He has a way of making them forget he isn’t one of them.
One in a series of concept pieces for Old Sond, the Arkoloteri, and Tamahuaq’s company of expies.
Fallen Arkai ◆ Control Burn ◆ the Lung ◆ Incandescence ◆ Foreign Body ◆ First Light
◆
Fire and fire ecology have become thematic, but maybe that’s not a surprise. It’s the focal point of the tension between the Arkoloteri and ne Cantesci. The Arkoloteri have taken a hands-off approach to keeping their machine-worlds alive, mostly because they physically can’t be hands-on without violating the most important precept of their organization (Don’t Open That Arkai.) Have they made some fatal oversights in designing the self-sustaining machinery of Sond? Don’t worry about it. Of course, ne Cantesci are very hands-on, they have to be. Nobody is going to keep their arkais alive but them.
The Warden wades through their disputes as a rare third party. This seems to be the one area where the New Guard is uniquely qualified in ways the Old Guard is not. They have new eyes, uncolored by thousands of years of political squabbling.
Before I pivoted to speedpainting, I killed some time trying to make a new sketch brush. It didn’t work out, but it did give me time to scribble the other guys the Warden sometimes deals with. I don’t know where else to put it so I’m putting it here.
[Long description: Sketches of Saimon and Noa encountering a detachment of Endlings in the belly of Old Sond. They are quickly surrounded and greatly outnumbered, but Saimon postures with his hand on the hilt of sword anyway. Khnaz, the leader of the Arkolote, stands by and watches impassively with the Warden.
Another sketch shows the Warden bailing Saimon and Noa out of a tight spot. The boys are knocked prone, but Saimon crouches protectively over Noa. The Warden stands over them both and locks blades with one of the old gods, a snake-like construct with four arms, four swords, and a placid human mask.
Other drawings show the Warden sitting on the floor and shooting the breeze with Riven and Khnaz, and Saimon finding solidarity with the Warden as two walnuts who are living and dying by the sword.]
Typically, first-time meetings don’t involve brandishing swords at each other, but Saimon is a foreigner wielding a very old and dangerous weapon.
There is some confusion about what “the dues we owe our descendants” means, exactly, in an increasingly cosmopolitan Sond. The last time war came to Sond’s doorstep, most Endlings perceived it as Sarikote infighting. They still aligned with the modern Sarikote, but this was along ideological lines, not relational ones. Still, there was baggage to unpack about the Diasporas, who consider themselves distinct from the Sarikote. Does their definition of kinship extend to them, even if it isn’t mutual? It seems to. Are they then accountable to them the way they are to their “closer” relatives? Is there some kind of priority-hierarchy here? It’s a lot of baggage to unpack for a collection of ancestors who are, historically, not the best at negotiating who does and doesn’t belong.
And now they’re adding randos to the mix.
For better or worse, the New Guard isn’t as invested in answering these questions from the perspective of an ancestor. They’re too young to feel like anything but peers to their surface cousins. Well, some of them, anyway— The Warden can respectfully recognize when someone is on some Icarian-type bullshit and needs to be protected from themselves.
meeting the Old Guard
O
You’re not from here, are you?
S
No.
O
That is unprecedented… We’ve never been called to safeguard someone who is not one of our own.
N
You never imagined that other people would be drawn to living here? Not once in your thousand-something years of being alive?
O
Never.
N
That says more about you than my partner, cousin.
O
I suppose so.
Leave a Reply