Etyries

[scott-martin]

She's a beloved revolutionary sweetheart, a windfall profit, a bustle in the hedge fund, a pearl of great price. She makes life interesting. We delight vicariously in her achievements, most of which have been misconstrued in the popular press. And that's okay. We see a new world in her and the old truths in that new world. More than either of the boys, she gets it.

Etyries became the favored goddess of a budding accountant and his circle of friends who held the London School of Economics in a healthy superstitious awe. Her fundamental innovation, her heresy and closely guarded cult secret, is often said to be double entry bookkeeping, which changed the world and made the empire possible. A generation later, I want to give her all the more elaborate monetary weapons we've developed in the armories since those relatively innocent times. She knows how to calculate and price futures contracts, evaluating not just what a dream can be worth tomorrow but what to pay today. She can separate a commodity into its derivative rights, sell or buy the notional pieces, put it back together in a previously unimagined configuration, make money. She can run time backward, buying a thing back later to ensure it can be sold in the past. Through a perpetual license of the IO Truth Grading System🈸️and her own genius, she processes the statistical field to concentrate on only the best risk-adjusted outcomes. She sets exchange and arbitrage rates, transubstantiating the vagaries of coinage into the imperial and theoretically Standard Lunar (L), which exists almost entirely in the spirit world and only occasionally gets called down to inhabit coinage. Working closely with Elder Sister she assesses the cosmological inflationary constant (>1/wane) that keeps the world alive and adjusts interest rates accordingly. She is the gini and the gong and all that's to come that runs in with the thrust on the strand.

Of course most of this is only useful or even comprehensible in the most spell-dense treasure houses of mind-melting Glamour, where I kind of hope I never have to go again. Out here in the fantasy bronze age world, Etyries is the force that binds a polyglot empire together. The Mothers don't do that. The Mothers are for putting on coloring books you hand out to the inbred illiterates in flyover country, I get it. Sentimental trash pumped out of the Jillaro paper factories. The last time Etyries played a direct role converting anyone actually important was Carmania, and that went pretty well. They recognized the inner core of her teaching and as far as they were concerned, no other earthly red goddess was necessary. They still love her up and down the modern West Reaches, which is appropriate when you think about it. A nice tribute. The West Reaches defied the Sheng era largely under her aegis. The Lunar Way that survived up there was her Way, the direct and unmediated (always mediated) system of Self Voyages, Wisdom Trading, Words of Wisdom. New Gods. They don't have a lot of that in Jillaro's shadow but I assure you it's huge in Arrolia. 

Our great sorrow is that she won't succeed. The deck is stacked against her and the temptations she faces are too intense. All of her achievements are paper money, moon money, glamour and dreams. It won't last. "That's all right, dad," she says. "Nothing does." Meanwhile she's a welcome kick in the pants. You know her too. What's she like when you see her?

[Lloyd Dupont]

Is that a love letter to your goddess?!   The goddess of capitalism and class exploitation! 😮 

[Sir_Godspeed]

So did Etyries apotheosize because she invented the Limited Company and shares?

[scott-martin]

17 minutes ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

The goddess of capitalism and class exploitation!

The historically successful ones always seem to end up there, one way or another, yeah.

Just now, Sir_Godspeed said:

So did Etyries apotheosize because she invented the Limited Company and shares?

If you are referring to the development of the Seven-Sided Soul I leave that to specialists to explicate. Not having a free subscription to the IO TGS or unlimited time to ponder its intricacies, I cannot prove which of the statements attributed to the historical Rufelza are actually the Voice of Rufelza, i.e., the Seventh Apostle.

[Eff]

I have two stories of Etyries handy. One is sui generis, one is part of a larger work. 

1)

The Goddess's truest followers have always been the lowly of the world. Bandits, street girls, disgraced scholars, queens without regalia, followers of the Wasp God too waspish for Carmanians, madwomen who barter with spirits, slaves. Etyries was a merchant, and who expects much from someone who leads jackasses around by the nose for a living? And yet when she came before the Goddess, in those days when the Victory was fresher than morning dew, she started and nearly fainted, it is said, and the Goddess pulled her out from the line and said, "Here, she is a Natural!" She did faint, at that.

And between her and Valare, that is how we learned what Naturals were. Etyries had all three of her eyes open, and all of them caught the Goddess's light. The unfiltered light of the Goddess, in those blessed days of the Zero Wane, brought madness to anyone who saw it, and Etyries was no exception. But her madness went deeper, and she saw further, and when she recovered from fainting, tended to by the Goddess Herself, she looked up and pulled out a coin from her purse. She held it up to the Goddess and said, "This I might have offered to you before, but I see now that it is a glamour, and so it already belongs to you."

The Goddess, it is said, clapped Her hands and laughed and said, "You, I shall personally instruct! You are already well along the Way." Etyries learned quickly at the Goddess's side, and then she sallied forth and shared her insights with the merchants, the traders, the lenders, the tax-collectors, and the speculators. Some understood, some said she had gone round the bend, some merely scratched their heads and returned to their abacus. 

Etyries returned, frustrated, and consulted with the Goddess for a long time, and then with Irippi Ontor for a while, and then she spent her time writing and writing, even as she instructed those who had proved receptive to her revelations of the intangible. 

She wrote even as the Goddess ascended into the Air and wrapped the Mask of the Red Moon about her. Finally, a year before Yelmgatha died, she finished her work and apotheosized. It was an explanation of the Lunar Way in simple, clear language that even the most prosaic shopkeeper could understand. Unfortunately, it was so perfect that it apotheosized with her. And so we who follow her have been bedeviled with hecklers ever since. If you are lucky and capable and pious, you may be privileged to someday see it in her emporium on the Moon, and perhaps copy out a single sentence.

 

2)

"Vibe Check!"

The Goddess declared this many times. It was a frequent exclamation of Hers. Whenever She was introduced to someone new, after greetings She would often say this, usually gently tapping them on the forehead. Normally She would follow this up with some small words of praise. 

But She also screamed it forth just before Her scythe swung down on the Shah of Carmania. And after that, She was heard to say, "Terrible, just terrible." And this mystery confused many. 

One day when the Goddess was instructing Etyries on the proper uses of hazia, Etyries at last ventured to ask Her just what that meant. The Goddess giggled uncontrollably, fell over on Her side, and finally said, "I'm hungry, let's find something to eat."

As they ate, the Goddess said, "This is what I look for when I say that. This is the fullness of goodness that I sought." And She kissed Etyries in delight. And Etyries finally understood, but she never told anyone else what the Goddess had meant.

Edited November 25, 2019 by Eff

[scott-martin]

11 minutes ago, Eff said:

Vibe Check

Yeah, that's the stuff fullness of goodness. It's going to be an interesting couple years for the Way and the Empire. Great to see you hitting the ground running.

Edited November 25, 2019 by scott-martin

[Eff]

3 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Yeah, that's the stuff fullness of goodness. It's going to be an interesting couple years for the Way and the Empire. Great to see you hitting the ground running.

Thank you, thank you. I should probably get a blog or something to post this stuff on...

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 hours ago, Eff said:

"Vibe Check!"

marry me

[g33k]

6 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

marry me

Yes, the Red Goddess says that a lot, too...

[EricW]

Ha there is a deeper question. Since double entry book keeping is the invention of a chaos goddess, are storm bull's sense chaos triggered in the presence of Lunar trade ledgers?

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, EricW said:

Ha there is a deeper question. Since double entry book keeping is the invention of a chaos goddess, are storm bull's sense chaos triggered in the presence of Lunar trade ledgers?

If they are auto-calculating spread-sheets, possibly yes, but mere scratches of symbols of Order on parchment or pulped aldryami are probably not enough to trigger Bull senses.

Does your berserk go crazy if you attach a piece of cloth with a charcoal image of the Chaos rune to his backside, without him noticing?

(Once he notices, better run...)

[JonL]

4 hours ago, EricW said:

Ha there is a deeper question. Since double entry book keeping is the invention of a chaos goddess, are storm bull's sense chaos triggered in the presence of Lunar trade ledgers?

I believe you have to escalate to derivatives and credit default swaps before that happens.

Storm Bull & Rathor actually compete for Etyries affections each fiscal year, much like Esrola's suitors.