Lore:Ecdysis

Ecdysis is a Lore book introduced in Joker's Wild. It tells the story of the Awoken Titan Orin and how she became an Emissary of the Nine. Entries are unlocked by completing the Invitations from the Nine.

Seeds and Cuttings
1.

On the day she boards the Yang Liwei, they call her Nasya Sarwar. She carries in her knapsack an unopened letter from her brother, her mother's ashes, a selection of seeds and cuttings from her favorite neighborhood trees and plants, and some thirty thousand songs and short videos on a hand-me-down myoelectric augment.

On the ship's manifest, Nasya Sarwar is one of two dozen classless Scopares, trash collectors and composters and caretakers devoted to endlessly tidying the many surfaces and people within the Yang Liwei that cannot or do not clean themselves. She hopes through hard work and perseverance, she will prove herself worthy of one of the ship's remaining civilian cryopods, or—even better—a promotion to an Auturge position where she believes she'll find the freedom to devote her waking hours entirely to the loving care of the ship's hydroponics facilities.

Nasya is quadrilingual. Several of her fellow Scopares are not: born monolinguals who got lucky in international Exodus lotteries, just like she did. When they realize that she can speak to some of them, they do their best to befriend her. They share meals. They show her photos of the loved ones they left behind. They explain the function of the ship's many impossible machines. In turn, she does her best to teach them how to speak to the others. In this way, they are all a little less alone. She is twenty-seven years old.

2.

On the day she awakens in the Distributary, she names herself Nasan Ar. She carries in her hands a small silver jar. A dent has crushed its lid; it is impossible to open. She does not know its provenance, but she feels an inexplicable tugging of grief in her chest when she thinks about walking on without it.

She makes herself a home under the largest tree she can find. In the early days, it is little more than a lean-to and a campfire, but she shares it willingly with whoever passes by. Her guests help her transform the lean-to into a proper cottage with several guest beds. One cottage becomes two, then two is three, until three becomes a village.

Nasan loves her guests and friends; she loves her little ramshackle community... but she never wished to become mother or mayor. Whenever they gather in the evening for dinner, she feels claustrophobic anxiety press tight around her. She is shackled to the earth by all these people that she loves, and she has no words to explain her own restlessness. She feels monstrous. Why doesn't she love this? Why doesn't she want to stay?

One clear night, amid the honey-heavy smell of spring flowers and recent rain, she takes her silver jar and goes out into the dripping dark.

3.

She wanders. She tries on lives like she is trying on city-tailored fashions: for a few weeks, she is a Corsair. Then for a whole summer, she is a field hand. When she tires of that, she balances books for an atom merchant who trades in radioactive materials. Nothing holds her. Seeing her silver jar, one man suggests she may be a treasure hunter. The idea sends her deep into a subterranean cavern where she finds no treasure, but instead bioluminescent worms and a Paladin who calls herself Sjur Eido.

"If you're looking for a job," Sjur says, "I should introduce you to my boss."

4.

On the day Nasan finds her calling, the Diasyrm styles her a translator. It confuses her, because the Speech is the Speech. Variations have developed over time, but none are so distant from each other that two Awoken from around the world cannot speak to each other. "What do you mean?" Nasan asks.

"Well," the Diasyrm says. "I've been watching since you arrived. People look to you when they're fighting, and you try to understand each side before you try to help. When you speak, you do it deftly, without condescension." She considers Nasan. "It seems to me that you lend people grace when you help them explain themselves."

A little candle of pride flickers in Nasan's throat. "That's just mediation," she says, glancing away.

"Don't sell yourself short. Anyone can break up a fight. Few people can so clearly grasp the spirit of a thought, then rephrase it so that deaf ears hear it. Gifts like that can end wars." Thinking on that, the Diasyrm sobers. "We'll have to keep your talent to ourselves, for now. The Sanguine would just as soon cut out your tongue."

5.

The Theodicy War is a fact of life until it isn't. The killing stops, but the wounds remain. Nasan helps the Awoken mend. Her friends urge her to speak publicly, to help people on a grander scale, but Nasan believes the most effective change happens in groups of fewer than ten.

Chords of Meaning
6.

She is standing in a crowd of thousands when Mara Sov tells the Awoken about the dying world they abandoned. The idea sucker-punches her—one crippling jab to every tender part of her. For four sleepless nights, she can scarcely draw a breath without gulping. She holds her silver jar to her forehead, focusing on its cool constant weight, and knows that she must leave.

7.

She finds her old friend Sjur. Amid the feverish departure preparations, there is somehow time for an introduction to Mara. Nasan makes a pledge of herself and her skills.

She will do what she can to convince those who might stay behind—

"No," Mara interrupts with the bite of unsweetened tea. "I would not ask that of you or anyone else."

Nasan hesitates.

"Help those who have already made their choice, whatever it is. Help them with the grief." She clasps Nasan's hand. The stress around her eyes eases. "That's more important."

8.

The exodus is absolute in its terror. Nasan has never felt such a profound sense of schism—not when leaving lovers, nor communities, nor cherished hiding places.

As the Distributary shrinks behind their Hulls, she looks down at the little silver jar in her hands and wonders who she left behind in the world they're returning to protect. She wonders if they might still be alive.

9.

Sjur is as plain and ready a companion as she ever was in the Diasyrm's camp, but Mara is an enigma. Nasan feels drawn to her, not by her porcelain beauty, but by her onion-skin layers of defense. There are so many different truths that ring through Mara's carefully chosen words: chords of nuanced meaning that she feels she might be able to separate out into cleaner notes for frightened minds craving simplicity.

She does what she can. In quiet hours and fragmented conversations, she becomes an unconventional counselor to the would-be queen.

When the first fragile attempts at rebuilding society run afoul of the Long Unquiet Night, then the discovery of the Traveler and the Fallen, and then inevitably turn to riot and desertion, Nasan goes to Mara again to pledge her services. "Let me go after them," she begs, not a day after the proclamation that they all hear in their skulls instead of their ears. "I don't mean to change their minds or convince them to come back. I just—"

"Then what DO you mean to do?" Sjur asks curiously. Mara watches her with ageless patience, waiting for her to find the words.

Nasan purses her lips. "I want them to understand that you are—that you—that you are good. That you aren't what they think." Seeing Sjur bristle, she holds up her hand. To her relief, Mara makes a slight warding gesture as well. "And if they know that and still wish to live apart from us on Earth, that's fine. That's their choice."

"I don't need them to understand that," Mara says softly. There is the faintest husk of grief in her steady voice.

"No," Nasan agrees, relieved that Mara is willing to consider this truth. "You don't. You have the courage to be disliked, and that is uncommon. But it is just as important, sometimes, to cultivate good will..." Especially if you have forgotten what it feels like to not know everything, she thinks.

Mara looks away. Nasan watches closely and thinks that perhaps she has been heard. Sjur shifts her weight impatiently, tired by all this meaningful silence. It has been a long nineteen hours.

"If you go," Mara says finally, "you cannot come back."

Nasan hears the truth in it. She reaches to clasp Mara's hand. "Of course."

10.

So she goes to Earth. She carries a survival kit, a hunting rifle, and the tarnished silver jar that has followed her through her whole existence.

She finds no Awoken as she wanders an empty prairie. She spreads no gospel.

It is not two weeks before a band of Risen—wild with fear of themselves, each other, and the unknown—ambush her lonely campsite and kill her in her sleep.

Risen
11.

On the day her Ghost resurrects her, she asks him for a name and he calls her Orin. He asks her for a name and she calls him Gol. Marrow-deep instinct drives that decision; she could not declare its etymology if someone held a knife to her throat.

Gol explains that there is a settlement a few days' walk to the east, that there is no road, and that the wilderness is regularly patrolled by roving aliens who will try to kill them both. As he speaks, Orin looks around. They are surrounded by a young forest vivacious with birds and clouds of gnats. It is impossible to imagine that a deadly alien might be lurking somewhere nearby. But Gol found her. Gol knows more about the world than she does. She trusts him.

She scavenges the leaf litter until she finds a fallen tree limb. "Will this help?" she asks him, testing its heft. He twists his wings, puzzled. "...Against the aliens," she elaborates.

"Oh." Courteous, he pretends to consider it, then, "No. Probably not. They have guns."

"I see," she says, though she doesn't. She breaks off the smaller branches, using her foot for leverage. Soon, she has a crude mace. It is heavy, slow, and does not break when she tests it against a tree trunk.

She doesn't know what the aliens look like. She does not know what guns are. She does trust Gol. But, she can't help thinking, if an alien tried to attack her while she was armed with a stick like this, she would have no trouble crushing its skull.

12.

They reach the settlement. It is smoldering cinder and ruin. Gol frets about "fission products" and "acute radiation," so Orin lingers at a distance and studies what remains. A cat moves among the most distant rubble, hunting for mice. A tattered banner stirs in the breeze. She sees nothing more, so she ignores Gol's warning and goes in for a closer look.

She finds bodies. Adults, mostly. Some children. There are little houses for big animals, but there are no big animals among the dead.

"How did this happen?" she asks, overcome by grief for these charred strangers. "Aliens?"

"I doubt it. The Fallen don't often use nuclear weapons. It ruins the land. My guess is that a Warlord raided this place for its livestock and then set off a bomb."

"Why?"

Gol gives a little shrug, bobbing in place. "Why not? No one was here to stop them."

Orin clenches her mace a little tighter. She feels nauseous. "Can you tell when it happened?"

He runs the computations. "Not precisely. Less than thirty-six hours ago, I suppose."

"I should have walked faster," she mutters, and then bends over to be sick.

"You can't do that here," Gol interrupts anxiously. "Stop, Orin. Stop. You have radiation poisoning. If you're sick here, you'll die here, and then I'll have to resurrect you here, and you'll be sick and die again and again. You have to move. Come. I told you not to walk around here."