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What Not to Wear: Neathy Edition
Topic Started: Aug 11 2017, 03:42 AM (286 Views)
Louis Ferdinand
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In one of the more quiet, upscale areas of Veilgarden, seemingly a world away from the raucous din of the district's (in)famous taverns, honey-dens, and brothes, Louis sat at a sidewalk cafe, smoking an unusually thin and elongated pipe and reading a small, plain looking book entitled A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. The cafe was modeled to be a near perfect replica of the famous Café de la Paix of Paris, and it, along with the rest of the similarly themed neighborhood in which it was located, was a favorite gathering place for both artists and admirers of the Celestial school. It was also a preferred destination for some of the younger, more fashionable members of high society; those looking to escape the stifling confines of the Palace and experience the freedom offered by Veilgarden, but wary of getting too close to anything truly deviant or degenerate for fear that it might threaten their social standing. This, along with the area's general resemblance to Paris, attracted the presence of some of London's finest couturier houses, eager to market their tastefully radical creations to those whom, unlike the often chronically destitute Bohemians, actually had the income to spend on luxury fashion.

This was what brought Louis to the area. His protégé had made significant progress since he first met her, but she could only go so far without some significant additions to her wardrobe. London had certainly grown more accepting of nontraditional modes of dress since the Fall, but not so accepting that she could go on mimicking her father forever.
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Louis Ferdinand
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"Splendid! I believe our destination isn't too far from here. It should be this way..." Louis peered down the quasi-avenue, trying to make out any familiar landmarks. "No wait, it's the other way. Or was his street parallel to this one rather than perpendicular?" He looked up in an attempt to get his bearing from the false-stars, but quickly resigned to the fact that he was lost.

"Oh who am I fooling, everything around here looks exactly the same to me. Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe Paris? As a young child, a minor relation of mine—not a blood relation, mind you—'volunteered' to bring me there to meet with a certain highly renowned violinist whom, he claimed, offered our family his services as an instructor, but was too frail in his old age to manage the trip to Wien. I thought it was suspicious when, upon our arrival, he took all my clothes and gave me a bundle of rags to replace them, but it wasn't until after a month of being dragged from one clandestine meeting to another that I learned he had fabricated the whole thing to convince father to send him a large stipend for my needs, with which he intended to help fund the activities of a group of anarchists he had fallen in with."
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Felicia Voight
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Felicia snorted. "Anarchists. Bloody typical. You're lost? Give me a minute."

She rushed towards a wall, grabbing hold of a gutter drain and a loose brick, climbing as quickly as a rat up to the roof, hefting herself up onto the top of the building, then leaping across the street to another roof and climbing its chimney. She stood there for several long moments, scanning the skyline and the streets below, before dropping down again to the roof and lowering herself back to street level with the air of someone who did this sort of thing routinely.

She nodded to Louis. "Got it. Can't be sure, though. Not totally, without the Flit. We're near Stonymonk. Nearest bridge is Bazaar Bridge. Southwest. North is Hollow Street. Edging towards Spite, that way. Clothes markets look westerly. That help?"
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Louis Ferdinand
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"Yes, thank you, you're a lifesaver." Louis said, relieved that they wouldn't be late and that he wouldn't have to humiliate himself by asking for directions. "It's just over the bridge and to the west; the building on the waterfront with a rounded roof and a sign with the initials "A.S." stylized to resemble a heron hanging above the dooryway." He set off briskly in the direction Felicia had revealed. Élois gave her a quizzical look, cocking his head slightly to the side, then followed after Louis.
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Felicia Voight
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Felicia shrugged and moved with Louis, eyeing the crowds around them. Most took one look at her and turned up their noses, not seeing much in the unfashionable teen. Some eyed her more closely, for whatever reasons they might have. She shrugged again, turning to Louis.

"Lot of snooty Lordships here. Keep turning up their noses. Dumb b____rs. What's wrong with me, anyway? Not good enough for them? Me arse."
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Louis Ferdinand
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"You're better off not being noticed these 'people'. If you can even call them that." Louis scoffed.

"If you haven't noticed, we've passed quite a few faces one can regularly see at the Palace. They come down here for a taste of Veilgarden. Not too big a taste, mind you; they want a sample of what they imagine life with the demi-monde is like, but are too afraid of what their peers back at Court would say if they were to be seen with the degenerate reprobates found in the more colorful parts of the district to venture any further than outlying areas like this. I know your father has warned you of the superficiality and slavish devotion to conformity endemic to the upper echelons of society, but I fear even he is not aware of just how bad it is." Louis stopped walking and his expression turned odd and distant, like he was mentally somewhere far away.

"This world is diseased. Rotten to the core. It is infested by a Worm most foul and voracious; a profligate thing, frantically writhing its way through the amorphous, fleshy folds of time, carving out massive, labyrinthine networks of putrid tunnels in search of some momentary relief from the ceaseless pain and fear that has defined its existence since it was an even lower form of life. It instinctively gouges out its eyes and fills in its ears with lead to hide its fragile ego from unpleasantness, spins for itself a cocoon of convenient half-truths to shield its immature heart from the full-truths which terrify it, and arms itself with spines of of pettiness and wilful, malicious deception in an attempt to exert an illusion of control over its world. Worse still, though lacking in capacity for forward thought and remaining a slave to its instincts, it possesses a remarkable talent for connecting and modifying those aforementioned tunnels into a wide array of configurations; however, due to its aforementioned deficiencies, it is utterly unable to implement any configurations that do not immediately satisfy its instinctual drives for shelter, defense, and manipulation. Ironically, as it refines its configurations into more effective models, it renders said instincts more and more obsolete. Its creations hide, shield, and control for it far better than it ever could by itself, enabling longer and stronger relief from its pain and fear. All of these factors contribute to the development of a loop of sorts; relief is good, its creations provide relief, therefore its creations must be good. It doesn't matter how inefficient, backwards, and repugnantly destructive said creations are in reality, for the ingenuity which enables creation also enables the transmutation of lies into "truth". The worm can warp any failing into success, frame any deficiency as intended, form justification for any injustice. And if there is an incongruity between truth and "truth" so glaringly obvious that even with all its ingenuity, the Worm cannot deny its existence, it can always fall back on its instincts and simply ignore it.

Can you guess the name of this Worm?"
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Felicia Voight
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Felicia thought silently for several minutes, considering and discarding various literalist and occult answers. Such being the case, she was forced to make a guess. It wasn't a hard leap to make, but it was still a guess.

"...Society?"
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Louis Ferdinand
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"Humanity. All of humanity. The set of practices, structures, and ideas you refer to as "Society" is just one of many similar devices they have engineered throughout history to satisfy those base drives. No matter how high-minded its constituent elements may seem—no matter how noble, enlightened, advanced, or just—they all answer to the same master: the same old Worm they have always been. Anyone who truly believes otherwise is simply too attached to their perception—conscious, subconscious, or both—of the effectiveness of their preferred device to see its true nature. Whether or not that perception is accurate is of no consequence. The effect remains the same. However, this fact is not to be understood as some moral or intellectual failing on the part of humanity. After all, 'morality' and 'intellect' are just devices. Rather, it is to be viewed as merely the result of natural processes not entirely dissimilar from that which determines the capacity of living beings to survive. Those beings whose configurations are better able satisfy their physical needs long enough to reproduce are more likely to do so, which means that their configuration is more likely to remain extant for another generation. If their configuration is deficient in a way which hampers their ability to survive until they are able to reproduce, they are less likely to do so, meaning their configuration is more likely to go extinct. This is a rather gross simplification of a complex phenomenon, but if you are familiar with the writings of the late Charles Darwin, you are no doubt familiar with the basic concept."
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Felicia Voight
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Felicia nodded, thinking a bit, pulling an Echo coin out of a pocket and rolling it around her fingers, an idle sleight of hand that spoke of a practiced pickpocket's hand.

"Read 'im, yeah. Dry as toast. Father doesn't like him. Says the zee's too weird. Not rationally explainable. 'Zee-zpiders shouldn't exist'! According to him, anyway. Pedipalps and silk and claws? Bridge too far for him. Me...I wonder. So much zee life. And nothing like Surface life. It's odd. You'd think they'd be closer. But different evolutionary pressures? Might explain it. If that's it, though? Means the Neath is old. Older than anyone says. That stuff takes time. Lots of it. Food for thought, right?"
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Louis Ferdinand
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"Your father is correct. Law is far from here." Louis paused, lost in thought.

"However, humanity is a species which came to be in a place where Law is less distant. Said Law still exerts a certain amount of influence over them, even here, and shall largely continue to do so without assistance. More importantly, humanity's inventions—the aforementioned "Society"—also came to be under the Law. That is what must be understood. That human ideas are subject to the same processes that humanity as a species is. Ideas which are better able to adapt to changes in their environments—the minds of those who think them—are more likely to remain extant. Ideas which are better able to reproduce—become known by new minds—are more likely to remain extant for longer. Ideas which are unable to adapt to their environment are more likely to be discarded, ideas which are difficult to spread, discourage spreading, or threaten the physical health of the minds in which they reside are more likely to be forgotten as their current thinkers die. Consider religion. Consider the Parsi of Gujarat. The faith, in the eyes of those who hold it, can only be spread within the lineage of the first Parsis, and proselytizing is highly opposed. Consequently, the number of people who possess the idea of being Parsi is very small. Now, consider the Roman Catholic Church. The faith can be spread, through the sacraments of initiation, to anyone of any ancestry, nationality, or race, and, as is written in Mark 16; "Et dixit eis: Euntes in mundum universum prædicate Evangelium omni creaturæ." Consequently, allegiance to Rome has spread to every corner of the world. Does this make sense to you?"
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Felicia Voight
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Felicia nodded, tossing the coin into the air thoughtfully. "Yer, it does. Ideas evolve. Ideas live like people.Some ideas? B____y stupid. Simple enough. Yer building a point, though. What is it?"
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