this document was written at all however, and conclusions ranged from dying making him a cynical pessimist, an epiphany had on death’s door, or - perhaps the most interesting of all - that it was written as a way to connect with his descendants, in the most Arcad way of all; the conveyance, exchange and entertainment of ideas.

The Fel-Arcad would then go through the nomadic period in their history, and it was during this time that the descendants of the original three took on the mantle of their ancestor-kin, refusing to be defined by the tragedy they had been struck with, choosing instead to organize into the Rosenthalist Courts as they are now known, secretive circles that sought to preserve and uphold what they believed to be the true wishes of Arcad Rosen and Arcad thought. At the crux of this sentiment was that of a grand ideological victory brought about by the homogenization of peoples, and thus, the homogenization of thought. By ensuring - in a sense - that the Arcad were the dominant thinking beings in the Switchboard, they would demonstrate the purity of their selves and their doctrine, and thus be able to further uphold that same doctrine. Arcad Rosen’s egalitarian ideals of fairness and empowerment were only possible when all believed similar, and achieving that aim would require first building a Switchboard of only those receptive of - or already entertaining of - Rosen’s ideals. The Redsight, they felt, was justification for this line of thinking, as even Arcad Rosen himself had entertained such ideas.

Thus, the three Rosenthalist factions rapidly built up strength in the Switchboard, doing so by wearing many faces; faces to deal with the other families such as the Sil’khan and the Lancasters, faces to deal with their Fel cousins, faces to deal with each other. But below these masks was forever the core Rosenthalist belief; that they were still Arcad, still descended of a Danseer, still mighty - mightier than all others - by virtue of heritage and doctrine. They were, by all worthwhile metrics and even plenty not so, superior to all other beings that walked the Switchboard, and believed that achieving their ancestor Rosen’s vision of peace in the Switchboard would first require that all who would challenge both the reality of their ontology and Rosen’s ideals to be subjugated - or annihilated.

It was for this reason and others that they abhorred the Sanscrii arcology when it was built, abhorred the ArcDanseer Nadira when they claimed to speak for Rosen, abhorred the Semblance Doctrine that spilled from his lips, and abhorred their Nadiran Fel cousins for being so eager and willing to take in this doctrine when it was proffered. All of it, to them, was capital heresy, and beyond merely marring the name of Arcad Rosen, it was polluting the Arcad totality with doctrine that they had no reason to believe had ever been proposed by Arcad Rosen.

It was concluded by the Rosenthalists at large that before their more widespread goal of preparing a Switchboard that only the Arcad could inhabit could take place, they would first have to cleanse the rot that had festered among their own cousins. It is on this note that we then go on to discuss how each Rosenthalist Court manifested the doctrine of their own believed superiority over the other denizens of the Switchboard;

• The descendants of Aavar, the Aavarosi, and their methodologies of economic dominance, sabotage and subterfuge.
• The descendants of Roslet, the Roslettes, and their methodology of ascension.
• The descendants of Hiorti, the Hiortros, and their methodology of militancy and subjugation.

The Aavarosi are perhaps the most forward-facing and yet clandestine of the Rosenthalist courts. Even while active adherents of their beliefs of supremacy, they envision a battle that is won by gradually weakening an enemy by building up their reliance on external powers, while weakening the trust and reliability of internal ones. Through infiltration and subterfuge, they weaken the institutions of other parties in the Switchboard, making them wholly reliant on the Aavarosi for a litany of their needs, and gradually eliminating their self-sufficiency and eroding the trust they have in each other. Aavarosi agents work with only one thing in mind; dismantlement. By eliminating all opposition without even shedding blood, they pave a smooth path to their future of total dominance.

The Hiortros espouse a different approach; that of open, zealous warfare. The most extremist Rosenthalists by far, their methodology from first principles is a simple desire and pursuit of eliminating an enemy. Through targeted strikes they destroy important assets belonging to the Fel-Arcad; fleets, outposts, space installations, even inhabited arcologies, all in the fervor of crusade. Hiring out their services to other unsavory groups in the Switchboard yields them economic resources and shaky alliances, but at their core, they are driven only by a need to scrub the stars of perceived heresy. Many, many parties in the Switchboard have declared the Hiortros an existential threat, even other Rosenthalist factions, but they set out on their mission with the full awareness and intent of making enemies.

The Roslettes, are a rather unique Rosenthalist faction. Rather than attacking the enemy from outside or dismantling them from within, the Roslettes seek to attain dominance of the Switchboard through a far more sinister means; ascension into something beyond the Third Kin. Believing the victory conditions sought by their siblings and cousins to ultimately change little about their ontology, the Roslettes have devised an entirely different stratagem, one based on consuming the very weave of the denizens of the Switchboard.

The Rosenthalists’ creed and methods have thus earned them no small amount of ill repute among other denizens of the Switchboard. It is somewhat blackly debated in jest which faction of the Switchboard despises the Rosenthalists the most, with all discussion culminating in the concession that it is between the Nadiran Fel and the Vahnkin. The Vahnkin particularly despise the Rosenthalists as the Rosenthalists, particularly the Hiortros as they were the Antamaran Fel who fought the Vahnkin and the Vahn faithful in a bid to find a means to close the Void, believing that doing so would prevent - or at least postpone - a second refrain. While the Antamaran conflicts ultimately ended grossly in the Vahnkin’s favor, it still stands that the Vahnkin hold mostly distaste towards the Fel-Arcad, and immense hostility towards the Rosenthalists. The Nadiran Fel differ from them in holding negative sentiment towards the Rosenthalists mostly on ideological grounds, as the superiority of any one peoples or faction over another or others is immensely incompatible with the Fel-Arcad’s means of viewing the world and building societies within it.

The Lancaster maintain a sort of ambivalence towards the Rosenthalists, stemming from the Lancaster’s most unfortunate placement with regards to their ability stride and weave - or lack thereof. The Rosenthalists view them as non-threatening to their causes, and some even view them as useful, taking advantage of the Lancaster’s penchant for commerce and their overall social tolerability when compared to the Rosenthalists, putting them to task as an insulating membrane between them and the rest of the Dancirah.

Their disposition towards the Sil’khan, however, is rather noteworthy.

pNarrat: The Rosenthalists and the Sil’khan

The Rosenthalists harbor a fiery mix of both hatred and jealousy towards the Sil’khan, as to them, despite their formulation in the Triptych Crucible - a decidedly unnatural process - they are far, far more like the Danseers than the Rosenthalists. In addition to resenting the Sil’khan for merely existing, they resent the old Nadiran Fel for creating the Sil’khan, out of the belief that after the service the Danseers had tendered to all Third Kin and the Dancirah, and it would be an unspeakable loss for them to be wiped out by the curse inflicted by the Refrain.

To the Rosenthalists, their fellow Fel went out of their way to create a faction they would be subservient to as a matter of course, by virtue of the Rosenthalists own yardstick for measuring strength and prominence in the Switchboard; being like the Danseers. Had this not be done, had the Sil’khan not existed, the Rosenthalists as descendants of a Danseer would have assumed the post of superiority among all others among the stars. But the Fel in their benevolence bestowed the fading Danseers with an opportunity to descend and dwell in the Switchboard they had fought for, and for many Rosenthalists, this is the greatest sin of the Nadiran Fel of all.

The Sil’khan, however, have adopted varying dispositions towards the Rosenthalists, ranging from finding their indignance amusing, finding their fanaticism deplorable, and finding their methodology worrying. But for many Sil’khan, the Rosenthalists are simply beneath their notice. They simply exist with little care for the fact there exists a people that so violently despise them, for little reason other than the fact that any truly meaningful opposition the Rosenthalists could form against the Sil’khan would result in the Rosenthalists’ own annihilation.

This has not stopped many, many Rosenthalists from ages past concocting means to wipe out the Sil’khan, as they are convicted of the idea that if the Fel-Arcad brought them into these stars, then Fel-Arcad can take them out of them.

The Weave-eaters

Let’s talk about the Roslettes. They’re vampires. Or, better put, my take on them.

At the crux of the Roslette’s own brand of supremacist philosophy is that they are possessed not of innate superiority, but of the means to attain it. The Hiortros and Aavarosi - despite difference in methodology - are entirely similar in outcome; that of subjugation of all unlike them. The Roslettes propose a different approach; that by becoming more than what one is, what still is will be brought lower than what has become as a matter of course. That one merely need only position themselves favorably in the calculus, and it will resolve according to their ends, rather than trying to force it to act as one wishes.

Their means of doing so is by exploiting a quirk with regards to Teks and the mechanics of descendance;

Teks for whatever reason have a noteworthy propensity to pass from generation to generation, growing slightly different from the parent Tek, but notably stronger as well. As they pass from hand to hand, they seemingly grow and evolve into new forms, bestowing greater power to new wielders and tying family trees together with binds beyond mere descendance. These ancestral Teks as they’ve come to be called, are Teks that were chiseled long ago from the early Switchboard, and allowed to grow and mature, like obsidian blades that only grow sharper the more they are used. They’ve spread to various hands with time, branching and taking on new forms as Teks are ‘mixed’ with other Teks and wielded in new ways. The results are Teks associated with certain factions in the Switchboard, and this ancestral power has given them sway, by right of chalk.

Link to original

The Roslettes are possessed of a tek that has passed through their house from generation to generation, and careful, stringent enforcement of customs has kept this tek within mostly the hands of the Roslettes. This Tek is the power to eat and assimilate weave from other beings in the Switchboard, particularly the Five Straits found in the thinking weave. By doing so, they are able to harvest the information of their victims, add it unto themselves, and become more.

In particular, the Roslettes seek out a specific woven backbone that dwells in all Third Kin, backbone weave that connects all kin to the Old Danseers. While the ‘concentration’ - of sorts - of this backbone-weave fades from generation to generation in the Third Kin as it is gradually overridden by the weave of the Great Families, there still remains flecks and shards of it in every Third Kin, and the Roslette’s Tek of weave-eating allows them to rip this bit of weave from the lattices and straits of their victims, and stitch it into themselves. By gradually accumulating more and more of this Danseer weave, they in turn become more and more like the Old Danseers, inheriting their power - but more particularly - their ‘post’ in the Switchboard.

Their grand ambition is to thus deceive the Astrolabe’s calculus into treating them like the Danseers, and in turn regularizing their current state to be reconciled with the strength the Danseers once bore. Their gambit is that by becoming more as Danseers from the very lattice, their ledgers will be treated as Danseer ledgers, and they will thus be elevated to the prominence the Danseers once wielded. Once this is achieved, it will simply be a matter of nature that they are beyond all other Third Kin, as this was how it was in the earliest days of the dawning chalkstrider era. It is less so the ushering in of a new era as it is a return to an old one, albeit with new faces on old thrones.

Because they need to seek out Danseer weave, the Roslettes have come to target the Sil’khan, the direct descendants of the Danseers as they died off following the Refrain, engineered into being by the Fel-Arcad of the time in a bid to preserve them even past the curse that purged them from the Switchboard. The Sil’khan have not been quiet about opposing this as well, and the both factions have been locked in overt and covert warfare for the longest while; the Roslettes seeking to ascend, and the Sil’khan fighting to preserve the memory and legacy of their ancestor-kin, which they see the Roslettes as working to defile.

Foreseeably, something of a culture arose around the Switchboard’s weave-eaters, the amalgamation of a litany of themes ranging from the relationship with food and with others who they see as it, the nigh-religious fervor their charge invokes, the clandestine nature of their livings and doings, resigning themselves to only their own company, and the inevitable convolution of the weave-eating practice with the desires of flesh. Perceived by others in the Switchboard - even other Rosenthalist factions - they are a cult of debauchery and perversion, their only redeeming qualities being a firmness of conviction and the audacity to pursue their ends, something that - even then - is admired only in a vacuum, much as how one might admire the svelte majesty of a venomous snake, even though wholly aware of the suffering it brings.

How the Roslettes have come to operate varies. For one, their courts are possessed of truly unfathomable reclusion, so much so that there are many who even outrightly deny their existence. Much like the Aavarosi, many Roslettes are fond of the clandestine, understanding that their charge and the means of fulfilling it are repulsive, but are still wholly unable of doing away with the need to pursue it. With the power to eat weave - having been morphed and shaped and honed over time - came the appetite for it, and even beyond the desire to ascend to the post of the Danseers comes a baser hunger to simply feed on weave in general. As such, they are terribly predisposed to acts of gruesome murder, being literal hunters of kin. Many are more so stalkers, choosing to be as covert as possible with their affairs, feeding when they can, killing only when they absolutely must, and working to minimize chances of detection and capture. Others are more monstrous and overt, cultivating superior prowess in both the physical and calcic to subjugate foes and devour them as they will. Many of these latter Roslettes work with the Hiortros in their campaigns, as the practice of eating weave yields boons beyond merely satisfying hunger.

This, however, is the means by which individual Roslettes operate, constrained by the reality of their being only person. Many Roslettes possessed of lofty ambitions and the drive to pursue them have contemplated and even executed mass operations to ‘farm’ and ‘harvest’ copious amounts of desirable weave from massive amounts of victims. Attempts to execute such against the Sil’khan have proven overwhelmingly unsuccessful, but their Fel-Arcad cousins - what with their colossal arcologies and overwhelming opposition to violence - have proven a sufficient target for the most daring and darkly of Roslettes, who have turned entire arcologies into feeding grounds. These black arcologies in turn become havens for all other manners of criminality, and serve as the many front desks for the Dancirah’s underworld.

The act of weave-eating yielding a tangible increase in strength has resulted in a very elementary means of Roslette societal stratification; all hierarchies are dominated by the categorical strongest, and they must feed on weave to retain that post, as those below them are certainly eating weave to obtain the power necessary to depose them. Horizontal division at the top sees Roslettes divided into clans and dynasties, and vertical stratification sees these entities bearing those of high prominence, middling rank, and low regard. With strength being the major determinant of status, and the threat of destruction levied over every layer by the one above it, the social structure is one of immense stability. Miserable stability, but stability all the same. It is thus a major affair when these structures are upturned in one manner or another, either from outside aggressors or from within, and violent engagements ranging in scale from inter-family tussles to near-wars - often over nothing more than pride and standing - have led to perceptions of the Roslettes as immensely territorial and murderously snobbish.

That being said, the zealous charge of ascension levied upon all Roslettes by the absolute highest in their society - those with a post analogous to a papal office in our world - greatly oppose overt violence within clans and courts between individual Roslettes, and outrightly forbid violence and overt conflict between clans and courts, out of - perhaps - an understanding that their charge is to eat and grow, rather than fight and diminish. There is the caveat however, that even this post is subject to changing leaders, and thus equally changing philosophies on how to go about their ascension, with some demanding they turn their fangs outwards to the rest of the Switchboard, towards greatly organizing and optimizing the task of consuming weave and ensuring as many as possible ascend to Danseer status - and others proposing instead that ascension is the privilege of a chosen few, and that these few are determined by a willingness to obtain strength for one’s self and subjugate all others, including Roslette kin.

It is thus ripe grounds for perhaps the most prominent of Roslette social conventions and pastimes, their Culling Games. Either agreed upon by various clans and courts, or imposed upon multiple lower ones by a higher one, or periodically demanded by the highest Roslette office, grand festivals of culture and brutality are conducted in suitable Black Arcologies, as a means - primarily - to put on display the relative strength of the Roslettes as a people, and in turn to increase the average strength of the absolute strongest by culling those that represent their mathematical floor. Roslettes from all over gather at the venue, either out of compulsion to represent their house, the desire to test their mettle against others, zealotry in partaking of the ascension charge levied upon them, or to settle old grudges against other houses and individuals that will be participating. The format of this event varies, but the core principles of it remain the same from occasion to occasion; a celebration of strength, where many go in and few come out. It differs from other similar events in the Switchboard via having little by way of rules, and by being fundamentally a death game, and thus is attracts even non-Roslette observers from far and wide, who come to watch, gamble, make merry, revel in displays of weftcraft, scout potential talents, and any number of other more clandestine ambitions. Yet they are but mere observers, and the true purpose of the event remains an opportunity for Roslettes to revel in blood sport, and by doing so, gauge how much further and longer remains before their highest echelons attain their ranks as pseudo-Danseers.

The Roslette Culling Games occupy an area of dubious legality with regards to greater Danciran law, as for one, questions of the illegality of the act, as well as black arcology jurisdiction, remain hotly debated.

• Perhaps worth considering first is whether the actual principle of the Culling Games - or rather, the governing principle of the Roslettes, their desire to ascend via consumption of weave - is actually possible. This is of interest in particular to the Brass Monastics, who have appointed themselves as an investigative and managerial authority with regards to actions and phenomena that can or may have adverse, wide-spanning effects on the Switchboard. The return of the Danseers - but under entirely different, arguably adversarial principles - would be without question something they would work to prevent. However, there is no categorical proof that the Roslette’s weave-eating could ever bring about this outcome. Considering the Brass Monastery is disinclined towards interfering with the affairs of the Third Kin otherwise, they thus turn something of a blind eye to the Culling Games, though under the note that should there ever be merit to the Roslette’s method, their full might would be brought to bear against them.

• Fel-Arcad arcology authorities are widely viewed as the ones who have a jurisdictional basis upon which to oppose the Culling Games, as the black arcologies they take place in are still treated as belonging to the Soleri that established them, though with the caveat that they have been taken over by hostile powers. For this reason, Fel-Arcad working alongside allied parties have opposed the events in the past, and have even fought to retake captured black arcologies, with varying success. Beyond this jurisdictional basis though, is their exercise of a moral one, where they oppose the Culling Games due to the elements of coercion of participants, and the fact participants fight to the death.

• The Sil’khan have the most complicated relationship with the Culling Games, as for one, the Roslettes have made themselves out to be predators of the Sil’khan, but for another, they being a proud and competitive people who love little more than the opportunity to participate in a no-holds-barred showcase of strength. As such, the Sil’khan are mostly torn, with the general disposition towards Roslettes ranging from distaste to outright hatred, but there being more nuance on whether one chooses to associate with them or not. For many Sil’khan, their own means of opposing the Roslettes is participating in their Games only to cull all of the strongest Roslettes participating, a lengthy joke with a brutal punchline. Many Sil’khan have come to see black arcologies as a necessary evil, as their value as an economic and logistical entity cannot be understated.

• The Lancasters and Vahnkin have little by way of interaction with the Roslettes, both bearing the least Danseer backbone weave, and thus regarded as already inferior to the Roslettes. Thrifty Lancasters however, often serve the Roslettes in exchange for various incentives, and particularly work as logistical go-betweens for getting interested parties into the Games, or moving Roslettes around in general. Much of Roslette society is in this way necessarily padded by layers of morally grey, coin-seeking Lancaster brethren, as they face zero risk of being consumed by the Roslettes, while in turn bearing little loyalty to the other Great Families, thus presenting little risk in return to the Roslettes. While their service does little to change the low regard held for the Lancasters by the Roslettes, the Lancasters are no strangers to such dispositions towards them, and the inequality of their post relative to the other Great Families has made them satisfied with very little.

• The Spyndl Academy similar to the Sil’khan have a complicated relationship with the Games and the Roslettes at large as well. For one, the Spyndl works for the preservation of the Third Kin, but mostly only on the macroscopic scale. Individual violence done by kin against kin is of greatly less concern than hypothetical threats against all Third Kin at large, and the Spyndl truly only harbors a sense of suspicion towards the Roslettes, born out of concern of whether they can truly become pseudo-Danseers. That being said, Spyndl covertly values the Culling Games as an excellent grounds to find new recruits, as their lack of rules and the brutality that stems from it as a consequence creates an excellent crucible for forming and refining truly powerful chalkweavers. Anywhere the Games are being conducted, there is sure to be a Spyndl agent in the crowd, watching the on goings and making notes of promising prospects.

However, the existence of those who are ambivalent towards - or even somewhat cooperative with - the Roslettes, doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of the Switchboard regards them as a murderous death cult, and there are individuals, orders and large bodies dedicated to hunting Roslettes wherever they can be found, with the end goal of wiping them from the face of the Dancirah. Only few are driven by a genuine fear of the possibility of their becoming Danseers, mostly simply hunt Roslettes because they present an undeniable threat to kin everywhere, and use the former point as a shield or justification of their cause. The Roslettes, naturally, have responded in kind, each side placing bounties on the heads of the others notables, while engaging in endless turf wars and assassination ping-pong all over the Dancirah. The necessarily clandestine operations of both sects, however, has made it impossible to determine which side is truly winning.

A Curse

The tek that confers the power of weave-eating has passed from generation to generation in the Roslettes, and as they have exercised its power and borne descendants, the weft of this tek has morphed and evolved in time, undergoing further sharpening and refinement towards achieving the ends it serves. This has in turn made the Roslettes increasingly powerful generation over generation, in the spheres of hunting and acquiring prospective victims, finding and tearing weave from their lattices, and integrating it into their own.

The weft-eating tek manifests as a major revision to the entire bodily plan and lattice of those that bear it, transforming them almost for the task of eating weft at hand. The tek’s modifications can be categorized into three; hunting, feeding and assimilation.

Under hunting, the tek provides a list of various physiological improvements. Refinement of the senses, particularly that of the weavesight are foremost, granting one increased passive sensory prowess that is useful when stalking and taking down an opponent. Modifications to the lattice are undergone as well, with the apical and basal hardshell armor plating being thinned out and the motive framework made more proficient, sacrificing durability in exchange for strength and agility.

The more prominent and visual modification made by this tek, however, are alterations to the dentition and the nails of the hand. Structurally, the incisors in the teeth and the nails on the hand are lengthened, hardened and sharpened to dagger points, and are conferred with weft that allows them to tear wickedly through lattices. Calcically however, these modified bits of lattice additionally have lengths of the computational strait woven just under the material. By making direct lattice contact with the computational strait, weave-eaters are able to discern useful weave from chaff, and these sharpened teeth and claws allows for picking and pulling this desired weft even from living targets.

These modifications being visual, however, does have a number of social ramifications. Sharp teeth and nails are often tell-tale signs of a Roslette, and thus must be hidden when moving among peoples and in places that might be hostile to one. A common practice is filing down these protrusions. Roslettes who need to spend time among others often undergo this process, losing what makes them dangerous and in return being more able to mask their true nature. Being subject to the lattice’s own reverse unravelling, they do eventually grow back with time, and some Roslettes with solid command of RUteks can regrow them nearly instantly as needed. Undergoing the loom at a sembleworks can additionally modify the lattice to make the fangs and claws retractable, enabling hiding them away when not in use. But for many Roslettes, their being visible and well-kept are a mark of pride, and - where it is not uniquely disadvantageous to present as a Roslette - they prefer to showcase their nature as a means of intimidating others. Roslettes of particularly perverse dispositions are known to work their fangs and claws with tools, the most common modification being chipping them to make them serrated, so as to inflict greater pain when used on victims.

Feeding comes with modifications to the Five Straits, particularly that of the interpreter strait, removing one of the quirks of its function; rejection of weft that is parsed as not belonging to the owner. If a denizen of the Switchboard consumed the memory strait of another for example, they will primarily suffer from a colossal infusion of densely woven chalk that will wound them, but even after surviving this, the interpreter strait recognizes the weft as not originating from the owner, in a sense, and thus destroys and unravels it into regular ribbon chalk. Denizens of the Switchboard can thus not ‘eat’ another’s head and gain access to their memories; all denizens except the Roslettes. Weave-eating disables this function of the interpreter, and allows them to feed on foreign weft with little consequence - when done properly, as elaborated upon later. Eaten weft passes through the interpreter with its integrity maintained, and is handed off to the tek on the computational strait for processing, or assimilation, rather.

Assimilation precedes the Roslette’s goal of ascension. Eaten weave goes to the computational strait, where the weave-eating tek discerns between kinds of weft, threshes the wheat from the chaff, and passes it to the appropriate parts of the lattice. The most desirable weave - Danseer backbone - is harvested from the spines of Third Kin subjects and passed to the Roslette’s own backbone, where the tek invokes the lattice’s own reverse unravelling to integrate this new backbone with the preexisting one, and the addition of Danseer weave permeates throughout the lattice and straits, inducing a tangible strengthening in their function. How well this process is done varies from Roslette to Roslette, with newer generations being more proficient than older ones, and younger members of one generation being more proficient than elder ones.

Wherein the power to consume weave becomes a curse, however, is the hunger. The ability to consume weave comes also with a hunger to do so, and even Roslettes who have no intent of chasing the post of a Danseer are still stricken with the desire to feed on the lattices of others. As such, even beyond the ascension charge, Roslettes are obligated to feed to maintain the wellbeing of their own persons, as - if this hunger is not attended to - the weave-eating tek will turn the lattice against itself, and begin an excruciating process of internal self-cannibalization. One cannot cheat this hunger either by simply eating any odd weave available; the tek creates a hunger for complex weft, and unfortunately, the most readily available complex weft is that of the memory and computational straits.

This does come with a number of problems, however.

The interpreter strait, as explained above, actively filters out certain permutations of weave that are parsed as not originating from a given subject. The weave-eating tek disables this function, and additionally facilitates the assimilation of consumed weave into the lattice. For weave such as familial backbones, this results in imbibing the nature of the origin of that backbone, and becoming more like that family. For memory straits however, a Roslette can indeed consume the memories of a subject and imbibe them as their own, integrating them into their own memories, akin to stuffing papers in a book and treating that book - additions and all - as though it were a single cohesive unit. This does come with the problem of breaks in continuity however, as a Roslette that frequently eats the memories of others will in turn become a living chronicle born of half-remembered tales, many of them not their own.

The irreconcilability of one’s own memories and the memories of others on the fronts of temporal placement, content and context has cursed the Roslettes to suffer from a strange form of ‘collective identarian impermanence’, where individual Roslettes have only fleeting ideas of what they are, and the Roslettes as a whole suffer from an inability to identify oneself with respect to the identities of others. Roslette houses and clans and courts constantly collapse and emerge - not from starvation or strife - but from their members simply forgetting that they were a member of such a thing, and it has become essential to keep extensive written records of nearly anything of note, as any thing stored in the mind and passed on by word of mouth, never once being committed to anything more solid, is at nontrivial risk of simply ceasing to exist in the collective Roslette consciousness. This problem is dealt with in part via the maintenance of extensive records of knowledge and lineages, and referring back to them to refresh oneself of information deemed important enough to store. However, this produces two more issues in turn; the first being that the existence of a central record of what is ‘true’ that is also not unmodifiable is simply begging for someone possessed of a sufficient blend of intelligence, intent, ambition and drive to functionally rewrite history as they see fit, in a bid that quite literally shapes the future. The second problem is more philosophical, that being that as Roslettes eat, they lose more and more of themselves, and what is restored to them are only the basest principles of the necessity of further eating. Even the Roslettes, as perverted, maleficent and fanatical as they are, are capable of moments of warmth, joy and bliss. These moments, few and far-between, are treasured by their kind, but they are in turn among the first to go when a Roslette has fed too greatly in their time, and the void left behind is filled only with memories that were never theirs - making them yearn even more strongly for the ones that were - and a renewed hunger that must be satiated.

Eating the computational strait of a subject results in a noteworthy occurrence, the passing on of Teks. The weave-eating Tek occupies little room on the memory and computational straits, and thus it is common practice for Roslettes to wield a second tek in addition to the power to eat weave, this secondary tek usually being obtained by prying it from the carcass of something they’ve preyed upon. Eating the computational strait itself does additionally yield the various fold equations that were written upon it, and thus grants the consumer an explosive boost in chalkweaving potential.

For many Roslettes, this is their path to power, eating the strong and growing stronger, and coupled with the effect eating has on their memory, the Roslettes could be said to be totally, utterly cursed with a charge that demands them to exchange their selves - what they are - to become something else.

Addendum: Nectar

A necessary addendum following SB_Physiology and the addition of the note that the denizens of the Switchboard do indeed bleed, something that wasn’t solidly established in canon prior. This addendum thus seeks to reconcile the fact the Roslettes - being vampire analogues - lack a very critical quality with regards to the vampire motif.

Technically, there is very little actual advantage gleaned from consuming the nettare of denizens of the Switchboard. Without the tek that grants weave-eating, the disjointed straits within the solution of nettare are destroyed once consumed and turned into liquid of little consequence before unravelling into chalk. Even with weave-eating, consuming interface straits yields virtually nothing, and the amount of computational strait material consumed is very little, and contains virtually nothing by way of plunderable equations for the usage of the drinker.

However, drinking nettare does provide a temporary boost to passive reverse unravelling in weave-eaters, due to this being one of nettare’s more primary functions. But far more prominently, the weave-eating tek confers nettare from different persons with varying tastes, and in addition to this, vaguely positive mental feedback that can induce something akin to addiction. Possessors of the tek can come to love and despise different flavors, and be compelled to drink nettare in general.

Calling it nectar was something of a choice.

The ArcolMass

‘ArcolMass’ is a Fel-Arcad term meant to describe the summation of arcologies in the entire Switchboard. When discussing matters that have to do with arcologies in totality, less so as a concept and more so as they tangibly exist in the universe, ArcolMass is used to describe it.

Preservation of the overall wellbeing of the ArcolMass is paramount to the Fel-Arcad - in particular, paramount to the Fel of the Sanscrii Arcology, which serve as something of a centralized, overarching power for the Fel in matters that require such a thing. Administration of the ArcolMass can be viewed as taking charge of a human body, one like ours, where the individual wellbeing of every organ is required for the total wellbeing of the entire organism. This coupled with the fact that organ don’t serve identical functions for the body - rather, being specialized and often unique in doing certain things - it is thus the case that the ArcolMass can be viewed very much like a body in and of itself.

As such, it is important to entertain the idea of arcology specialization. While the root document for the Fel-Arcad might’ve alluded to wholly self-sustainable arcologies that require little to nothing by way of external input - and indeed, some truly optimized arcologies are capable of functioning in this manner - it is far more often the case that arcologies serve different functions that are needed by other arcologies, with logistical lattices connecting them, this structure of production, consumption and distribution apparatus forming the bulk of the ArcolMass.

That being said, I would still rather stress the point that much of what the arcology model aims to solve is in fact, this very thing; the separation of consumers from production sites and methods, and instead trying to create a synergistic relationship between them that - as an emergent property - maximizes efficiency and thus minimizes waste. If the solution to the destructive sprawl of current city-building methodology due to the fact production and consumption sites are discrete is to employ arcologies, it makes little sense to then build arcologies such that they are dependent on other arcologies to function, thus creating arcology sprawl and winding back up to where we started. The endgame, after all, is achieving as much as possible with little, including space.

As such, the concept of arcology specialization in the ArcolMass applies to the exceptions, rather than being the norm. In instances where there is simply no way to locate consumers next to production sites - due to danger associated with production processes, the necessitation of expansive terraforming operations to achieve optimal production, the unique nature of certain raw materials, or in a bid to harness economies of scale - then we see instances of arcology specialization emerge. Otherwise, arcologies do indeed function as self-sufficient quasi-nations, with interactions between them being minimally economic and material, and maximally human. Specialized arcologies then, do the bulk of the Fel-Arcad’s heavy lifting with regards to their contributions to the entire Dancirah’s economic activity, and serve thus as a means of upholding their end of the social contract.

Specialized Arcologies

Specialized arcologies can be more broadly defined as the equivalent to machine worlds in other bits of fiction; a singular civilizational unit devoted to the maximal production of a singular or handful of Things. Those that live there do so solely to contribute to the production of the Thing. All efforts expended are expended towards the realization of the Thing. Logistical infrastructure exists solely for the transport of raw material necessary for the Thing into the structure, and the transport of completed Things out of it. The singleness of focus is indeed how it achieves maximal utility.

They are in turn broadly classifiable into good and service, which benefit from being incredibly self-explanatory. As such;

Goods Arcologies

• Extraction
• Agricultural

Service Arcologies

• Refinement
• Military
• Assembly
• Colonial

Goods Arcologies

Extraction Incredibly self-explanatory. These are arcologies dedicated to the extraction of some given resource from some given context. In most cases, this is either raw chalk mined from wellsprings, or some mineral resource plundered from the bowels of the earth. In either case, these arcologies exist solely to extract these resources, and contain all the infrastructure necessary to make this possible; habitations for workers, workshops for constructing and repairing tools, silos and storage facilities of every kind for keeping whatever is being extracted.

The replichrome makeup of arcologies in general proves very useful here, as the natural ability for replichrome to grow is utilized extensively in extraction operations. Soleri programming can instruct the arcology to grow deep roots into the earth, roots so large that crews of workers and their machines can fit within them, and thus carry out the work of extracting resource from deep below while needing minimal work to actually get there.

It is often the case that extraction arcologies make use of widespread structural casting to outrightly terraform planets that they are operating upon, especially when extracting resources that are on the surface rather than underground. Many of the Switchboard’s biomes are otherwise unavoidably dangerous, and taking what is needed from them would be just about impossible. In even grander operations, modification of the planet’s planetary equation can be used to compel it to formulate even more desired resource, but this is not without expected risks.

Extraction arcologies feature infrastructure for interstellar logistics as well. Normally, mining massive amounts of chalk is done by simply blasting an entire wellspring to pieces, and flinging the subsequent chalk-rich asteroids into the orbits of other planets, towing them there with starships, or just flinging them down to the planet entirely to fall as meteors - though this latter option is only in cases where the energy from the impact won’t wipe out the planet entirely, or throw it terribly off its regular orbital trajectory. Where that isn’t possible, mined resource must be gotten off-world by launch apparatus, loaded into interstellar craft, and ferried away. As such, many extraction arcologies are coupled with orbital installments that handle this task - sometimes multiple to allow for overall more accessible launch windows.

Agricultural While the Third Kin do not necessarily need food for sustenance (more explicitly outlined in SB_Physiology), there is still wholly-understandable widespread demand for it, and as such, supply must respond. Agricultural arcologies are exactly what they say they are on the tin; single-minded operations towards maximal food production.

Where extraction arcologies are deep, agricultural ones are tall, constituting of rows and rows of replichrome towers outfitted for maximal hydroponic production. Command and control is done at a central structure, all other growing towers circling it, concentric rings of specialized growing towers for all manners of Fel engineered crops. In the interspaces between towers are smaller greenhouse arcologies for growing of food in more ‘conventional’ manners, meant to supply those who find themselves put off by the hydroponics-grown food - what with all the drive for efficiency and little room for love - and are ready to shoulder the premium incurred to satisfy their exacting palates.

Service Arcologies

Refinement Very straightforward. Next on the supply chain to goods arcologies are refinement ones, which are easily viewable as expansive industrial complexes with living quarters attached. They do just about exactly what they say they do; taking raw materials and moving them slightly forward in the process of realizing their final shape. Turning logs to planks, ore to ingots, so on, so forth.

Assembly Assembly arcologies describe an extremely broad classification of arcologies that specialize in the production of final products. Where they differ is in what the steps in realizing final products demand to be realized.

I stumbled upon a worldbuilding question-and-answer forum once that posed the question of “Why machine worlds?” It’s a valuable question, one that can be taken from two different angles, one further along the chain of getting to an answer than the other. It’s actually better to take the second, more forward angle first, which reshapes the question to “What could possibly require an entire planet to make?”

The answer given pitched the idea of exotic matter that needed to be manufactured in particle accelerators. The power of a particle accelerator is interestingly enough, limited by its size. Suppose then, that some universe-critical bit of far-future infrastructure such as FTL travel or cryogenic preservation of human beings is dependent on exotic matter produced in particle accelerators, and our current measly accelerators that only straddle the border between two countries couldn’t possibly generate the ferocity of collisions enough to cause this matter to emerge. Imagine then, the only way to synthesize this matter was to vastly, vastly upscale these accelerators to the point that they run around the circumference of the entire planet. Imagine if multiple of them are needed - perhaps because one resultant bit of matter is a raw material for another - and the planet thus has multiple accelerators circling it like waist beads.

Powering this setup - much like building it - would require a source of power approaching the limits of imagination. Most simply; a star. Achieved in our universe, a Dyson sphere or swarm beaming power down to this setup would be just about the only way to power multiple planet-circling accelerator assemblies, generating constant peta- or exa-electronvolt scale collisions.

Keeping this kind of infrastructure running would require however many tools, replacement parts and crew needed to maintain our current accelerators elevated to all-new orders of magnitude. It would need heavy-duty factories and logistical infrastructure needed to transport the exotic materials produced - which might be unimaginably dense or highly unstable - to the beginnings of new manufacturing chains for further processing, or to storage, both of these things most rationally being kept on-site.

And of course, it needs interstellar infrastructure to get both raw materials in and finished product out, mandating fleets of starships, robust launch and landing apparatus, ports and orbital installations.

The result of all this is that you now have a planet defined by a huge network of spaceports and related infrastructure, a robust power grid, factories and plants running off the materials moved in by the ports and the power provided by the grid, and all the housing and support needed to keep this all running.

It only makes sense then, to locate other production and assembly processes here as well. Why make on thing when you can make lots of things? Everything needed is quite literally already there.

While Samsara has neither particles or accelerators for them, it isn’t beyond conception to see how planet-sized manufacturing infrastructure might exist, and how these would need to be maintained. It was already established in the Dawn of the Dancirah in the forging of the Glasseater that multi-planet-sized structural casts can be used to achieve certain ends, and scaling these down a bit to a planet, and even further to - say - a continent, is hardly outside the realm of realism for the Switchboard. The logics of power distribution in the Switchboard already features firing beams of hyperweave across interplanetary distances; it is entirely within reason production on a similar scale could be realized in the Switchboard.

It thus makes sense then to have an arcology or multiple overseeing these operations, dedicated solely to production and the maintenance of production processes.

Perhaps as an additional note, some production processes could only be ideally done in isolated assembly-dedicated arcologies due the production of certain byproducts harmful to kin. Plain pollution might be the cause, and while the Fel do put extensive effort towards producing in a manner that results in minimal negative environmental impact, accidentally leaks, spillages and general release of pollutants are always a possibility. In truly awful cases, this contamination could affect the planet in a way that both makes it inhabitable, and difficult to restore to any kind of habitability - something that would be a much larger problem if there are also large numbers of people living nearby.

And as a final note; human vanity. We generally don’t like to live near production processes, they can be noisy, smelly, disruptive; overall blights on the human experience. Even if they are not these things, they might not be pretty too, instead being utter eyesores that not even familiarity can fully mitigate. There’s little reason to believe supersizing this to a cosmic scale would do anything but exacerbate these problems. No one wants to live there, and as such, no one builds habitations there. The most straightforward answer of all.

Military The Fel-Arcad being a peaceful people aim to minimalize and remove both violence and elements from it from their view. Coupled with seeing it is ‘feeling’ it, or more so the awareness of it, in the sense that it is always within reach as an option. Yet, many concede that while one can choose to not be violent, there is little that can be done to oppose others thinking differently, and as such, contingencies must exists as a sort of necessary evil.

Military arcologies thus exist for this purpose. Being the headquarters of Fel Sekators, they serve as a means to project force over space, defending nearby arcologies dedicated to other purposes from harm. They serve additional purposes as stationing grounds for troops and weapons, as well training facilities, and occasionally as fronts for commerce involving weapons and similar.

Their isolation in a sense serves as a means of avoiding normalization. By preventing the representations of idea that weapons and violence are merely an ever-present fact of life, it is thus easier to cultivate a populace that rejects that idea - a standpoint necessary for the overall success of the arcology model.

Colonial An arcology not very different from the standard unspecialized arcology, but so called because they are part of an effort to colonize a planet. When Fel are newly moving into a planet to begin efforts to build a proper arcology, a much smaller colonial one is established first, providing the Fel building the larger arcology a settlement to live and work for the time being. Due to its being made of replichrome, the colonial arcology is often assimilated into the larger final arcology structure sometime during its growing process, having served its purpose.

While colonial arcologies are fairly well used, it is occasionally the case that migrating Fel are housed in large starships or orbital facilities pending when a new arcology meant to house them will be ready. Many Fel, however, are used to living in arcologies and thus would rather live in small, temporary ones than anywhere else.

The ArcolNet

Communications and Compute and compute is recommended reading for this section.

Presided over by the Second Arcology at Sanscrii, the ArcolNet is a series of large-scale straitNet that’s semi-isolated from the rest of the DevitNet. This lattice is presided over by the Fel of the Sanscrii Arcology, and built and maintained by the various arcologies that exist in the Dancirah. The ArcolNet exists primarily to link all Fel-Arcad arcologies to every other arcology, allowing for the free-flow of communication between Fel-Arcad habitation centers.

It started small in the pre-DevitNet era, as the Arcad of the time were not so spread out, and thus only needed straitNets that connected arcologies directly to each other, the arcologies themselves acting as both endpoints and relays for information. This changed with the hit of the Refrain and the later rise of the Fel-Arcad, who renovated their old architecture and expanded it far into the Dancirah as the Fel-Arcad spread.

Arcology Logistics and Migration

Fairly well-established above are the many moving parts that facilitate logistics between arcologies. The Dancirah being as vast as it is and the Fel-Arcad really only ever putting a single habitation-focused arcology on a planet in the overwhelming majority of cases, coupled with the Fel-Arcad’s own collectivism-centered strength, means that logistics is of immense importance, and thus robust infrastructure is needed to make it feasible.

Much of this infrastructure is concerned with interplanetary and interstellar operations. Thus, fleets of starships rendezvous with free-standing and orbital installations, which are supplied by various orbital launch mechanisms. Installation and maintenance of this infrastructure is often a multi-arcology affair, as a result of complexity and scale.

The Fel-Arcad move around in mass via arcology ships; large people-carrier ships designed with arcology principles in mind, defined by slower travel times to allow for better living conditions.

A Black Cornerstone

“It would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism were to deny the reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diversity,” he writes in the new report. “It would be equally unfortunate if an ahistorical and ethnocentric conservatism were to deny that addressing that challenge is both feasible and desirable.” The Downside of Diversity | Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (harvard.edu)

The arcology is a philosophy realized as a feat of architecture.

This philosophy is a multifaceted one, encompassing aspects of ecology, collectivism, egalitarianism, social justice, and rationality, coalescing to form a sort of ‘arcology concept’ upon which the physical structure of the arcology is guided by, as well as the civilization and peoples that will come to live in it. Essential to the success of this ‘arcology concept’ is conviction in the very validity of the concept to begin with; its underlying ideals and what is extrapolated from them. This conviction is necessarily a resultant of education, which is in turn conditional upon a willingness to be taught. Because of how involved the arcology is physically - speaking in terms of what is outrightly demanded from its participants to succeed - it is thus a major guarantor of the long-term success of the entire ordeal if those participants are convinced of the arcology model beyond merely its viability as a means of providing a roof over one’s head; they must wholeheartedly embrace the tenets outlined in the concept, not just as a means of constructing habitation, but as a means of constructing civilization itself.

Narratively, none are as convinced in the writ of the arcology concept as much as its original creators; the Fel-Arcad. So much so that the writ that makes up the arcology concept and the doctrine of the vast majority of Fel are intertwined with each other to the point of being functionally synonymous. The Fel are their arcologies, and the arcologies are the Fel. For many, the arcologies were quite attractive prospects for those looking for a place to inhabit, what with their promise and often even delivery of nigh-utopic standards of living. However, Fel-Arcad social theorists and tangentially-related scholars - particularly the Soleri - made a rather worrying discovery with regards to arcology migration and demographics; below a certain percentage of the population that is Fel-Arcad, arcologies show an increased propensity to suffer collapse scenarios.

The cornerstone of the arcology concept’s success, then, is a critical percentage of all involved in it being ardent adherents to its tenets. Applied in canon, arcologies generally succeed when they demographically consist of majorly Fel, thus incentivizing - in some cases, mandating - the exclusion of non-Fel.

The Soleri - being the tenders of the arcologies - are ultimately the ones who have to bear the brunt of this knowledge, and taking the decisions that stem from possessing it. Not being satisfied with merely having the effect, however, they sought to deduce a cause. Overt study into the instances made available - and covert study into the ones less so - revealed that two major parameters determined the long-term success of any arcology with regards to population; the prevalence - or lack thereof - of collectivist sentiment, the balance of in-group and out-group biases, and a number of other factors that add wrinkles to the previous two.

The Fel-Arcad - to generalize - posses a high amount of collectivist sentiment, and little by way of in or out-group biases- though they occasionally lean towards out-group bias, for reasons elaborated upon later. This makes them immensely suited for the arcology model, as the model demands collectivist mindsets and an egalitarian worldview to maximally function. Operating off of this baseline, the sociologists among the Fel ranks sought to find out in which ways the other great families differed that made them seemingly unconducive to the health of arcologies.

Kin Neighbors

The Sil’khan The Sil’khan were found to be lacking in collectivist sentiment and possessing considerable in-group bias.

The Silks being born of the Danseers inherited much of their personalities, and thus nature, and theirs is a nature shaped by expansionism and conquest. Being literal god-children makes them disinclined towards long-term interdependent relationships with others, preferring instead their nomadic, hedonist lifestyles of traversing the Switchboard, seeking out things that meet their fancy, and avoiding what doesn’t.

This nomadic sentiment in particular makes them very ill-suited for arcology living, as they yearn for the great expanses of the Great Sky of the Dancirah, and thus actively refuse to get invested in anything that they view as ‘tying them down’, such as building things that last, be these settlements or relationships with those dwelling within them. It does not help that - while overall, they are on friendly terms with the Fel - many Sil’khan regard the Fel-Arcad as a ‘weak’ peoples. The Sil’khan - like their Danseer ancestors - value both strength and its cultivation, and view the Fel-Arcad’s elimination of strife from all facets of living as being a recipe for the cultivation of a people unable to hold their own. While this assertion isn’t objectively false - most Fel are indeed ill-suited to even the mildly uncomfortable reaches of the Switchboard - the Fel recognize this but attach no more significance to it. The Sil’khan on the other hand loosely stratify their society around various measures of strength, be it combat, chalkweaving or striding, and generally make few accommodations for those viewed as weak or frail, something that directly contradicts the Fel’s manner of doing things, which seek to treat all people equally irrespective of quality.

Their own in-group biases take an interesting form; their unique lack of a sense of auxiliary components of sexuality - such as marriage, childbirth and parentage - mean that their own in-groups are formed around larger clan descendance, adherence to the tenets of a particular Skydancer, or loyalty to some other larger Sil’khan figure such as explorers, fighters, thinkers, apostolics and ritualists. They tend to center the holders of certain ideas, in opposition to the Fel who are more inclined to the ideas themselves. The Sil’khan practice something akin to a religion with regards to how they regard the Skydancers, and some having this practice compel them to behaviors that may not be conducive to dwelling within arcologies makes them ill-suited for cooperating with the Fel, who’s sole responsibility, they believe, is held towards fellow kin and nothing higher.

Most simply put, the Sil’khan are selfish, inclined towards satisfying solely themselves, uplifting themselves, looking out for majorly, themselves. Cooperative actions among them are rare, and generally only when operating under some higher ruleset than none at all. Even then, they are strained, with most Sil’khan still yearning to perpetuate one’s self at the expense of others. They are far from incapable of cooperation, but rather disinclined towards it, having a predisposition towards individual growth and pursuits.

The Lancasters Being born the Switchboard’s underdogs in that they lack the powers to stride and weave, they were compelled to harness the strength born from cooperation to eke out their own in the Great Sky. As a result, they boast an immense sense of collectivism, and a robust understanding of the power of a multiply-wound cord. However, their underdog status has cultivated both an inferiority and a pride within them; an understanding of their place in many hierarchies, as well as quasi-nationalistic pride in their achievements, the former fact notwithstanding. Poor and even malicious attitudes from other families have caused the Lancasters to hunker down and huddle together, viewing the outside world as bristling with threats and looking out only for their own. As such, their in-group bias is the absolute highest, with a disposition to outsiders that spans silent, cold distaste to open, fiery hatred.

Lancasters are very disinclined towards cooperating with non-Lancasters. Where they are found in cooperation with members of other great families, it is almost always for some form of reward or more clandestine motive. Some - especially the Fel, possessed of seemingly bottomless wells of understanding compassion - argue that they can hardly be blamed for this, having been dealt a poor hand at the very onset of their kind, and multiple subsequent ban hands via the actions and inactions of their Third Kin cousins. By virtue of there being more of them than the other third families, and their inability to fend of the travails of the Switchboard in ways that those who can stride and weave can, much of the overall suffering generated in the Great Sky is Lancaster in origin. This all-encompassing unfairness has led to them being a distrustful people.

The Lancasters in particular greatly despise the Rosenthalists, who respond to this ill-will with copious servings of their own. Viewing them as the least of the least, the Rosenthalists are disinclined towards treating them even as kin, this made particularly manifest in the form of the Roslettes who see them as easy prey. The Lancasters in turn have jacketed much of the Fel-Arcad in the sentiment of the Rosenthalists, seeing the Rosenthalists who hate them, and the other Fel-Arcad who pity them, as not meaningfully different from each other. One curses, the other - try as much as they may not to - condescends, and some Lancasters even prefer the Rosenthalists, as their overt, explicit negative sentiment leaves no room for uncertainty of conviction. The Rosenthalists are to be hated. The other Fel, however, are to be distrusted and treated at arm’s length, as though they may seem to be - and perhaps even actually - be kind, it stems from seeing themselves as their betters, and the Lancasters - despite being aware of their own place on the ladders of the Switchboard - are not a people to be pitied. They possess an ironclad sense of honor in self and people.

For this reason, they are by and large incapable of dwelling peacefully in arcologies as they remain unconvinced - and occasionally inconvincible - of the Fel-Arcad’s message of egalitarianism and equality of all peoples. To them, it is delusion to act as though the fundamental differences between them either don’t exist or don’t matter, when every time a Sil’khan doesn’t dignify a greeting with a response they’re reminded of those differences in crystal clarity. For them, no recourse exists to be found between them and other families, and as such they refuse to dwell within the arcologies where they are a minority and surrounded by those who they feel will never grasp the reality of their existence, believing it insulting that they even try.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and it has been noted that Lancasters who overcome this in-group bias prove to be desirable elements in arcologies at equal level to native Fel, due to their high propensity for cooperation. Nonetheless, Lancasters who for one reason or another have to dwell in arcologies seem to radiate a resentment at their lot, feeling that the entire endeavor is them acting how they believe others believe they should be acting; in service to those above them. While the arcology model does by design insistence on placing as-equal demands as possible upon every head, the Lancasters still feel unequally yoked; that they are serving Fel-Arcad in a Fel institution, and yet expected to contribute to the same degree they are, while not possessing the privileges and affordances they do.

As such, the Lancasters are insecure; they do not trust others to treat them fairly, and as such respond in a manner that’s defined by pointed distrust. While the Lancasters will more than readily work with their kind out of an understanding that the continued preservation of all Lancasters is conditional upon doing so, they extend this disposition to Lancaster kind and nowhere further. That they cannot believe in their own equality to others means they cannot wholly grasp the arcology concept, and thus dwell poorly within them.

The Vahnkin The Vahnkin are somewhat similar to the Lancasters, but while the Lancasters have a general aversion to all other Third Kin, the Vahnkin have a very old, very exacting grudge with the Fel-Arcad. Perhaps the blackest stain on the Fel’s history, fear of a Second Refrain took hold of suspicion that the Void might be the catalyst for it happening, fanning sparks into embers then into roaring flame. Flame that seeded the first Antamaran Fel, who began violent military incursions into the Void to find a means to seal it for good, even if it meant dooming all those - the Vahnkin - who had come to dwell inside. The Antamaran conflicts that followed led to losses on both sides, with the Fel being defeated and the Antamarans pushed back into obscurity, while the Vahnkin declared the Fel their forever-enemies, and refuse to have dealings with them where and whenever possible.

Of all Third Kin, the Vahnkin are the least inclined to living in arcologies. Beyond even assessment of their merit as places to live, the simple fact they have majority Fel within them makes them undesirable, and little more justification is needed than that. The Fel-Arcad are simply enemies, and there is no associating with enemies.

The Vahnkin, due to the hostile nature of the Void and the shape their civilization has taken within it boast a fair bit of collectivist sentiment. However, their practicing of their own brands of monarchy and feudalism has created various in-groups and thus associated biases that favor them, resulting in the Vahnkin being a people that - unlike the Lancasters and like the Sil’khan to a much greater extent - they are mostly unconcerned with the survival of the Vahnkin great family as a whole, preferring instead to fight for the superiority of some chosen faction above all others. This makes them immediately incompatible with the arcology model, and perhaps to a far greater extent than all others.

Coupled with this is the Vahnkin’s own brand of religious practice; their worship and reverence of the First Amaranth Sultan, who confers upon the Vahnkin and other faithful various boons and powers. The Fel-Arcad are disinclined towards paying tribute to any of the Switchboard’s divinities, and even the Rosenthalists who nigh-worship Arcad Rosen and his descendants find the Vahnic faith and its adherents as deserving of immense reproach. Various tenets of the Vahnkin faith - beginning with obligation to Vahn rather than fellow kin and descending from there - are incompatible with the arcology model and Fel-Arcad manners of living, and immense friction occurs in any instance where Fel and Vahnkin aim to abide.

Various attempts have been made to reconcile past differences with the Vahnkin by the Fel, including open displays of opposing Antamaran and similar sentiment, offering incentives to come live in arcologies and dwell among the Fel, and developmental endeavors targeted towards improving conditions in the Void. The fundamental differences in ideals however, makes most of these efforts hollow, and the awkwardness and resentment that stems a wronged and offending party have proven so injurious to the psyche that both sides often refuse to engage in any kind of reconciliatory discourse, choosing instead an uneasy informal pact of above-the-table nonviolence, where both parties at large do not actively, openly engage each other, but are wholly aware that cells of either of them wage quiet wars in the shadows.

For many though, even generations after those directly tied to the Antamaran conflicts had returned to the Current, they cling firmly on to the hatred it seeded, having made it almost into a tenet of being Vahnkin itself. For them, there is no recourse, no olive branch, no path to reconciliation. They were wronged and will remain wronged until the last stars fade. All that they are is conditional upon being so.

There is little other way to summarize it; the Vahnkin are dogmatic. While they are well within their rights to not forgive the Fel-Arcad, the argument can be made that the Switchboard is none the better for it. To move more squarely back to the subject matter, dwelling and operating within arcologies demands a willingness to accept the fallibility of one’s kind and thus a willingness to forgive those failings. Arcologies cannot function with people holding grudges over offenses any more than they can function with actual inflictors of offense; reconciliation must be sought, or the structure crumbles.

Seeking Recourse

The Fel-Arcad are dissatisfied with the idea that they must exclude others for the arcologies to maximally persists, as one would very easily suspect. Someone less familiar with the Fel would be unable to grasp their endgame, and thus tender the question of why it is so terrible that the arcologies belong to the Fel. But the Fel’s endgame is that they - the arcologies - not belong to anyone; their endgame is the proliferation of arcology living and ideals throughout the entirety of the Switchboard, and that cannot possibly be achieved while excluding the parties that make up that ‘entirety of the Switchboard’.

Much of the success of the arcology model is conditional upon acting against individual self-interests; swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction, compensating and even over-compensating for selfish thought with self-less deed. The Fel-Arcad in a sense war with the original make of the Third Kin that arose from the first chalk deserts; those beings sought to enrich solely themselves and favored only those who they viewed as immediate kin, so the Fel-Arcad compensate with being aggressively collectivist and the only great family in the Switchboard with a robust, conscientious, out-group bias, where they actively work to treat elements outside of themselves and immediate kin better than those two things.

Of course, the arcology model demands acting in this way, but it also makes it possible to act in this manner to begin with. A Lancaster trying to do similar in a community of Sil’khan might find themselves ignored at best, and exploited at worst. And even a Vahnkin among Fel aiming to rectify the gap between perpetrator and victim might still meet unease on the Fel-Arcad’s own side. The Fel, after all, are hardly perfect themselves. Rather than being perfect, they are driven. They recognize these problems and go further than that; they fight to rectify them. And so they swallow their guilt and take the olive branch, or they continue to reach their own out, even if it is met time and time again with distrust and scorn.

The Fel-Arcad, after all, share a particularly essential conviction; the infinite capacity of all peoples for directed growth. To them, all these things - the Silk’s selfishness, the Lancaster’s insecurity, the Vahnkin’s dogma - all these things are merely ideas that can be dispensed of and replaced with new ones. And they are absolutely correct. The problem is cost.

The Soleri’s Calculus

The Soleri’s findings on arcologies where Fel aren’t an overwhelming majority are dire at first glance. All peoples within them - Fel included - are observed to be more reserved. They have less trust in their neighbors. They express much less trust in arcology governance, local governance, infrastructure, institutions, just about everything. That final point metamorphizes into a disinclination to exercise civil powers, such as voting and seeking recourse in courts and public forums. They observed a decreased inclination towards charity, volunteerism and public service, less conviction in others coming together to solve pressing societal problems and even reportedly less friends and confidants, which produced an overall feeling of dissatisfaction with being altogether.

The takeaway of ‘diverse arcologies are less happy are more prone to collapse scenarios’ was a truly provocative one, but the proof was in the pudding. It seemed to all that the kin were possessed of a built-in fear of anything perceived as ‘the other’. Theorizers felt this - rather than spawning with the first kin that rose from the chalk deserts - instead emerged within them as a product of learning quickly that things that could act in much the same manner as they could were not necessarily like them, and this hooked into pattern-seeking and identifying routines in the computational strait, making the task of reducing complex beings down to what silhouette they most instantly fit upon cursory examination immensely cost-effective and right enough times to grow this function to the state it now was.

But if anyone would argue for the transcending beyond original shape, there is none more suitable than the Fel-Arcad, and they insist that these old functions, useful as they may be, can be unlearned - and if not that - tamed with the stilling cords of reason. To concede to the idea that ‘others’ were enough of a problem to never justify reaching out was simply incompatible with core Fel-Arcad tenets, and thus they refused to accept it. Instead, they chose to take action, and this action was in the form of education. The arcology concept was - after all - conceived of in a Third Kin mind, not delivered by the Astrolabe or something beyond it. If a Third Kin mind could conceive of it, then one could grasp it. And if it can be understood, then it can be taught.

The cost, however, was the Fel-Arcad themselves. This manner of reaching out was not without its difficulties and constraints, and even when focusing on the targets of outreach, many, many Fel-Arcad were compelled to face ridicule, scorn and often violence. For the Soleri, this was too high a price to pay, even if there were Fel ready to pay it. To risk Fel-Arcad wellbeing on a gamble that peoples they had extensively discovered were adverse to their ideals and contributed negatively to what they had built could be morphed into model contributors - when it was so much easier to simply shut the doors to people who weren’t even majorly looking to enter and reap the benefits that comes with following the path of least resistance - was to the Soleri, by every metric, a raw deal.

This concession wasn’t met overwhelmingly favorably, of course, not even among the Soleri themselves, leading to bouts of ideological infighting between those who wanted to preserve what they already had, and those who felt compelled to launch out into the deep and lead others to better paths, even at risk to themselves, what they loved, and what they had built. It is a truly dreadful position that they’ve found themselves, and it remains perhaps one of the greatest ideological debates that plague the Fel to this day. For better or worse, the conservationists hold sway; despite the charge that the Fel-Arcad as a whole have, many are far more inclined towards preserving their way of life, protecting what they’ve built by any means possible. Even if it means shutting the door.

An Even Blacker Mandate

There is one faction that views the matter from a completely different angle entirely, however, this faction being the Order of the Undersol.

The Undersol exist for a singular reason; to be the cloaked dagger of the Soleri towards the aim of preserving arcologies. Operating on the very limits of the Fel-Arcad’s own principles, the members of this order have taken it upon themselves to shoulder sins that others couldn’t bear, so as to protect the institutions the Fel-Arcad have built.

They in particular view things through and aggressively ideological leans, in which objectives to defend and attack, as well as weapons and defenses themselves are all fundamentally ideas. The arcology concept is an idea. It is the task of the Undersol to protect and preserve the sanctity of this idea. This manifests in how they control the Fel, as the Fel themselves are the ones who hold the arcology idea, and the survival of the arcology is conditional upon - put most explicitly - a homogeneity of doctrine.

Preserving this homogeneity is thus necessary, and perhaps the greatest threat to this homogeneity are those who have not had the arcology concept instilled and inculcated within them, having been born in it, raised within it, taught it, and empowered to uphold it. The threat to ideas are always other ideas, and the Undersol works to fight incursionary ideas and the ones who bring them. And none bring new ideas into the arcologies like members of other great families.

The Undersol thus wages a war against ideological contamination. They fight, quite literally, to protect the Fel-Arcad from external lines and patterns of thought. This they do via covertly opposing the very interaction of Fel-Arcad with perceived outsiders, be it by opposing efforts to reach out to them, opposing migration of non-Fel into arcologies, working to expel those already present, and eliminating incentive for more to come in the future. While they are highly disinclined towards particularly overt methods, they are not wholly above them, having accepted that their work - and their hands - are already soiled beyond measure.

The Soleri wield the knife that is the Undersol rather unwillingly, but they wield them all the same. Having come to understand the work it took the Fel-Arcad to shape the ideals they abide by, and how tempting the doctrines practiced by the other families are - the Sil’khan and their self-exalting individualism, the Lancasters with their fierce tribalism, and the Vahnkin with their vicious, unchanging remove and justification for all actions - they justify their wielding of the Undersol as the one true weapon they have in a Switchboard that straddles the lines of apathetic and antithetical to them.

To the Soleri, they simply have no choice; preserve what one has built even if it means soiling the hands, or leaving things to follow natural course, and being compelled to be silent in the face of ruin.

Choosing to act in the former way, to swallow small evils to fight much bigger ones; that is the black cornerstone of the Fel-Arcad people.

Arcology Collapse

Nothing built can truly last forever. Be it time or circumstance, even the mightiest edifices will succumb to something. Arcologies are no different, and in fact, might be uniquely positioned in this regard. Their nature as nigh-living things means that the manner in which they cease to exist is somewhat reflective of this, in that arcologies - much like corpses - decay and die. Fel-Arcad studies have made the science of arcology collapse a fairly robust study, as it is in the best interest of the Fel to reduce instances of it to as minimal as possible. Because while other feats of architecture merely decay and crumble, arcologies decay, rot and fester, spreading malaise in multifarious forms.

The study of arcology collapse finds that the causes of ‘collapse scenarios’ are broadly classifiable across two axes; internal or external, and ideological or tangible. Roughly, they determine from where the trigger for the collapse scenario originates, and the nature of that trigger respectively. With this established, it is thus fairly simple to classifiable the following list of non-exhaustive scenario triggers along these lines;

• Conviction dilution
• Subtle takeovers
• Sustenance system failures
• Verdant Mind failure
• Outbreaks
• Glass breaches
• Rosenthalists
• Amarans
• Roslettes
• Sanscryvan order
• Planetary turmoil
• Celestial events
• Replichrome rampancy

	Ideological	Tangible
Internal	- Conviction dilution - Takeovers	- Sustenance system failures - Verdant Mind failures - Outbreaks - Glass breaches
External	- Rosenthalists - Amarans - Roslettes	- Sanscryvan collapse order - Planetary turmoil - Celestial events - Replichrome rampancy

The Shape of Collapse

Before delving into individual collapse scenarios, it is worth considering the shape that collapse takes.

‘Collapse’ can better be understood as a deviation from normal function. One can imagine the arcology concept as outlining the theoretical perfect arcology, and all actual arcologies built in the Switchboard as striving to attain that perfection. This perfection is determined by a number of quantitative and qualitative measures that ideally are maximized and not at the expense of others. A collapse arcology is thus one that hasn’t attained a certain threshold in a certain number of metrics.

This is why an arcology that is still physically standing can be described as collapsed, as arcologies are far more than just the replichrome shell. And an arcology that is just Fel-Arcad peoples living in an incomplete husk of replichrome splatter is a collapsed arcology as well, as it does not guarantee what the arcology model is meant to guarantee. In the same vein, a fully intact arcology that is minimally populated by those who are actually convicted of the tenets of the arcology concept is said to be collapsed as well. Sil’khan or Lancasters in a replichrome tent doesn’t make an arcology.

As such, while collapse scenarios can detail what appears to be a fairly still-arcology arcology, the evaluation methods used by the Fel-Arcad are far more exacting, and thus far more willing to declare total rot where only a little mold seems to be - for better, or for worse.

Collapse Category: Tangible, Internal

Sustenance Systems and Verdant Mind Failures Arcologies are outfitted with a litany of life support systems, ranging from water purification and distribution, to waste management, to air purification and circulation to more esoteric systems such as those that manage agriculture and healthcare. The Fel-Arcad sembleworks are particularly dependent on systems that require constant functioning, particularly clients of the sembleworks that are having entirely new bodies spun for them while they wait in states resembling suspended animation. For arcologies in some more extreme environments, life support can include induced artificial gravity and managing heat. In even more extreme cases, arcologies can possess active defense systems that shield them from external threats. All of these systems are handled by a Verdant Mind; autonomous superintelligence built for management of distributed systems.

In the spirit of good engineering, many of these systems are redundant and often doubly so, but failures still happen, and total failures - though rare - have still happened frequently enough to fill many reports on the topic. Failure in a non-critical system - such as water, food and waste - is unlikely to cause arcology collapse unless it is unable to be repaired for longer periods, and even then, mitigation mechanisms would’ve been put in place. More critical systems such as air and heat can cause a collapse scenario within hours and minutes depending on how extreme the regular state - such as the ambient temperature and nature of the air of the biome an arcology is situated within - is and by how much the controlled environment within the arcology deviates. For arcologies with artificial gravity control systems, failure can trigger collapse within seconds.

The failure of Verdant Minds, however, is often an instant collapse scenario. Keeping redundant Verdant Minds requires robust infrastructure and immense calcic expenditure, and thus it is far more common that Minds are simply built to be as resilient as possible. This isn’t often the panacea one would imagine it could be though, and indeed Minds can still be afflicted by all manners of sharp-edged calcic mechanics, ripping through their weft and rendering them incapable of function. If an emergency workforce of kin cannot be assembled and deployed fast enough to begin manual control of the arcology’s systems, collapse is more than often guaranteed.

Outbreaks

SB_Physiology is recommended reading for this section.

Extensive care is taken in ensuring that disease doesn’t cultivate and run rampant in an arcology. The close proximity of its inhabitants and the interconnectedness of its systems means that any kind of blight on the lattice can propagate rapidly throughout the structure. The architecture of arcologies does somewhat help here; modular design means that entire sections of the structure the size of city blocks in both population and raw square-footage can be cordoned off from the rest of the structure like air-gapping a computer system. This quarantining can save the rest of the arcology, and allow for medical and decontamination efforts to take place.

This is predicated upon catching pathogens early enough however, and it is entirely possible that specifically engineered viral weft can fly under the radar long enough to escape detection, and then strike swiftly and brutally, wiping out an entire arcology in hours or days. In such instances, a still-active Verdant Mind is instructed to air-gap the entire arcology structure to prevent spread beyond its walls, and request external aid from nearby arcologies and the Second Arcology at Sanscrii. The verdict in these cases is often unanimous; if there’s nothing left to save, then everything is to be destroyed.

Glass Breaches

Glass is recommended reading for this section.

Arcologies make extensive use of piped heat to supply chalk needed to run various devices. Nearly all of an arcologies systems - from the most critical to the most mundane - make usage of the negentropic properties of vitric glass as sourced from the Shelf above. Winding produced heat into motion allows a very many number of devices to function, and this particular phenomenon working exactly as it does is necessary for preserving the Fel’s standard of living.

Using glass in this manner is - for the most part - completely safe. Immensely small amounts are used, and they are heavily insulated and monitored to prevent it from propagating and perfecting the distinct function out of everything around it. Nonetheless, glass is still what it is, and in larger-scale industrial applications of it there is always an amount of risk. Should glass be given the opportunity, it will catch, propagate and assimilate everything in its path into its crystalline perfection, with zero regard for what comes under its consuming maw.

An entire arcology can be swiftly destroyed in this manner. Replichrome is particularly vulnerable to glass as its very nature is the replication of pattern. Glass hooking on to replichrome’s own programming allows it to spread dreadfully quickly throughout an arcology and eat through structure and subject alike. Arcologies destroyed in this manner are total losses; in other instances, there’s often some room for debate on whether the arcology can be recovered or not. Materiel such as furniture and machinery can often be recovered from collapsed arcologies, as well as a wide range of other things, but not so in the case of one that has suffered ravishment by glass. All that is left to do in those cases is disposal by relevant authorities.

Collapse Category: Tangible, External

Sanscryvan Collapse Order Though rare and generally avoided as much as possible, the Second Arcology at Sanscrii can issue a Collapse Order. It is very much what is says on the box; the Soleri of Sanscrii after much deliberation have concluded it is necessary for an arcology to be dug out by the roots.

It is often the case that Collapse Orders are issued to prevent other collapse scenarios. Should Sanscrii have reasons to fear that some imminent threat to an arcology hasn’t been detected by it’s Soleri, and/or can’t be mitigated even if it was, they can order that arcology to be collapse. This mostly entails a large-scale evacuation operation, often off-world entirely, as few planets have multiple arcologies on them. Arcology ships ferry away the populace for temporary, though long-term domiciling in space, with the plan that they be resettled in other arcologies.

With regards to the physical structure itself, depending on the nature of the threat, it can simply be left as is. Often, the Soleri leave behind final instructional writ upon the arcology’s replichrome that it not replicate any further unless provided instruction to do by sufficiently-high authority. However, because of the concern of ‘black arcologies’ that are havens of criminality, it is often the case that the replichrome is issued a command that causes it to resolve into dust, and then into harmless chalk as it is dispersed. This isn’t instant however, and it has happened before that half-decaying arcologies vacated by collapse orders have the decay process stopped by skilled hackers of sorts, who can instruct the replichrome to begin repair, and then utilize the arcology for their own means.

It is thus occasionally the case - in truly un-Fel fashion - that the arcology must be thoroughly, utterly destroyed. Orbital saturation bombardment is - perhaps concerningly - the preferred method of doing this.

Planetary Turmoil and Celestial Events The Switchboard is a tale conducted on a cosmic scale and thus it is subject to similarly sized inconveniences. Occasionally, by sheer bad luck, an arcology is situated in the impact zone of a colossal meteor, freed into space by the violent detonation of another planet that has been - say - stripped of all resources and geological stability by the chromeling forces of a local Vault Mind. In instances such as this, there is very, very little that can be done except to evacuate as many inhabitants as possible. Some arcologies may be lucky enough to have planet-side or orbital defenses, and thus there may be an opportunity to shoot the oncoming rock into harmless fragments before it breaches the atmosphere. Again, this is subject to pure luck. Arcologies boast considerable resilience, but few things can survive the impact of a dislodged asteroid.

In the same vein, by sheer bad luck a Vault Mind can begin stripping the domiciled planet of an arcology for material to build the vault infrastructure. Massive swarms of chromelings can strip a planet’s topmost layers in mere weeks, and thus it is of immense concern when such minds show interest in a planet hosting an arcology. Typically, the Soleri of the arcology in danger - or the Soleri of Sanscrii themselves - either hire a kache krashing team or place an open contract on the Vault for any interested teams to take, and the local space can become terribly busy as daring teams of - often Sil’khan - arrive to try their hand at crushing the Vault Mind within, upholding the tenets and practice of the Infinite Offensive began long ago in the dawn of the Third Kin era. The arcology soon becomes a hub for economic and paramilitary activity, as kache krash operations are immensely involved endeavors.

Perhaps the most dire instance of external threats to arcologies are when planetary equations are damaged in some manner. Even if rare, planetary equations are growing, dynamic things, and iterated over long enough timeframes, planets can come to fracture and break in one way or another, be it atmospheric collapse, geological unrest, or entire biomes being transmuted to to others. In the most common instances, earthquakes simply shake an arcology to pieces. In far rarer scenarios, a biome that plays host to an arcology can gradually begin transforming into one far less conducive for hosting life. These are far more common on planets who’s equations have been somewhat skewed artificially, be it psychitects who came before, or the Soleri themselves in a bid to make it more conducive for arcology building. In these instances, how effectively an arcology and its inhabitants can avoid a collapse scenario is predicated upon how much forewarning they had. Biome transmutations are slow, and thus the inhabitants of an arcology can be evacuated long before they become a problem. Geological events such as earthquakes and tsunamis caused by them could’ve been foreshadowed via seismic activity some time in advance, though they can also strike with little warning. If the facet of planetary equation that controls the atmosphere breaks, death of the inhabitants in the arcology is often swift.

Collapse Category: Ideological, Internal

Conviction Dilution and Takeovers These ones, by the Soleri’s own admission, are hard to define.

The first entails a collapse scenario defined by the Fel-Arcad in an arcology no longer acting as Fel-Arcad in an arcology. This is a contentious topic, as the yardstick declares that there is an expected amount of ‘conviction’ in the arcology concept that is to be held by those dwelling in the arcology, but also presumes to quantitatively measure what is fundamentally a qualitative subject matter. The general idea is that there is a point where an arcology stops working as an arcology should along philosophical lines, and this is a product of a dilution of conviction; a scenario where a large fraction of an arcology’s populace aren’t maximally concerned with abiding by the principles that built it. A decline into apathy, if you will, a metaphorical blunting of the edge meant to cut through the meat to trim flesh from rot. A sum total of metrics - economic, social, political - are sampled and used to ascertain a final metric that - once it has fallen below some given threshold - is said to have triggered a state of collapse.

This is interestingly one of the collapse scenarios that can actually be recovered from; a reinvigoration of conviction can be enough to prompt reassessment, and thus remove the tag of ‘collapsed’ from a given arcology. Doing this is generally ideal, as arcologies that bear the moniker of ‘collapsed’ are treated far differently by other Fel-aligned organizations and assets, with the Sanscrii arcology believing the arcology to be under suspicion, and other arcologies being disinclined towards further dealings with them.

The driver of conviction dilution is often the driver of the second trigger for a collapse scenario in this vein; takeovers. This too is under debate. There is nowhere in Fel-Arcad’s legal writ that forbids non-Fel from taking high-level leadership positions in the Craun, and indeed non-Fel judged to be sufficiently capable of leadership in some spheres have been placed in these positions. It has just gone somewhat unmentioned but widely believed that the Fel-Arcad who developed the arcologies are arguably the most suited towards running them. It goes against their precepts to judge one’s suitability for a task by the circumstances of their birth, but this rule is more so one that governs assumed causations rather than observed correlations.

If you were to quiz a member of the Undersol however, their rhetoric would be far more bladed. A takeover is a collapse scenario triggered when the Fel-Arcad become a population minority in their own governance, and this in turn begins to have adverse effects upon the arcology and the Fel-Arcad within it as ascertained by the yardsticks of the arcology concept. In history, these takeovers have been conscious, deliberate efforts by bad actors who exploit the fact that the Fel’s own principles aren’t actually oriented towards preventing this kind of thing from happening.

How this is handled varies. Demanding that those carrying out this takeover realign themselves with Fel principles of governance is the most commonplace. Pressure is placed by other arcologies and Sanscrii to make this possible, usually through economic sanctions. In extreme cases, the Sekators have been used when gross abuses of power are suspected, though this is widely regarded as the last of last resorts. It has been the case however, that these arcologies are taken over and go rogue, with the once democratically appointed leaders turning tyrants rather quickly. Armed intervention is almost always an inevitability as those living in the arcology at the time now become subject to very undesirable conditions. These scenarios are among the most feared, and while most Fel have little recourse to offer beyond swallowing a bitter pill and admitting the necessity of the Sekators, the Undersol have taken it upon themselves to prevent it from ever happening, mostly irrespective of method.

Collapse Category: Ideological, External

Rosenthalists and Amarans The Fel-Arcad’s ideological positioning and lengthy history has cultivated a number of friends and foes. Friends such as the Sil’khan, who owe the Fel their very existence - a debt the Fel-Arcad have graciously chosen to spurn in favor of relations between both parties on equal footing. And foes such as the Rosenthalists - though mostly that stems from their own ideological positioning - and the Vahnkin, with whom the Fel have perhaps earned the ire of.

Loyalists from both factions make it a point to take targeted action against arcologies. However, the sheer scale of arcology structures and population means that in the sense of pure material damage, small strike groups can do very little. This has thus led to two major approaches; siege, and sabotage. Sabotage endeavors takes advantage of the utilities presented by small teams; reduced footprint, stealth, and speed of deployment, operation and extraction. Knowledge of the inner workings of arcologies in general, or access to the blueprints of specific arcologies, allows for targeted strikes on critical operational infrastructure to disrupt or outrightly cripple functions. Siege is a fare more involved strike doctrine, and is fairly rare. It entails large-scale offensive operations against an arcology on multiple fronts, with the Amarans having the advantage of using space itself as an incursion vector.

Instances of this are of major concern to Sanscrii and other Fel, as it is direct attack on them wholly on the ground of ideological friction. While others who are far less inclined to the Fel’s approach see self defense and perhaps even an escalation and reversal of offense as wholly justifiable solely on the grounds of the desire to exist, Fel sociologists, philosophers and thinkers of all kinds are tormented by what is the ‘right’ course of action to take. Some argue that in the case of the Vahnkin, to strike out without cause and then to demand one does not seek recourse is hypocritical of them. Others argue that even if the Fel are in the wrong, it is paramount that they continue to persist in the Switchboard all the same as the sole pursuers of a ‘right’.

No clean answers are particularly forthcoming, but targeted attacks on arcologies can swiftly trigger collapse scenarios, which the Fel of Sanscrii - irrespective of the true morality of the action - are sworn to prevent.

The Roslettes The Roslettes are of particular concern with regards to collapse scenarios as when they are involved, there tends to be immensely targeted harm done to Fel-Arcad. Roslettes are perhaps the most common cause of black arcologies arising, but their brand of is particularly brutal in that they capture and cultivate the populace inside for feeding and blood sport. Arcologies taken over in this manner prompt immediate and aggressive response from Sanscrii, declaring the entire structure a loss and calling for incursionary forces to storm it, with the aim of recovery. The Roslettes being powerful in their own right present a formidable threat, so much so that often, the Spyndl Academy and similarly powerful organizations are tasked with their elimination.

The resulting fracas isn’t too far off from a localized war, as the Roslettes - though usually less formidable than upper echelon Spyndl Operators, the Roslette benefit from defender’s advantage, as well as doctrine that rewards fighting without care for self-preservation, and that their weave-eating nature means that protracted engagements and wars of attrition greatly favor them. Roslettes sacking an entire arcology in this manner is fairly uncommon, and attempts to do so have been thwarted, but many of the existing black arcologies are ancient Roslette strongholds built upon innumerable dead Fel. Recovering these arcologies would be mostly symbolic, as little is left of them but a cadaverous basin.

pNarrat: Rampant Replichrome

A final entry under the tangible and external collapse scenario demarcation, this one treated separately due to how unique it is. Replichrome is a metamaterial the writ for which was found in the Cartulary, and it is the backbone of the Fel-Arcad’s entire architectural prowess. While the arcology concept hardly demands any sort of nigh-miracle material - as replichrome is often claimed to be - in its actualization, much of the Fel’s ambitions are made solely possible by the tools they have.

Much of replichrome’s utility stems from the fact it is programmable; the Soleri who grow the arcologies are able to do so because the material can respond very literally to instruction. But what are the limits of this? What happens when instruction goes wrong?

The propagative potential of replichrome is - as it is understood - infinite. Supplied with sufficient chalk, replichrome will create more of itself without anything by way of qualms, merely growing and growing in accordance with the last instructions fed to it. With no instruction, it grows in silver tree and roots, reaching both above and below for calcic supply. Given instruction, a landscape can be covered in repeating replichrome sheet, pipe, nearly any shape imaginable that be held by metal, and this metal will continue to propagate so long as it is fed chalk and not told to stop. This is usually prevented from happening either actively by the watchful eye of the Soleri, or passively via conditional writ upon the replichrome that stops it before it spirals out of control.

However, this is a product of diligence, which is hardly a universal trait - though the Soleri are far more diligent than most. The effectiveness of these methods, however, wanes considerably when using replichrome programming to build more complex structures. It is quite possible - even easy - for replichrome to be grown into a multi-story apartment complex with routing for water, heat and waste, windows, furniture, the like. It is far more difficult, however, to design, draft, perfect and implement various failsafe measures and conditional triggers to stop it from growing once it has begun.

This particular function - generating apartment complexes with programmed replichrome growth - is particularly essential in building arcologies. Considering how many they need to house, and thus how many rooms of how many sizes and functions they need to create, doing so manually is simply impossible within any constraints of time or workforce that’s anything short of infinite. As such, building arcologies is a task of outlining a shell, using a generation algorithm to fill it out with the bulk of its space enclosures, and then taking the detailing to task manually. Arcologies in a sense are procedurally generated, and this function is critical to their construction.

This function - however - is also very much the cause of a litany of construction issues. Using algorithms to build tangible spaces requires exhaustive definition of both constraint and construction parameters, and errors in either one can be replicated rapidly and expansively throughout the structure, compounding and manifesting as immense architectural mishaps can cause the entire endeavor to be condemned entirely, the half-fleshed skeleton torn down, and construction begun anew. However, this still does not compare to the rare, dreaded, ‘Grey Rampancy’ scenario.

At the intersection of adequate coincidences - immense calcic reserves, poorly written and overly complex replichrome code, incompetent Soleri, plain bad luck - replichrome can ‘break’ and begin to propagate out of control. It takes the last instructions fed to it and accepts none else, and begins carrying them out, vacuuming up immense quantities of chalk and propagating geometry rapidly, outwards and upwards. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms spill out in all directions and cover the uneven landscape, creating almost an artificial biome dominated by wireframe geometric solids, inexplicable cubism as far as the eyes can see. This is already a cause for immense concern, as the tidal wave of replichrome can spill over and crush everything in its path, and it only gets faster as it goes, with each square inch of replichrome in contact with calcic material speeding all other instances of it all the more, but that still isn’t the true extent of it.

Under further ideal conditions - particularly with regards to gravity - it is possible for rampant replichrome to begin propagating upwards. Spreading outwards and downwards via solid wireframes creates a robust substructure for supporting a hypothetical superstructure above it, and as the rampancy continues, this once-arcology to grow higher and ever higher, reaching deep into the atmosphere - and in rare instances, beyond it.

Perhaps one of the greatest displays of the true extent of the calcic is the geometric wireframe superstructure of a broken not-arcology that has grown and propagated so monumentally that it has tangibly sapped its origin planet of mass, and has now become honeycomb-like mesh in orbit. This collapse scenario is hardly even one, but it has become something far greater. The stalk of the structure is often snapped, and the bulky head at the top - free to grow however it pleases once no longer as constrained by gravity - is freed even further and allowed to go into orbit, or flung out into the far reaches of space.

Its final fate is often as an orbital dockyard, hideout, research station, or staging grounds for other sojourns in space. Or all of that and more; there’s almost always enough room for everyone.

The Un-Fel

A common gripe levied against the Fel-Arcad and their arcologies - particularly by their Sil’khan cousins - is that by design they blunt the sharper edges and grey out the vibrant colors of living.

Arcologies both attract and create a specific kind of person, one optimized - consciously or not - for maximal function within them; agreeableness and a willingness to cooperate and compromise, possessing little by way of strong opinions, a selflessness that seems almost manufactured in how universal it is, and a penchant for conformity that reinforces all those things in others. While the Fel do in turn have immense empathy and affinity for reason going for them as well, the Sil’khan and their thinkers feel it does little to sweeten the bitter pill that is their perception of their dagger-eared cousins as incredibly boring.

One’s own take on this needs to adjust for the fact the Sil’khan themselves are on another extreme, just one opposite to the Fel. Being born from the liquified ontology of the Danseers, the Sil’khan were predestined to be a people defined by a cosmos-spanning richness of being. The Switchboard’s god-children would hardly be deserving of that name were they not possessed with the psyche of the same, bearing egos large enough to curve comets towards them with their gravitational pull, and appetites for the raw stuff of living so large as to swallow that comet whole when it arrives. Theirs is an unmatched boisterousness, a fervid fever always at pitch, a zealousness to all that they do - eating, drinking, travelling, flying, exploring, loving, fighting, learning, teaching, seeing, telling, birthing, becoming, dying - that the friction with the relative serenity of the cosmos they create is the driving force behind that same cosmos’ perpetuation. Their mere existence keeps wheels turning, for better or for worse.

It is the Fel-Arcad’s concern and insistence on existing only for the better that has - in the Silks’ minds - made them what they are. Their anodyne existence given edge and color only through arts, music, sport and debate is a product of a philosophy predicated upon primum, non nocere - ‘first, do no harm’. The Sil’khan feel differently, believing both harm and its doing to be natural, immutable laws of the stars, and it is so because there are things forged in the ‘negatives’ denounced by the Fel that both cannot be sourced anywhere, and are critical for realizing the maximal potential of the kin. Theirs’ is a doctrine of chaos, meritocracy and strength through strife; the cultivation of greater things at the expense of others, uncaring of what the ‘others’ are, be it people or the precepts that guide them. There is a first principle in the Switchboard - they assert - both among and above many other principles, the writ of which states that the greater shall triumph over the lesser and become more great as a result, and where these great reap the richness of being, the less shall reap the lessons on how to attain it. This they feel was proven in both praxis conflicts, where the greater thinker inherited the stars, and the lesser was relegated to notes in the latter’s history.

It is why though the Sil’khan and Fel-Arcad are on friendly terms, individual Silks and Fel are somewhat disinclined to associate, the rift formed by individual Silk’s own perception of the Fel as their young, naïve but well-intentioned younger siblings, who they are more than ready to protect from the harsher realities the world presents - out of love for them yes, but also out of love for asserting one’s right to exist over another. The Fel reject the ‘game’ that is the Switchboard. The Sil’khan, however, love it. And while the Fel do strive to assert their position as the right one, the Sil’khan need not even try, having come to see the Switchboard as proving them right time and time again. That the frog eats the fly and not the other way around - they say - is all the argument in their favor they need.

That the Fel-Arcad remain incredibly agreeable, and the Sil’khan anything but evangelical for their principles, is why these absolutely diametrically opposed parties have managed to get along so splendidly. It does also help somewhat that the Lancasters and Vahnkin have bones to pick with each, though it is hard to measure how truly present and strong the bonds formed by being targets of mutual distaste really are.

A Question of Post

The Sil’khan have come to evoke quite a bit of envy from various denizens of the Dancirah. The Lancasters are believed to be the most envious of them, considering by how much they differ on relative scale with regards to power. However, the Lancasters are a proud people, and rigorously fend off these allegations as a matter of course. The second most accused of this - and the ones for whom it sticks - are the Feljourn. Being perceived almost traitors by some more dogmatic Fel, the Feljourn have defined themselves by a rejection of the arcologies to traverse the stars. Following in the footsteps of the Sil’khan, they’ve come to be fairly associated with them - aligned with them almost - in a manner some disparagingly declare to be born out of envy; a desire to become Sil’khan.

This is but one of the Fel ‘factions’ that are inclined towards the Sil’khan, however.

Another - less prominent - but still very noticeable sect of Fel-Arcad exist, who have come to, in no uncertain terms, aspire to be Sil’khan using an interpretation of them still grounded in Fel-Arcad culture. That the Feljourn envy or want to be the Feljourn is in reality a misinterpretation of their creed. The Feljourn more so desire to be equal to the Silks in post, that being as sojourners and stargazers like them, drinking of the Switchboard’s great bounty. But this sect of Fel are different, they want to be like Sil’khan in that they are superior to others, particularly other Fel. The Feljourn still hold much of the sense of egalitarianism of peoples that the Fel-Arcad do, and in fact use this as the basis for striving to stand on equal ground with the Sil’khan. But this other sect of Fel differ greatly in this regard, choosing instead to believe and espouse that on varying grounds, they are better than others, especially other Fel.

The nature argument for Fel like this - deeply different from other Fel - is that the Fel-Arcad and Sil’khan are descended from the original stock that arose on the Astrolabic spheres, even if much meandering down the descendance tree was necessary to get to where they are from where they began. As such, the capacity to think like a Danseer - to recognize and then do what was necessary to secure the Switchboard for the Third Kin, and like an Arcad - to recognize and then do what was necessary to build a maximally-ideal society in that Switchboard, are inherent. The deviation from this unified, multifaceted, shallow, initial mode of thinking into differentiated, one-dimensional, deeper, final mode of thinking was something of a matter of course. And to see spillover in the form of members of one faction desiring to be afforded the post afforded to others was also a matter of course.

The more popular - under Fel sociology anyway - nurture argument is that the Switchboard’s peoples at large seemingly cannot help but defer to the Sil’khan, and this deference is something desired by others. Fel principle is built on the repression of baser, destructive instincts in favor of complex, constructive reason, but this repression is far from total. Though theorized, the ablation of certain desires that are unconducive towards the Fel’s ends have no means of being done, and are something of an ethical mire, even if in theory such a process would be incredibly useful in work towards the Fel-Arcad’s ideal Switchboard.

But what is, is what is. There are Fel who - irrespective of all the ways Fel doctrine and living tries to beat it out of them - are still convinced of an inherent, slumbering superiority and a means to awaken it. The problem they are faced with, however, is that the arcologies and the Fel-Arcad are generally unconducive - perhaps even hostile - towards disposed in this manner. A Sil’khan convinced that they are the second coming of Shalkarah himself has a nigh-endless path to walk and a ceiling that grows with the strongest in the Switchboard. Endless ends exist for chasing and acquiring power in ways considered proper, and far more await once one is inclined towards going beyond what is comfortable meal time conversation. This isn’t even exclusive to the Sil’khan; the Roslettes are a solid example of this. But this is because the Sil’khan dwell in the vast expanses of the Switchboard where strength is demanded and the rules are virtually non-existent.

Arcologies - contrarily - are designed in manner that to many seems antithetical to the concept of excellence itself. Working too hard and too long is only rewarded in certain cases and within constraints, and that’s in scenarios where it isn’t outrightly forbidden. Chasing economic milestones is met by suspicion and scrutiny socially, and ‘punishment’ mechanically via redistribution efforts in the spirit of aggressive collectivism. Very few competitive endeavors and outlets exist for the Fel-Arcad, who’s pursuits are defined more so by collective displays of skill (such as an orchestra) versus individual, competitive ones (competing sports teams). Accomplishment that recognizes and benefits only the individual, rather than contributing to the betterment of the arcology community as a whole, while not explicitly prevented or despised, is still regarded as lesser by Fel-Arcad left to judge. Their ‘everyone wins’ approach does lead to greater well-being enjoyed by more persons, but thinkers on the outside still regard ‘everyone wins’ as a philosophy that benefits only those who’d otherwise be losers, and tells those who’d actually won - and those who play audience to it all - that there is little use to given anything more than the minimum demanded for the entire social theater to not completely collapse.

Even in a litany of other spaces - physical appearance, influence, knowledge and scholarliness, - the subtle social pressure of the Fel-Arcad and their arcologies is that the peg that sticks up will either be knocked down, or have its own height lowered to lift all others around it. In theory and in practice, the collective good generated is a strong argument for this approach, but the offending pegs are still people - and by virtue of being offending, very driven, ambitious, perhaps even egotistical ones - and this manner of doing things leaves a bad taste in their mouth time and time again.

So what then is an available outlet for a Fel-Arcad who finds themselves possessed to assert the indisputable profundity of their own ideas over their neighbors? What avenue is available for them to buttress their mere feelings of being better with actual results, proof - anything - that proves it? What is their recourse?

In truly humorous fashion, it is by being very, very pretentious.

‘Aristocrats’

There is a kind of Fel for whom liking things is not enough. Music, art, film, theater, games, all that and beyond - liking them is simply not enough. Disliking things isn’t sufficient for them either. But it is not that they love things or hate things either; these they do naturally as does anyone else. The difference is that they take things beyond merely liking and disliking things; for them, engaging with creations is a matter of ascertaining the value of one’s very self, and thus judging the value of others. It is not that they merely like a thing, it is that they are better off because they like that thing, and you are worse off because you do not.

For these Fel, their desire to feed a superiority complex manifests in a decidedly humorous fashion; fandom. The Fel-Arcad are the Switchboard’s greatest creators and thus exporters of art in all forms - from synchronized dance to virtual reality videogames - and the shape this takes is entirely similar to ours; easily identifiable persons and intellectual properties that many Fel do indeed choose to identify themselves with in holistically normal fashion. But there are those for whom fandom is a means to feed a hunger, and they are driven to identify with certain creations - and even going further beyond that - as a means to feed and assert a sense of superiority over others. To put things terribly uncharitably, consumption for them is sport, and the means by which they can lend credence to their feeling superior.

‘Pretentious’ is perhaps not the word to use; while there definitely is an aspect of signaling the qualities of one’s own self, there is indeed a true love within it born out of genuine appreciation of what they are engaging with. But the all-too grating component of it as seen by other Fel-Arcad who ‘just don’t get it’ is the compulsion to compare; to declare one thing - and thus the fans of it - as better than another. This is indeed how their almost-idols - the Sil’khan - do indeed engage with media when it is presented to them, seeing it through the lens of striving to find the best thing that exists, rather than simply enjoying the wealth of things that do, but the Sil’khan generally have a reduced regard for arts in this way as it rarely stirs their spirits in ways that their lives already do not. Explaining thrill-seeking or escapism to a Sil’khan is met with confusion, as their lives already are orgies of thrill and escape.

And so these Fel are left instead to squabble among themselves about what truly is the best anything ever conceived. The result of this is a system that selects for the best and most loudly spoken, the most daring and willing to push the envelope, and elevates them to bannerman status around which others can rally. And while the Fel’s precepts do generally oppose treating persons in this manner, it is hard for them to raise any kind of true objection against the concept of someone liked by a bunch of people - or at least raise any kind of objection that would prompt a retaliatory response.

In this manner, Fel-Arcad arts, music, theatre, sport, writing, virtual media - in all shapes and all forms, Dancirah-wide - are dominated by a mockingly-called ‘aristocratic class’, who have come to be the informal arbiters of the quality and place of media itself. This influence in the tightly-knit spaces of the arcologies are generally quite felt, as they either drive the creation of media along their lines, or diametrically opposed to them as form of artistic rebellion. Either as a means to getting this post or a response to getting it and realizing the tasking nature of it, they do take on the mantle of diligence and scholarliness and actually add some academic merit to their critique - which comes with a proportional increase in ego and strength of opinion - such that there is occasionally benefit to viewing the endless mountains of writ they almost necessarily produce with something that isn’t mild distaste.

To many Fel however, that mild distaste never truly vanishes. This fervid artistic class that has busied itself with creating, consuming, critiquing and more is rife with a fervency of life that many Fel have come to view as a breeding ground for strife, but they are not ignorant to the fact that this splash of color and chaos on the stagnant, reliable greyness of arcology living is welcome break from exactly those latter circumstances, and from this bubbling chaotic pool does the bulk of Fel creation enjoyed by Fel all over arise. And as such, they are - at absolute worst - tolerated, and in many cases even somewhat liked, though this is an expression shown from arm’s length.

Sil’khan wise to the entire thing find it amusing, and there are many Sil’khan who have made it a point to engage with these fervid, opinionated, contentious Fel, having found an interest in arts and related matters themselves. Their thoughts are valued particularly highly, as these aristocrats - in exhibiting yet another quality that differentiates them from majority Fel - value travel and the outside viewpoints it brings, rather than regarding those who espouse it with suspicion. The Fel-Arcad with regards to arts suffer from a strange paradox, in which by creating environments most conducive for its production, have eliminated the greatest sources of inspiration. Most Fel will be born and die under the chrome ceilings of their birthplace arcologies; there is little about their existence that will ever compel them to express the richness of their being in song or on canvas.

The Fel have somewhat made peace with this, and see it as yet another argument for a pan-Danciran collectivism that allows for the free flow of inspiration and what it produces, this being the basis of why they haven’t sealed the arcologies to outsiders entirely (among other things). But the aristocratic Fel of fandom value these outside perspectives particularly highly as it is an opportunity to have ideas vetted by a mind wholly unlike theirs; one born in chalk deserts, honed by the raw edge of black space, and drunken upon the radiance of stars. In a sense, they want validation from Sil’khan, but are more than satisfied getting validation from others like them; the satisfaction that comes with knowing that one isn’t alone in how their love for something has possessed them. There is still the inescapable, condemnable inkling one gets that much of the driver of this sense is their seeing themselves as superior to other Fel - they, the zealous enlightened few that broke away from the dull, lifeless pack - but it is somewhat accepted, even though hardly forgiven or approved of, as an inevitability of creative drive and appreciation.

More dogmatic Fel, however, do view them as something approaching an ideological threat. Sil’khan influence does color much of these aristocratic circles, and it manifests subtlety in the yardsticks for critique they use and other guides and metrics related to the arts. While there isn’t a deliberate effort - by the Sil’khan anyway - to covertly dismantle Fel-Arcad society by influencing their media, there are some who are still worried that the telling of stories defined along decidedly Sil’khan lines - individualistic victories earned by one shouldering massive burdens for a helpless class, opposing foes with violence and cultivating strength to become more apt at doing so, extolling wild and free lives lived with little regards for social convention - will cause a compounding ideological shift that can cascade into an internal ideological collapse scenario. The kind of thing the Order of the Undersol is tasked with preventing.

Is the Soleri’s ideology-enforcement secret police responsible for the disappearances of the most influential critics and appreciators of Fel-Arcad art? Surely they don’t view them as that big a threat to the continued stability of arcologies the Dancirah over? Conspiracy is plentiful - in stark contrast to real answers - and if it is true, then they are clearly very capable at what they do. But only if it is true, of course.

A Creativity Conundrum

A discussion on the placement of the Fel-Arcad with regards to the culture of the Switchboard.

[[The Fel-Arcad#13. Arts, Entertainment & Recreation|Heading #13]] of the Fel-Arcad document is recommended reading for this section

An Intersection of Maxims

All of the great families of the Switchboard contribute something to the overall shape of culture that the Switchboard takes. Clothes worn, foods eaten; all can be traced to some great family as its origin. But who contributes the most?

The answer to this question is the Fel-Arcad, but there is a journey to be taken to get to this answer properly.

The Fel-Arcad are burdened by an interesting paradox, but it is only a paradox if you agree with a particular maxim; that adversity is - if not absolutely necessary - than a considerable driver of creativity. Why this maxim is relevant to this discussion stems from the fact that the Fel-Arcad have worked tirelessly and - to many extents - successfully to create environments that maximally insulate their inhabitants from internal and external harm. The endgame of the Fel is that no Fel - and ideally no one - goes without food, water, clean air, shelter, a little bit of metaphorical sweetness to their existence in the form of wants rather than needs, and a guarantee of all those things still being there tomorrow. In guaranteeing and striving to guarantee this however, they have eliminated much of all adversity that a denizen of the Switchboard would have otherwise encountered and under this maxim, the Fel-Arcad’s creativity as a people has suffered for it.

An immediate contrast to the Fel-Arcad would be the Sil’khan, but the differences between them has been stressed extensively enough. Consider instead the Feljourn. Fel-Arcad by backbone, but they have rejected the arcologies in favor of the expansive Starwylds, choosing to give up the guarantees of safety and security in favor of whatever it is they feel can only be found in the absence of those things. Narratively, their motivations are rather simplistic; for some, adventure, others, profit. But for many it’s meaning, a meaning to their existence that they feel must be strived for rather than handed to them. Arcologies achieve much of what they set out to do via the elimination of uncertainty; the societies within arcologies function optimally because the basic needs of persons are met. But if you are a subscriber to this maxim, your takeaway would be that in enough cases, those who are guaranteed safety and security are less inclined to creative pursuits than those who are not.

There are two ways of reading this maxim that either justifies it or justifies dismissing it, both predicated upon observing history. One could cite an example or multiple in the vein of Italian artist Michelangelo, famous for a litany of works that would become emblematic of Catholicism itself. You could absolutely make the case that much of his ability to produce the works he did is in part a result of the fact he didn’t have to struggle for daily bread, being extensively sponsored by religious leadership at the time to create the works that he did. The second way of reading it is to look at the brutalist architecture of once-communist regimes and how devoid of the ‘human soul’ they’ve come to look decades later. The latter point I concede is immensely subjective, but I feel the spirit of it is clear.

I think there’s a larger caveat to the maxim of ‘adversity driving creativity’, and that is that ‘those who are driven, will do’. The former maxim is hardly universal after all, but it does tally with the observed phenomenon of necessity being the mother of invention. Lacking things drives us to have things, and the question then is whether lack is a greater driver than abundance. Are we more inclined to create out of the vacuum within ourselves, or the fullness?

Speaking as something of a creative myself, works I’ve made have always been born out of something that I myself did not have, or hadn’t done, or felt did not exist. So I sought to realize them myself, and I feel that says all there is to be said on that matter. However, I will add this necessary caveat, and that leads me to the conclusion of this section; while adversity can absolutely inspire the creative process, it is generally unconducive to it. While there are some exceptions in the form of those who only bounce back harder when flung against the ground, it is hardly beyond conceptualizing that opposition in any shape or form will indeed oppose whatever it is that is trying to be done.

So then, the intersection of maxims; adversity can incite creativity, but is not conducive to the creative process. Ease is, and the presence of ease - safety and security - can allow incited ideas to flourish. You need adversity to spark the fire, but not to blow out the flames when they catch. And so when the question of “Who contributes the most to the Switchboard’s culture?” is answerable by “The Fel,” those with the complete answer can conceive of why, but those with only one half or another cannot.

The former group will likely still issue another question; “What then is the adversity that incites the Fel to create, that isn’t present while they are creating?” The answer to that is that no such thing exists, as adversity isn’t a pill that can be issued before a painting session that leaves you in terrible cramps but sparkling with ideas that still linger after the pill has worn off. What the Fel do instead is that they harness the incited ideas of others, taking seeds of creations formed under adverse conditions, and perfecting them under the ideal conditions of the arcologies.

The Dressmakers of the Dancirah

Behold a second Fel paradox; the Fel have a generally poor view of Fel who pride themselves on being widely traveled and generally unfamiliar with arcology living, yet they rely on them as importers of culture to combat the stagnancy that can inevitably take root in an arcology. The result of this is outlined somewhat in the section of ‘The Un-Fel’ above; a sort of informal but distinct ‘creative class’ populated by Fel and non-Fel who are a strange blend of ideals conventionally aligned with arcology living and Fel principles, and ideals that are not.

Much of the Fel creatives are like this. Arcologies offer few muses, and the pool of things that can inspire is constrained significantly if one is less inclined towards doing things that have already been done before. The sheer extents of the artistic merit of the chrome-roofed, chrome-floored, chrome-walled arcologies has already been exhausted, and while some skews can be introduced, the reality of it is that arcologies are closed systems in most cases, and without external interference, they will continue to produce virtually identical results whenever they are shaken enough. The rectification of this, of course, is keeping the doors open.

As such, an informal exchange takes place; outside individuals come to the arcologies and find those who are driven to create, but lacking the spark to make flame, and give them that spark. All it takes is a foundation, and the Fel under the ideal conditions of the arcologies can take it to fruition. The scholarliness of the Fel have worked to formalize this very thing, taking the various jumbles of qualia that infills into arcologies every single moment and categorizing them and building off of them to realize their own Fel interpretations and - more importantly - perfections of them.

The Fel’s purpose in the chain is to learn, formalize, instantiate and perfect. They hear of the things outside of the arcologies - from a simple crystal chime recorded in an audio log between operators, to the grand narratives that follow the ordeals those operators underwent - and from there produce music, visual art, theatre, sculpture, interactive media; anything and everything in whatever form. Facilitating the time and resources necessary to do this are the arcologies themselves, as the Fel - once they’ve fulfilled their ends of the social contract to keep the arcology standing - are free to pursue just about anything they like, and for many Fel, there’s no higher pursuit than merely pondering and creating. A mentally contemplative, physically idle state achieved only when one wants for nothing are the conditions under which the Fel create the various things that would come and define the global culture of the Switchboard. The collective experiences of the Switchboard are refined, as it were, under these ideal conditions and return to the Switchboard formalized, skewed and perfected.

The point of ‘skewed’ is particularly noteworthy as it relates to a calcic symbiosis between arcologies and those that dwell within them that has come to be praximechanical in nature. Permeating the ontology of an arcology is a factor of randomness that is introduced via the curlicue seed that is the precursor to and center of every arcology ever built. This factor of randomness - the ‘nymia’ - permeates the cognitive lattices of all dwellers in an arcology and mildly skews them in a manner that it is only identifiable when iterated numerous times and contrasted with other instances of it. The effect of this nymia is a skewing of all things the Fel-Arcad create in a manner that cultivates a traceable ‘arcology artistic identity’, such that even otherwise identical works produced in different arcologies are conferred with a flair unique to that arcology that can be traced back to it, and identified in other works - paintings, music, sculpture, theatre, any and everything - by those who know how to look for it. Almost like DNA.

The combination of outside ideas, refinement under conducive environments by skilled practitioners, and a factor of identarian randomness results in the Fel creating an abundance of works of all kinds to saturate the Switchboard, with the Fel being the largest drivers of the Switchboard’s subsequent global culture; the melding of the aspects of all great families and the skewing of that final result by that very melding process. And as new ideas are brought to the fore and the Fel take them, iterate upon them, realize them to their fullest extent, and disseminate them back into the cosmos, they in turn determine the tide of aesthetic cultural change throughout the Dancirah. Other parties do indeed bring the cloth, but it is the Fel who cut the dress; no one else is poised to do it better.

Civil Religion and Secular Ritualism

Addressing the shape of the Fel-Arcad’s convictions.

Arcology Theology

Are the Fel-Arcad a theocracy?

Taking the most literal definition of one; absolutely not. For one, the Switchboard’s ‘divinities’ wear that moniker somewhat shakily; the Skydancers are more so elevated war heroes if anything, and much of the powers they confer upon the Sil’khan are considerably hampered compared to what the boundless imaginations of an actual god might bring forth. The Amaranth Sultan is somewhat better off, but he too is more so a component in a system that needed a humanlike interpreter between man and phenomenon. While both entities and groups of them do indeed respond to various shapes of supplication, they are not particularly responsible for, nor pivotal to, any of the Switchboard’s operations. As such, the Fel-Arcad simply do not subscribe to them.

Secondly, and as a consequence of the first, the Fel thus lack many aspects of a theocratic regime; divinely-appointed leadership, mandated worship, holy holidays, demarcated sacred things, moral policing, and robust punitive laws for perceived sacrilege and blasphemy. On the singular ground alone of not possessing and centering a transcendental figure in any way, shape or form, the Fel-Arcad can not literally be called a theocracy.

That being said, you could absolutely argue that the Fel-Arcad are still religious.

At the crux of the very being of the Fel-Arcad is the arcology concept, and its tenets (and extrapolation from those tents) bind in a manner that dictates every aspect of the Fel’s civilization, from growing food to dressing to architecture to governance. So totalitarian is the hold of the arcology concept that the Fel are largely split across the lines they are as a result of their disposition to it, with the Nadiran embracing it in whole, the Feljourn disagreeing with it on the basis of the restriction of freedoms, and the Rosenthalists on the basis of the proposed equality of peoples. And just as the arcology concept defines the Fel, the Fel too brought the concept into being; the initial writ by Arcad Rosen, the following writ by ArcDanseer Nadira, extensive addendums by Fel scholars over various processions, and the aesthetic shape of it being concocted over time through myth, ritual and symbol, coagulating into culture.

The ‘civil religion’ is the proposed idea that the summation of the symbols, stories and practices of a given people are able to take on a transcendental aspect by virtue of collective conviction. The idea builds off of another proposed idea, that ‘sacred’ be not synonymous with ‘religious’, but rather with ‘unquestionable’ and ‘traditionalistic’, thus allowing for things that are sacred but not necessarily religious. National flags and coats-of-arms, monuments, anthems and ceremonies like presidential inaugurations fit into this bracket nicely, and in turn give shape to the outline of civil religion.

Interestingly, civil religions are unconscious things, emerging over time as collectives seek out means to define themselves, some of the easiest being shared experiences, geographic proximity and identical epistemological frameworks. Were they conscious things and thus oriented with the aim of achieving something, they would be the ethos of a society that undergirds a perceived common good; a means of uniting an otherwise discordant people into a collective structure that is convicted of something higher than themselves; not just some dudes in a room, but the Room of Dudes, something that is greater than the sum of its parts.

It is this conviction in an imagined higher thing that makes the entire thing work. It is because kings of old were seen as inviolable figures that killing a king was such an audacious, inconceivable, blasphemous thing to do. While there is indeed the fact that killing organizational heads does indeed lead to a breakdown of organizational structure in models where there isn’t redundant leadership strata - military logistics can swiftly fall to pieces without a singular shot-caller at the table, for example - what truly was the matter with an act such as slaying a king was that it represented the devolution of the divine to the mundane and thus a subjection of once-higher precepts to baser, carnal rules. Even worse is if such an action goes unpunished; it tells all who care to hear that their reverence was misplaced, and this ground is excellent for cultivating uncertainty, from which chaos and bloom forth.

The Fel-Arcad, are very much like this, their civil religion being the Fel-Arcad themselves, and the arcologies as both an extension and manifestation of this. The godless religion of the arcology concept gives the Fel-Arcad their identity and comprises their ethos. Though other concepts such as personal interest, instrumental rationality and the social contract do indeed work to keep Fel society together, these things are ultimately subsumed into the the writ of the arcology concept, and are subsequently elevated in prominence in the minds of the Fel beyond the writ of social theory. The bonds formed under this elevated writ gives the Fel a sense of inclusion and belonging, unity, structure, confidence, worth and - particularly - purpose, this final point being notably important with regards to how the Fel seek to spread their principles throughout the Switchboard at large.

Post-Theism

In the initial draft of the Fel-Arcad I imagined them as being a mankind that has been pushed ideologically into the future along a track of what can - perhaps - be inarguably called progressive ideals. Much of the Fel’s operating tenets are existing ideals today pushed to imaginable conclusions, expanded to a civilizational scale, and skewed by the unique mechanics of the verse where they take place. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the writ under Birthing and Being, outlining a very far-from-now structure for sexuality and related topics.

I’d like to propose another discussion vector for the Fel-Arcad, this one instead with regards to how the Fel-Arcad take the shape of a post-theistic civilizational, and how the Fel who began that way might look compared to us who - in this hypothetical - are working towards one.

I will declare a couple of biases and conditionals first; this is written from a decidedly western perspective, and by someone who isn’t exhaustively familiar with the topics being knowingly or unknowingly discussed. That being said, I do feel there is room for guided extrapolation.

Much of the work towards this hypothetical future is predicated upon an extensive amount of dismantling. If the Fel were our future, and we were as we are now, between us and them is a nontrivial amount of dismantling preexisting structures and what upholds them, and rebuilding new, better structures in their place, ones that - by some yardsticks - are more rational, humanistic and efficient. The Lattice as a Canvas discusses this on the front of gender and sexuality, were old rigid interpretations were replaced with newer and more liberal ones, with the operating principle being that doing so was ideal if not mandatory because where they were going was better than where they began. Judgement of that is left up to individual persons in the real world as it is in the canon itself; the tenets of LatCanvas aren’t universally embraced, and in some cases face open hostility.

That is an aside; this discussion vector is one of dismantling the various theistic structures upon which our world now is built upon.

Though it grates many to admit, there is indeed a robust Judeo-Christian bedrock at the foundation of many western institutions, ranging from law and morality to even our holidays. This latter point - holidays, or more specifically, ritual - is the actual core of this section, but I will give the former some attention first. While it is indeed true that very many ‘biblical’ and ‘Christian’ principles informed the construction of society today, those principles are hardly exclusive to those domains. It is entirely doable to start at a different origin and arrive at the same destination, and it may perhaps be ideal to do so as one might have a more rigorous basis upon which to reach that destination. To speak in more certain times, you absolutely can build morality from an entirely rationale-based position, rather than a transcendental one, and this rationale-based moral structure would be more resilient to challenge than a divinely-inspired one, due to the finnicky nature of the divine, interaction with it, and extrapolation from it.

In the Samsara canon, the Fel-Arcad achieved this very thing, and while they haven’t yet achieved a device capable of the mythical compute necessary to place mathematics upon human morality, they have made do to the best of their ability with what they currently have.

The latter point, ritual, is what I truly want to discuss however.

Holstering the Hammer

Consider the following list of commonly adhered-to rituals and practices;

• Christmas
• Valentine’s Day
• Easter
• Marriage
• Circumcision
• Prayer
• Funeral rites

All of the above are commonly practiced western rituals, and all of them have a decidedly Christian slant when observed in our current era. While their origins might not be - many have secular or even pagan origins, origins that the church at the time saw fit to blur into obscurity via calculated redefinitions of the meaning of those seasons and acts - as said before, it is the shape they take now, and thus what must be contended with.

If you take dismantling to be an essential component of the progressivist charge, and you view the theistic backing of the above practices to be deserving of the hammer, then it is already clear to you what must be done. However, we should consider the latter point of being ‘worthy of the hammer’. What earns the ire of the hammer are all those things that are measured by the yardstick and found to be irrational, oppressive, regressive, harmful, so on and so forth. They thus should be destroyed and rebuilt in better shapes. But while this is an approach that works when arguing to replace a judicial system predicated on the collective vibes of everyone involved with one with clearly outlined rules, infractions, methods for determining guilt and innocence, and punishment for wrongdoing, I don’t feel it works on things like Christmas and marriage.

An argument; we can simply do away with those things. This is true, we might even be better off if we did; why have one specified day for indoor trees, giving gifts, and okaying strangers breaking into your house and swiping dairy and confectionery? Why should having someone come live in your house and have children with you be first predicated upon an elaborate ritual of wearing outfits, reciting vows in front of some community figurehead, cutting cake, throwing flowers, dancing, and receiving well-wishes from convened families? It could simply be a matter of signing a document at the courthouse; civil unions are already a practice that exist, and can simply be expanded into greater recognizability.

This manner of thinking is immensely extensible. We can dismiss with the ‘BC’ and ‘AD’ naming system because why should the chronology of the entire species be predicated upon our temporal distance from the death of one specific prophet anyway? We can dismiss the names of the week and months of the year because they’re named after old gods - the irrational imaginings of uniformed, motivated minds. In this manner does the hammer of dismantling old things go from concept to concept, creation to creation, gradually shattering it out of the human consciousness. The reason? They are old, oppressive, emblematic of older times when we didn’t know as much as we did now, and as such they must be destroyed. And this might even be true; maybe calling it ‘Thursday’ actually is harmful to the species in some way deductible only under chaos theory.

Where am I going with this.

I think it’s easy to destroy. I think it’s even necessary sometimes too. But replacing the void that is left behind is far more difficult. The endgame of the dismantling hammer is utter annihilation; a total, irreparable severance of the mankind of one era from the mankind of the last, where one only slightly understands the shape of the other as mere impressions and approximations of their practice. The hammer will eventually crush every culture left to it, as culture is inherently not a ‘rational’ thing. It is born from - as I understand it - qualia, and how we interpret the world is often at extreme disconnect with how the world is. So extreme is this disconnect, that entire cultures can have days and parades and costumes and dances and songs and foods dedicated to communing with the dead and departed, when there is virtually nothing under naturalistic worldviews that accommodates such a thing. And it is good to be a naturalist no? It is ideal to have a worldview that tallies as accurately to reality as possible isn’t it?

Is it worth it though, if chasing that ideals mandates stripping all color from our experiences? If it means never subscribing to any manner of practice not vetted by robust inquisition bodies screening for any figment of irrational thinking in its design documents? You could say yes, but you’d then have no Christmas - just the option to have an indoor tree and give gifts and leave snacks in convenient proximity to unlocked entryways, something you already could do to begin with.

My biases are obvious to anyone who’s made it this far; as someone who worldbuilds, it is hardly beyond conception that I’d value those little quirky things civilizations evolve into being from strange bases and through subtle iteration. It is probably - less so, but still - hardly beyond conception that this informs how I look at the real world at large, and how I’ve come to oppose what I view as standing on the doormat of what could possibly be a secularization crusade that will leave behind anodyne, lifeless, bureaucratic, grey goop where all of the world’s cultures once flourish. I concede that this is a ‘doomer’ mindset. I also believe the slippery slope ‘fallacy’ is anything but. The tether ball need only a strong enough return stroke to snap the string and leave us at a point where we cannot easily return from.

There is a world where its brightest minds have spilled rivers of ink analyzing the extensive history of the virginial-white wedding dress and veil and riddled it to tatters with all the bullets of progressive thinking. There is also a world where we take all that analysis, shelve it in our broadly accessible libraries, and choose to wear the dress, the suit, say the vows in front of the community figurehead, cut the cake, throw the flowers, and dance and sing and be wished well by all parties gathered because these things all contribute to the richness of being. We acknowledge the bloodied pasts they had, but rather than destroy, we reclaim. We give what exists new shapes and build from scratch when we choose to, rather than dismantling all we are and then scrambling to assemble something from the scrapheap.

In a sense, this is readable as an argument for a preservation of the status quo. I ask for a more charitable reading; that we archive the past and build new and greater things with the foundation already bestowed upon us, because that foundation is as old as our species and not easily replaced. I envision that there will be those who cannot detach these reinvented aspects of our being from the histories they once had, and yearn for new things. They are of course forced to confront those who dislike the shape of the new and yearn for the old. Debating the ‘rightness’ of either position I feel is only an unnecessary source of discord when options are available for both; behold a sandbox, now do as though will.

But at the crux of my point is that we need not ablate and break away every piece of ourselves that does not measure up to the most exacting yardstick mankind has ever devised. At the end of that tunnel is a machine, and machines are poor guests at Christmas.

A Secular Ritualism

The Fel-Arcad are poised somewhat different compared to us; they didn’t have a theistic origin that slowly declined in active adherents over time, with its more tolerable vestiges making it into baseline culture after some modification over the course of many processions. Instead, the Fel-Arcad were lucky - blessed, perhaps - to have a patron figure possessed of considerable vision and foresight, enough so that he and others could construct a skeletal framework around which to build the post praxis conflict world of the Switchboard. This would later come to be the arcology concept, as rigorously established.

An unforeseen consequence of this, however, was that Fel-Arcad society emerged in a manner that differs from convention; instead of emerging and evolving naturally from the ground up, Fel-Arcad society is built from the top down, with the arcology concept design documents outlining in robust detail the top level function of the things built under it, and thinning out in specificity on the way down. As such, while the top level functions and institutions of Fel-Arcad society - broad, complex subjects such as governance, economics and justice - are defined, the Fel-Arcad lack the cultural history that emerges from conventional methodology; allowing simple things to grow and evolve into more complex ones. It doesn’t help that the Fel functionally suffered a cultural reset at the hands of the Refrain, something other families didn’t suffer nearly as much.

As such, the Fel-Arcad were tasked to take their approach to it’s natural conclusion; devise rituals for themselves, things that would obtain meaning through repetition. It wasn’t a particularly simple task; the Sil’khan and Vahnkin benefitted from larger-than-life near-divine historical figures in the form of the Skydancers, the Amaranth Sultan, and legendary peoples from both factions. The Lancasters in particular practice a fair bit of hero worship of the many kin of theirs who didn’t let their underdog status keep them for pursuing great ends. The Fel-Arcad, however, facing the twin prongs of few notable figures to elevate to near transcendence, as well as an ethos that generally abhorred this very thing, were thus tasked more harshly than the others.

As a broader subject, the devising of secular ritual grows in importance as civilization by and large grows more apathetic - if not outrightly opposed - to religions and religious practice. Where the problem arises is that the old rituals that one once practiced are now ‘meaningless’ to continue in the sense of their original purpose, that being reinforcement of conviction in the belief system they espoused. The unforeseen consequence of this is that these rituals as a side effect did have positive ramifications on those that practiced them and society as a whole, in that they broadly aided in counteracting loneliness, stress, depression and trauma while fostering community, bridging identarian gaps, building societal resilience, induced and reinforced a sense of purpose, served as means of meditation and supposedly even opposed cognitive decline in those susceptible to it.

The question of “Is church good for you?” is one with a multitude of answers depending on what you value most highly. Singing and dancing might be good for the soul, but widespread magical thinking isn’t ideal for civilization. The Fel-Arcad sociologists at the time would’ve made very similar observations that we did; the Vahnkin Conclaves and the Sil’khan Sabai did indeed boast of consecrated grounds filled with joyous faithful, but the discerning Fel were far more capable of paring away the gilded foil and glimpsing the deadening dogma of the former and consuming hedonism of the other, having been on the outside looking.

Understanding that ritual need not be religious or theistic - that you could take the whole, trim the bad, and leave behind the good - was what drove both secular thinkers in our world and Fel thinkers in the Switchboard to devise secular rituals of their own, plundering liberally the aesthetic languages of others, while ensuring they didn’t also import their negative foundations, filling the void with new aesthetics and practices unique to them.

Towards An End

The Fel-Arcad and Sil’khan great families share a connection that is far closer than the ones shared between other families. In a very literal sense, the Fel-Arcad parented the Sil’khan, having reincarnated them from the backbone slurry of their true ancestors, the Old Danseers. Shaped by Fel hands, the Sil’khan share a kinship with the Fel-Arcad that sees them being fierce allies even with various diametrically opposing views. In a sense, they have come to complement each other, and are thus the dominant coalition faction in the Great Sky.

An interesting quirk of this dynamic is that the Sil’khan, though incredibly independent and headstrong, do occasionally look to the Fel as advisors and confidants. The Fel-Arcad are by all metrics the oldest of the great families, and have thus poised themselves as dispensaries of almost-wisdom, advising their Sil’khan cousins on matters of individual growth and civilization building at large. Taking this advice is much of the reason why the Sil’khan - though incarnated from the Danseers - are much unlike them in a number of ways; the Sil’khan build. Though not nearly to the extent of the Fel-Arcad or the other families, the Sil’khan do differ from their purely nomadic ancestors in that they build things they intend to last. For the Sil’khan who’ve chosen less nomadic lifestyles, for the utility of it in their operations, or merely from discovering the love of the practice, the Sil’khan have come to - much like the Fel - appreciate building things, and leaving their mark on the Great Sky in a manner the Danseers never did.

Learning to appreciate creation in this manner did have a particular effect on them, however; they came to share a fear with the Fel-Arcad that - though present - wasn’t as strong as before. This was a fear of a Second Refrain.

The Refrain took the Arcad and the Danseers. The Fel as we’ve come to learn were devastated by this in a manner that defines them to this day. The Sil’khan however, were far less dismayed, having little by way of connection to them beyond their descendant backbone. The Danseers hadn’t much by way of robust monuments or a particularly expansive heritage, and much of what they did have was cultivated primarily to be passed to the Sil’khan when the Refrain’s curse finally took hold. The Sil’khan thus don’t dread the Refrain in much the same way the Fel do, with many accepting it as a sort of inevitability; a product of the Switchboard’s calculus that is - for the most part - beneficial to the continued existence of the Great Sky. This was the case until the mindset of the Sil’khan began to change however, under the influence of the Fel-Arcad, and they became oriented towards finding a means to oppose a hypothetical second end of days.

It was a revision in mindset that was welcome when it did come, as the Sil’khan were fond of posing a singular question to the Fel-Arcad after regarding the sheer diligence and effort and seeming exhaustion that was intrinsic to the Fel’s manner of doing things; why bother? Much of the Fel’s logics were already understood by the Sil’khan, and did not satisfy them as answers for why the Fel led lives that the Silks felt were defined by immense exertion towards chasing a final ‘right’, while simultaneously leading lives they considered incredibly dull. To the Silks, the Fel life was one of endless subservience to some imagined good, and reaping little in return other than what they felt could already be obtained via cultivating one’s own self. ‘Safety and security’ they argued, were intrinsic to beings that had developed themselves in mind and body, and optimal civilizational structure were nomadic clans of such persons spreading across the Dancirah in search of greater insight to empower them further. Such a structure would be impaired by the Fel’s insistence that all Fel were worth preserving, irrespective of whatever cause they sought to pursue.

Seeking an answer the Sil’khan would accept, as they understood and rejected all others, the Fel-Arcad pitched an idea that proposes the existence of a ‘compute difficulty profile’ of every thing and being in the Dancirah. The gist of the idea is that everything that occupies the Switchboard inflicts a computational burden on the Astrolabe, and the culmination of all exertions is what builds the Switchboard towards a Second Refrain. The largest generators of this burden, the Fel theorized, are the Third Kin themselves, and they furthered theorized that there was a manner in which the Third Kin lived that would either accelerate or slow down their progression towards a rehash of the Refrain, born out of a realization that the Refrain was a measure of rectifying chaos - or rather, what was born from the crucible of it; change. The major Astrolabic resolutions consistently following moments of immense turmoil in the Switchboard was categorical proof of this, they felt.

The Fel suspect that the greatest driver of change as caused by the Third Kin is their own insatiable dissatisfaction. The endless needs and wants of every denizen of the Switchboard is what creates within them the desires to do what they do. The Sil’khan in particular - in yearning to grow stronger and manifest the reality of their conquest - have yielded endless chaos that scours the Great Sky, pushing them all closer to a Second Refrain. The Fel seek to prevent this; by cultivating the arcologies where needs are met to the fullest extent, their inhabitants are less inclined towards manners of living that inflict computational load upon the Astrolabe. The Fel-Arcad’s ‘boring’ lives is a deliberate defense mechanism, a stratagem developed to postpone imminent collapse.

The Sil’khan found this preposterous, but understood that the Fel were set in their ways. Their proposal was different, and rested on a singular belief that the Second Refrain would be a phenomenon that could be fought. Perhaps not in the form of a kin-shaped combatant, but rather in the form of a puzzle that strength and smarts could solve. The Fel have come to share this sentiment somewhat, and have joined the Sil’khan in studying means by which they might ‘defeat’ the Refrain, but the Fel’s convictions remain ever sure; maximal postponement of the Refrain was conditional upon the willingness of the denizens of the Switchboard to lead simpler lives, abandoning their wishes to leave chisel blows on the marble slates of ledgers, and instead find satisfaction and fulfillment in the mundane.

This they justify by asserting it only be the way to ensure the perpetuation of the third kin, irrespective of shape or creed.