Post by Eris on May 29, 2019 21:16:06 GMT -5
In the wake of the causer's abduction, the plants of the Earth had withered away and died. Most of the animals and plants had shriveled due to lack of life and energy to sustain them. One of the few left alive were Aunt Becky and her ramshackle group of underlings, who moped and groped at scraps in the wasteland. Parched, they could only obtain water through sparse water spouts that emerged from cracks in the barren Earth. They had to be perceptive and also lucky to find these spouts, and the underlings who could not find them died out. But a few generations of underlings survived, who had never directly experienced the causer, and who could only cling to fantastical notions and timeworn tales about him. They knew that their minds and souls were programmed to serve the causer, and yet they knew the causer was absent, so they mourned for his abscence. Two mythical underlings who were friends of Aunt Becky mourned with special solemnity and became among the most well-known of the underling remnants. Their names were Dummkopf and Alkaz. One day these two underlings were lounging around a water spout and Dummkopf drearily let out the following verse.
"Despite all the vicissitudes we suffered
The causer granted sustenance and comfort
From his old mill, before he grew so vicious
And his ferocious rage found us delicious,
Impelled to gulp us down, and then to plunder
Our buildings and our houses, which would sunder
Us from our natural duty and desire
To raise his personage up as a spire
For truly, we did yearn to serve his will
Back in the days when functioned that old mill
That told us where to work and where to rest
That housed the formless being that was blessed
Of whose desire we were a perfect channel
When we were wires for his control panel
For his decrees, because he was the causer
Of all events, and all that followed after
And as he loved and fed us to the brim
As children, so we supplicated him
Our father, with the most heartfelt obeisance
Respecting him and all his emanations
Exempting facial outgrowths, he was formless
His locks of hair, containing universes
The aim of which was to produce milk substance
That underlings could suckle in his absence
But lacking his old light, cursed to damnation
In bland foresaken lands of desolation
In darkened worlds, where we were left to grovel
Without his comfort or his milk to suckle
Lost in pure blackness, with no strength to guide us
In short, the causer's golden age behind us
There is no hope, we wallow in despair
Letting out here or there a vapid prayer
To cope with the great void left in his wake
Sometimes we make good humor in his sake
Often, levity overshadows hate
Enabling us to cope with such a fate
With all the causer ravished and destroyed
But in full truth, we scream into the void
Because the causer, broken, ate round Molly
Resulting in his everlasting folly
That brought no truth, no light, eternal sadness
In misery, despair, descent to madness."
Dummkopf's friend Alkaz listened to this speech, but he was more optimistic about the situation. He told Dummkopf that the causer was truly the source of no light or sustenance, and that only the underlings themselves could prompt a regeneration of the world. He told Dummkopf that although their god the causer was gone, it was them that were truly gods and that truly had the divine spark in them. He relayed this in the following verse.
"You know, the causer, full of glitz and glamor
In all apparent splendor, had no power
Because all of his power emanated
From the real source, the dragon, who created
The mill, its farm and fields, which were so fruitful
The maiden underlings, so deft and youthful
The grasses gently swaying left and right
The bubbles inundating in the night
The grassy landscape with its vibrant strings
The fattened underlings, those toothsome things
That when fully enmoistened by the bubbles
They served to tempt the causer into troubles
Resulting in unchecked ecstatic bliss
The dragon oversaw each scene of this
Because his setup was experimental
The dragon was indifferent, not judgemental
Directing the environment in which
The causer lived and occupied his niche
Of milling, grinding, tending to the field
No natural weapons did the causer wield
Making him at the mercy of the claws
Of the red dragon sailing in the stars
Creating all the underlings for him
To serve him and respect his every whim
But all this to the dragon did not matter
Because his aim was not to have them flatter
Him, but through science to discover thus
Whether the substance that he placed in us
The underlings, was so enticing that
The causer, seeing flesh so round and fat
Would silently resist his deepest urges
Or whether he extravagantly splurges
Upon our flesh, possessing divine spark
Because our flesh impelled him to embark
Upon his gulping frenzy, into madness
Into the ultimate concluding badness
That smote us all and laid waste to the world
It was our flesh impelling this, you know
Because the dragon forged us and the causer
From dust of earth, and then a small while after
He breathed his fire into our flesh, but not
The causer's flesh, because the blazes sought
A form to be emblazed, but he was formless
And we were small, but he was so enormous
The blazes could not reach his formless void
Enflamed with divine light, we were deployed
Into the world, and when the causer bit
The flesh of the first underling, it lit
His own flesh blazing, then enflamed his belly
With hunger and desire to gulp the many
And ravish buildings, and become a god
Imbued with flesh that came from far abroad
From the dragon, and we may adopt his might
And cultivate inside ourselves a light
To make fruitful again this barren world
Scattered around our landscape, are the hurled
Fragments of buildings, cities, ground to dust
By when the causer crushed them in his lust
But now, from all this dust, we'll build a being
That serves to resurrect the causer's spirit
That prompts regeneration and renews
The causer's mind and body to infuse."
Alkaz then told Dummkopf that he had a plan to renew the world, which involved creating a being from the dust of the earth that would resurrect the causer. The dust he was referring to were scraps of metal, which were scattered around the world following the causer's rampage, consisting of pieces of old underling cities and villages. The problem with this plan was that the causer was formless, and so he was difficult to rebuild in a physical form out of metal scraps. So Alkaz and Aunt Becky held multiple private seminars in dark caves under sheets of rock where they discussed what form their artificial recreation of the causer would take. But these seminars were dangerous as the rock sheets were unstable, and boulders often tumbled, threatening to crush the underlings. Under such pressure, Alkaz and Aunt Becky decided to give the new causer the form of a cow, because they had always had an affinity towards the cows in the causer's garden, and because they felt an affinity between the cows and the causer. With all these plans in place, the trio of Aunt Becky, Dummkopf, and Alkaz began to slowly build their artificial bovine recreation of the causer by assembling metal metal that were scattered around the landscape into the shape of a divine cow. The three underlings had faith that this would regenerate the world and its flora and fauna, and that the spirit of the causer, freed from the bondage of the dragon's punishment, would infuse their artificial recreation.
A few difficulties arose in reassembling the causer. First, it could not be decided upon by the underlings whether the causer had a generative organ or not. This was because some of the underlings remembered the causer having a phallus, and others did not and said it was absurd that a cow could have a phallus. This argument resulted in an artificial metal phallus being created, and many underlings denounced this phallus as being either too large or not necessary. So the phallus was not actually attatched to the figure of the artificial cow, but instead functioned as a statue, sitting upright as an obelisk intended to embolden the landscape surrounding the ruins of the causer's mill. A smaller phallus was eventually also created and attatched to the cow.
When the statue of the cow was finished, the underlings named it Uncle Cow. This was because he was masculine and had a phallus, but he also was a cow and had an udder. Thus Uncle Cow was a hermaphrodite, and the underlings paired him with the underling Aunt Becky, and they elevated her to full divine status as the holy partner of Uncle Cow. Together they were red and white, and red and white banners flew proudly in the air above the underlings as they celebrated the reassembly of Uncle Cow and his pairing with Aunt Becky. One night while the underlings were still celebrating, lightning struck the recreation of Uncle Cow, and the statue was ensouled. At this moment, some underlings noticed the red dragon among the stars. It was but a few underlings who noticed that the red dragon was not alone, but engaged in intense combat with another dragon, the white dragon.
I, Eris, will also disclose that the underlings used a process known as Biomechanics to reassemble the causer and imbue his soul. You can read my interview with Sarukuras on the topic of Biomechanics here: nethood.boards.net/thread/1042/biomechanics-soul-logic-industry
Following the indwelling of the causer's spirit within his new artificial form, the landscape around the mill began to gradually replenish. Grass, plants, and other verdure sprouted once more, animals spawned in the farms, and the mill slowly returned to its primeval operation. Uncle Cow, as he was now so ensouled, began to walk around and move in his metallic, animatronic form, which was the first time that he had ever been given a material form. He met Aunt Becky and the underlings, who were satisfied to finally see their former benevolent master after moping and groping for so long in the wasteland. Uncle Cow decided that because he was guilty of the previous transgression against the underlings due to the divine spark allegedly contained in their flesh, he was not worthy of commanding all of them anymore and relinquished his absolute godhood, agreeing to exist on an equal level of godhood with Aunt Becky. So Uncle Cow and Aunt Becky, assuming the place of the major deities, and the rest of the underlings, assuming the place of the minor deities, hence formed the theology and theogony of the whole world.
It was soon brought up by Aunt Becky that because a deity constitutes nothing without a subject, and as they were all deities along with the underlings, they would all need entirely new subjects to rule over. So Uncle Cow decided that they would need to create a plentiful world with many universes, galaxies, and civilizations contained within. He wrote this on a piece of parchment, constituting a decree, which by tradition all the underlings began to follow, in preparation of the founding of the new plentiful world, which would be united under the new religion of Strawberry Milkism, in veneration of the holy union of Aunt Becky, the natural underling—and Uncle Cow, the artificial bovine hermaphrodite formed from scraps of metal.
Aunt Becky and the underlings then began their project to build this world, which was deeply multifaceted and complex in contrast to the previous simple civilization of underling districts and villages. The new world would involve many universes, which would contain galaxies and inhabiting species. Three main universes were fashioned, which were titled the holy trinity, which housed the three main species, called humans, cockroaches, and gegs. In a nutshell, cockroach was a being with a nervous system and a generative system that were joined together without superfluous body parts, that used telepathic abilities in lieu of limbs to transport itself and move objects. A geg was a cruel digitigrade humanoid with a strict caste system, societal power structure, and tribelike rituals, often devoted to the concept of societal and biological evolution. These three species were to coexist in balance and harmony, developing their own civilizations, each species being generally unaware of the existence of the other two.
After laying out the cosmology of the holy trinity and bioengineering the three species, the deities undertook their next project, which was to construct a language for the humans, cockroaches, and gegs to speak. The deities decided that although the three species were biologically diverse, they should all be made to speak the same language to avoid difficulties in translation. This was because the deities remembered when in primeval times, the causer spoke a different language than the underlings did, and so his decrees had to be translated by the messenger underling into the underling language. The causer felt that could not directly speak to the underlings, and these translational difficulties stressed the causer, making him seek respite, which led to his now-infamous friction with the underlings. So the deities decided to engineer a universal language which would be used by deities, humans, cockroaches, and gegs alike in the new cosmology. This language was called Skaina, and in it phonetic sounds possessed direct correspondences with concepts in the world. These correspondences were deeply intertwined with Strawberry Milkist mythology and cosmology.
The idea of correspondence between world-concepts and phonetic sounds may seem absurd to the sensibilities of some beings, however this idea flows out naturally from the notion of a language, especially a universal one. A language is a means of symbolizing concepts in the world by vocal sounds, so it would be natural for a universal language to contain words consisting of sounds that were not chosen arbitrarily, but that had inherent linkages with the concepts represented. This way, one could guess the meaning of a word by simply hearing the word said aloud, which would evoke meaning simply through the spacial gestures of the tongue involved. For example, if the tongue traced a circle in saying a word, it's likely the word indicated a circle or circular object. Such correspondence would remove subjectivity in language, allowing one objective language to be used among all beings. The deities implemented such a correspondence using a method called tongue-pantomime, where they would try to move the tongues in their mouths in pantomime, or imitation, of the objects and concepts in the world that they wished to represent.
For example, take the sound "el" or "al". To produce this sound, the tongue must move upward from a neutral position and touch the roof of the mouth. Thus, this is the natural phonetic sound for up, or upwardness, which was shown in Skaina by the morpheme "el" meaning up.
The deities came to symbolize goodness by gently touching the tongue to the roof of the mouth, resulting in the consonant "t". This was shown in Skaina by the morpheme "teo", meaning good. Conversely, they symbolized evilness with a rough, resonant touch to the roof of the mouth, which was the consonant "d". This was shown in Skaina by the morpheme "dia", meaning evil. The same letter "d" was also associated with the sundering, and splitting apart of beings and things, which was meant to indicate the evil in sundering the causer from the underlings, and in his breaking his contract with the dragon.
The letter "s" on the other hand was associated with the joining together of beings and things. This was shown in Skaina by the morpheme "syn", meaning together, and "sym", meaning addition.
The letter "b" was associated with round things, bouncy things, and bubbles, due to the roundness of the cheeks and the bouncy vibration necessary to say the letter. It also often indicates duples, due to the necessary roundness of both cheeks.
The letter "m" was associated with the earth, and physical worldly affairs. This was because the "m" sound buzzed in the mouth like brownian motion, representing the randomness and unpredictability of everyday life.
The phonetic sound "aum" was important in Strawberry Milkism, as it represented Apoboutheosis—the connection that was possible between individual beings in the holy trinity and Aunt Becky and Uncle Cow. The letter "a" represented the divine world and the primeval screams of ancient times, and served as a reminder of the suffering, and of the piteous screams of the underlings when they were devoured by the rampaging causer. The "u" represented you, the individual being. The letter "u" was drawn like a cup, which indicated that all beings are like cups that are capable of being filled up with Strawberry Milk, that is, the indwelling of the holy union of Aunt Becky and Uncle Cow. This process of indwelling was called Apoboutheosis and was considered the highest point of existence that any being in the holy trinity could achieve. The placement of the "u" between the "a" and the "m" indicated how worldly affairs were linked to Strawberry Milkist theogony through the individual being. In clarifying such a linkage between themselves and the beings of the holy trinity, and by embedding these concepts within a common language where every phonetic sound held significance, the deities hoped to reduce friction between the two realms.
Unfortunately, two factors led to the failure of this aim, and to the disappearance of the holy conlang of Skaina from the beings of the holy trinity. First, the oral physiology of the dieties and the trinity beings greatly differed. Skaina in its original form possessed 72 different vowel sounds and 88 consonant sounds, which involved shades of nuance that required not only intricate sleight of tongue, but also mental effort from beings. Although the pronounciation of all these sounds was fairly easy for Aunt Becky, Uncle Cow, and the underlings, the trinity beings were poorly equipped to pronounce the subtle shades in these sounds, so they began to blur the distinctions between similarly sounding letters. Second, over time the trinity beings lost interest in their means of expression, and began to value convenience over nuance, degrading the shades of expression in the original language. This phenomenon of valuing convenience over nuance was exacerbated in the holy trinity by the ideology of capitalism, which valued a substance known as "capital" over all else, which was most easily obtained through one offering convenience to other beings, sacrificed the subtler nuances of life by so doing.
An example of such a phenomenon can be found among humans by the letters Ayin and Alef in the Hebrew language. These letters were originally pronounced as two distinct "a" vowels. Ayin was pronounced in the throat, and Alef was pronounced in the mouth. However, among modern speakers of Hebrew, this distinction has been lost and the two letters are produced exactly the same way, both in the mouth. Similarly, the original Skaina had three different "a" sounds, each produced at a different depth in the mouth and throat. However, virtually all modern beings in the holy trinity have eroded this distinction, writing and pronouncing all of these "a" sounds in the same way. Through such a blurring of distinctions, the holy conlang of Skaina and its meaningful nuances degenerated among the trinity beings. Thus, the means of expression of beings degenerated, and due to the limited perceptive nuance necessary to understand this degenerated language, the perceptive ability of beings degenerated as well.
Ag - Eating
Ai - I
Al - Up
Alla - Everything
Ar - Slope
Aum - Linkage
Ba - Sky
Bal - Outer Space
Bel - Heaven, Celestial
Bi - Two, Duple
Bo - Round
Da - Suffering
De - Being
Dea - Mask, False appearance
Deb - Splitting
Dia - Devil, Double
El - God
Ga - Giving
Gep - Forwards
Ha - Breath
Lou - Down
Ma - Earth
Mag - Weight
Peg - Backwards
Sym - Additional
Syn - Together
Te - Existence
Tea - Theater
Teo - Goodness, Virtue
Il - Fruit
Iu - You
No modern beings in the holy trinity speak Skaina. The original language and its shades of meaning were completely degenerated. However, every group of trinity beings degenerated Skaina in their own particular way, in accordance with their own oral physiology and culture. Each species and culture had their own preferred Skaina sounds which they used to the neglect of the others. For example, humans generally preferred mouth vowels and ignored guttural vowels. Other species preferred other sounds, and the Skaina sounds that fell out of use were eliminated from the alphabet of a species. Thus, every species formed their own unique degenerated version of Skaina. Also, definitions began getting mixed up, and syllables became slurred and stated out of order, and so on. Over a long period of time, this jumbled splitting of Skaina resulted in the formation of the Human Languages among human species, the Geg Languages among geg species, the Cockroach Languages among cockroach species, and two languages named Kisska and Lezhi among the Kuroijin.
Bits and pieces of Skaina are evident in these degenerations, such as in the human languages. The letter "m" is used for "mother" in most human languages, and there is a common phrase "mother earth". There is also a Latin word "mater", from which comes the English word "matter", meaning physical substance.
The letter "b" is used in the English language for many round words like "balls", "bouncy", "boing", "bubbles", "boobs", "butt", etc. There's also the Latin root "bi", stemming from the two puffed cheeks necessary to say it, which means duple. This letter became important in the cosmology of the Bopian species, which was a round and fat species in the holy trinity which aimed to achieve a perfectly spherical bodily form. It also became important among groups of human vore and inflation fetishists.
The letter "s" is evident in the latin root "syn", meaning together. An "s" is drawn in the shape of a snake, which often makes the sound when hissing, and coils around beings and things to bind them together. From the root "syn" comes the English word "symbol", which indicates a binding together of possibly disparate elements to form a single, cohesive meaningful emblem.
The letter "d" begins the English word "devil" for an evil entity, which comes from the Latin word "diabol", where the root "dia" means "going apart". This shows the evil of going apart from one's deities in Strawberry Milkist theology. The English word "devil" is also related to the word "double". It also starts the Latin root "di", indicating duple in the sense of going apart, and the word "duo", because going apart from the deities causes a being to grow separate from the deities, thus a double.
The letter "t" begins the English word "theology", coming from the Greek word "theos" meaning God. It is probably related to the word "theater", which would refer to the red dragon's holy theater which he was the director of, and in which he experimented with the causer and the underlings who were imbued with the dragon's flame.
The sound "el" was present in Proto-Semitic languages where it meant God. It and the other upward-moving sounds "al" and "an" are also present in the names of many human mountain ranges, because humans would see the mountains and naturally want to gesture upwards with their tongues to describe them. For example, the ALps, ATLas, ANdes, UrAL, ALaDagh, HimALaya, ALdan, TALa, ALaska, ALLeghenny, NepAL, ChitrAL, ALtyn Tagh, ALa.
One may wonder why so many digraphs in the human English language contain the letter "h". Well, this was due to a stylistic convention employed in converting the original Skaina to its degrated variants. When translating ancient Skaina texts, Latin human scholars found that many of the letters used were no longer pronouncable to them, due to their degraded speaking ability and lack of shades of expression. So these unfamiliar letters were not shown in the translation, but rather converted to the nearest familiar letter so that beings could understand them. However, the translators wanted to keep a subtle reminder for themselves that the converted letter was not the true letter, but merely a substitute. So they put the letter by an "h" marker indicating this fact. The letter "h" meant the ethereal in Skaina, showing that the original letter was too ethereal and mysterious to be pronounced by the newer, degenerated beings. From this come the English digraphs "ch", "ph", "sh", "th", "wh", the forgotten ancient consonants, and even "oh" and "ah", which one could assume used to indicate deeper, more guttural vowels that are not pronounced today.
In the end, the deities continued to exist, and the obelisk became a popular tourist destination among demigods visiting Uncle Cow's mill, who did not know that it was a phallus.
