Peter Fehervari’s Dark Coil

[Master Ciaphas]

This is excellent news! I will be getting that for sure*!

 

Cheers!

 

*Provided I do not have to buy it bundled with other stuff...

[byrd9999]

Has anyone read Aria Arcana yet?

It's out now as part of the BL Xmas 2022 eShorts series. I'm not a fan of digital reading, but I'll buy it once I finish the Fehervari story in the Successors book, which arrived a couple of days ago.

 

https://www.blacklibrary.com/new-titles/featured/eshort-aria-arcana-eng-2022.html

[System Sound]

I've just finished it. Not actually spoilers, but tagging it just in case.

 

Spoiler

 

So as always. After reading this, I'm left with more questions than answers. More theories arise...

 

I starting to think that Satori is has a bigger role in this madness, that I thought after reading the Reverie. I certainly getting an inkling that a certain cyclopian character from the days past, might be related too. And what ever the end of Cult of Spiral Dawn was.

 

I really need to reread everything. A fresh take with all the new clues would be a great experience I think.

 

 Less plot relevant, but, I love how Mr. Fehervari manages to shift the tone from mystery to creepyness, to unsettling dread. This probably could have easily been released as a horror week short. Ah well, hopefully his next short is coming soon too! And hopefully something bigger.

 

 

 

Side note:

Good luck to any one who at some point tries to make a Angels Resplendant army or a squad. The amount of kitbashing and greenstuffing would be endless. Just like a spiral!? *screeching fades out*

Edited December 10, 2022 by System Sound

[Arkangilos]

2 hours ago, System Sound said:

Good luck to any one who at some point tries to make a Angels Resplendant army or a squad. The amount of kitbashing and greenstuffing would be endless. Just like a spiral!? *screeching fades out*

Edited 2 hours ago by System Sound

Why do you say that?

[System Sound]

6 minutes ago, Arkangilos said:

Why do you say that?

In Reverie and this short, its described how each marine "customizes" his armor. Some paint their shoulder pads with artwork, some have unique helmets, gauntlets, ect ect.

[DarkChaplain]

I mean, in this story alone, we've got an Angel Resplendent with a freakin' bone hand with burning fingertips mounted on his helmet, a saurian cloak-wearer with the thing's head draped over his helmet, a guy with a knight-statue on his head and so forth. And then they all have individually painted armor to the point where it is repeatedly said through the Coil that the only really unifying trait between them is the chapter iconography itself. Heck, their armor painting shifts and warps by default!

But if you ever wanted to print yourself some transfer sheets of culturally significant paintings like the Mona Lisa and slap them on the other pauldron of your Marines, then this is probably your best option. No way in hell is anybody going to freehand dozens of pieces of art in miniature form.

 

So you basically have to invest in color shift paints (and I've tried looking into that, but none I found really covered the spectrums previously highlighted...) and plunder a ton of kits from both 40k, WHFB and AoS just to represent figures specifically described - and we have an entire company of folks on this level of decoration, with the other companies barely less ornate.

 

As for the story itself: It once again invites re-reading of the other works, particularly The Reverie and Cult of the Spiral Dawn. There are some sections in particular I'll need to review, but there are also parts where speculation might run nowhere, just by virtue of Peter's prose inviting the reader to throw their brains at a wall while the Gods laugh at the gesture's futility.

 

It's wonderful, and horrifying. You should have definitely read Requiem Infernal relatively recently to fully appreciate just what the hell is going on as the story unfolds, though. It's set basically right at the climax of the novel and explains some little doubts and absences from the novel's main events, while coming up with countless new questions.

Edited December 11, 2022 by DarkChaplain

[cheywood]

Just finished Aria Arcana. Beautifully written and opaque like all of Fehervari’s stuff. I need to reread Requiem Infernal and The Reverie, but it sounds like Satori’s up to some mischief? Curious to hear what those who walked the Coil more attentively have to say about this story’s significance. 

[Fire Golem]

The Angels Resplendent are almost as if the starting point was ‘what would be the most difficult chapter to put on the tabletop’. It’s an incredibly cool colour scheme to read about but I’m not convinced it would look good on the table if you even could pull it off. 
 

It’s been too long since I read any of the other Coil works to make any connections, but in isolation it’s still a really gorgeously written, evocative and different piece as to be expected. I hope (like others) we get a hard copy collection of Coil stuff at some point, I feel like I take things in easier reading a book rather than reading off my iPad. 

[DarkChaplain]

There is one thing I want to speculate on, but cannot quite grasp just yet. The end of Aria Arcana felt very much in tune with a section of The Reverie.... but Requiem Infernal also has one.

 

When Verlaine enters the "temple" with the disc, he is refered to as "[becoming] a knight" - this puts to mind the Penitent Knight, one of the incarnates. However, in Requiem Infernal, we got one of those, by virtue of Bhatori's craft - a weak incarnation, at least.

 

In the Postludium of The Reverie, we get this paragraph:

Quote

Foremost among these fugitives was the penitent knight who stood watch over the ruins that nursed the wound’s stark heart. Tireless in his vigil, the silver-armoured warden allowed none to enter the Temple of Scars, where a vicious circle awaited, defiled and eager to defile in turn. Despite his resolve the guardian knew he was fated to fail and fall again, yet he never wavered.

 

If we take this to refer to Requiem Infernal, we could argue that the Wound is the Koronatus Ring

From RI:

Quote

+There is tremendous power under the spires, but it has proven too volatile and capricious for precision crafting. I should have anticipated that. After all, the aeldari built the entire Ring as a sewage plant for the spiritual effluvium of their webway.+

 

The heart of the ruins would be the Last Candle itself, which never went out and in the end did things to Asenath.

 

Now if we look at Aria Arcana, we get these bits about Verlaine:

 

Quote

As Verlaine neared the disc its worshippers grew stranger, clearly blessed by their proximity to the light. Their flesh had petrified into white crystal, though their garments and hair were unaltered. Silver filaments riddled their faces and their legs had unravelled into glassy roots that melded with the tiles. A rhythmic humming leaked from their mouths, amplified by their numbers.

[...]

+So it goes,+ Satori echoed as his pawn stepped onto the disc and became a knight.

[...]


The radiance unveiled itself in a swirl of emotions, revealing a scintillant, ever-shifting web of light woven across a black void. Its permutations and possibilities were as limitless as the shining discs flitting along its threads. Every answer was there to be seized, savoured and celebrated, yet all were lies, for the questions that seeded them were false, poisoned by the hopes and hungers of those who asked.
Verlaine understood the futility of it all, yet he couldn’t stop looking.
Or longing.
‘It’s full of scars,’ he breathed as the disc rose, carrying him into the wound between worlds, where his brothers were waiting. He could hear their vessel’s song already, though not as he’d known it. This was more intricate than anything corporeal hands could conjure.

[...]

+Never forget yourself, Architect Radiant,+ Satori cautioned as their connection frayed, strained by a distance that could only be measured in dreams. +Or what you stand for.+ With a psychic snap he was gone.

 

To me, it sounds very much like the individual mentioned in The Reverie might be Verlaine, pawn promoted to knight, although it does not specifically mention his armor becoming silver; it is yet Librarian blue; however, he is warping at the end.

 

His journey to the "temple" - its both a shrine to the Last Candle AND there are worshippers right there! - is also one of him controlling his urges, although with dips in conviction.

The "vicious circle" could also fit the disc from the story, if you will.

 

It's not an exact match, and I have some serious re-reading to do, but I think the wording in particular feels too deliberate to be coincidence, considering this is Peter's work.

 

However, I also noticed ANOTHER parallel description. Remember the Fountain statue in Requiem Infernal?

 

Quote

A mosaic of pink and blue triangular tiles paved the open-topped expanse between the colonnades, radiating from a fountain at its centre. Sculpted from pink marble veined with blue, the fountain was a monstrous abstraction of swirling waves and distended maws, its whorls curling about one another rapaciously. Boiling water bubbled from its multiple mouths, shrouding its pedestal in steam and lending the statue an illusion of rippling, writhing animation. Jonah had witnessed countless horrors on his quest, yet he had never seen anything so viscerally disturbing. The statue was a calculated offence to sanity.

[...]

Something was happening to the fountain. Ripples were coursing through the pink marble as its veins pulsed in time with the sky-web’s beat. The liquid spewing from its mouths had become a cascade that set the air about it shivering and whistling.
 

[...]

With a whoosh of heat the fountain burst into life, its petrified form erupting into rampant flames. Rising on a skirt of blue fire, the abomination extruded tentacles that ended in snapping, magma-toothed maws. Atop the coruscating column of flame that served as its torso was a shapeless muddle of mouths and eyes that shifted ceaselessly, gnashing and bulging as they devoured themselves and spawned anew.

 

It seems like a typical-ish Tzeentch daemon, at least at first. But then we go back to Aria Arcana:

 

Quote

‘The Rhapsody Arcane,’ Verlaine breathed, finding his future coterie’s name in the music. He shivered at its potential, and the potency of those who would bear its message back into the Grey someday. His blood danced to the glorious anthem, kindling a wildfire of creativity in his flesh. Waves of transient, sentient colours rippled through his armour as it moulded itself around its wearer’s new form.
+Never forget yourself, Architect Radiant,+ Satori cautioned as their connection frayed, strained by a distance that could only be measured in dreams. +Or what you stand for.+ With a psychic snap he was gone.
‘Never,’ the resplendent herald vowed through manifold mirrored mouths. ‘We will burn arisen!’
Unfurling wings of azure fire, it leapt from its perch and soared into the empyrean.

 

That, too, seems too close for easy dismissal. It's like an echo in a timeless place. You could even go further and compare the disc imagery to the Orrery itself, which - in a sense - the statue-daemon is "guarding" the entrance to.

 

Now, Satori is obviously pulling strings here; he's setting up his own Incarnates, you could say. If we expect Bhatori's Penitent Knight to have been wiped out, we could use a new Incarnate to take his place. And if we consider that Czervantes and his company stayed on Vytarn for two years, despite mistrust in his own ranks, because Satori was waiting for these things to unfold, we can also infer that he also planned to take in Athanazius through him meeting Czervantes during/after the events of Aria Arcana, at the end of Requiem Infernal. Time at the end of the short story is malleable, but it would explain why it wasn't Satori who "found" Athanazius, but Czervantes, who has also been moved into position.

 

Quote

‘What sorcery is this?’ the warrior looming behind him breathed. Most others of his kind would have spoken with loathing, but his voice was filled with wonder.
‘An end and a beginning,’ Athanazius replied. ‘Captain… you’re looking for something. That’s why you’re here. Why you came back to the Candleworld.’
‘Then tell me, Athanazius the Artisan, what is it I seek?’
‘An answer,’ the boy said, frowning as he tried to make sense of the intuition. ‘A perfect one.’
‘And you have it?’
‘No… but I know it’s here… somewhere.’
Finally he turned to face the stranger, who was no stranger at all, for Athanazius had known the resplendent giant’s visage as far back as he could remember. This moment – this meeting – had always been inevitable, and through it all the splendour and suffering that must follow. With equal inevitability the boy, who had never been a child, found exactly the right words to say next.
‘We shall rise on burning wings, captain,’ he vowed. And sealed their fate.

 

If we then look back at The Reverie's Postludium, we got this line:

Quote

Among the most precarious of the survivors was an Aspirant who glimpsed a future crowned by thorns, where all beauty was sin and shame the highest virtue. He defied this fevered dream then rose among his brothers to make it real.

 

Which, considering The Sins of My Brothers and this section of RI up above could refer to young Athanazius. Who, in cooperation with Satori, betrays the Chapter and is directly involved in making the fall of the Angels Resplendent to the Angels Penitent possible.

 

....and Satori is still missing, last we've heard of him. He left the Chapter behind before its fall. He's still out there. His machinations seem to have gone as planned so far. The question remains: To what end?

 

Now, looking all the way back to Cult of the Spiral Dawn, we got the first glimpse of the Incarnates on Vytarn/Redemption. When Ariken joined them below the spires of the Koronatus "Ring", we got this part:

 

Quote

Ariken shut her eyes again and slowed her breathing, reaching for the serenity she had sometimes – rarely – attained in her duels with Omazet; a state where her body had been in motion, yet her mind had been perfectly still. The candle at the heart of the storm, her mentor had called it.

 

It is this metaphorical candle - under the spire that the Last Candle graced before, until the warpstorm took Vytarn - that brings her sight in the Underspire.

Apart from the figure that is undoubtedly Asenath talking to her, we get these:

 

Quote

The first was a giant resplendent with nobility, yet strangled by sorrow…
The second was a man who reeked of hungry dreams turned sour…
The third… the third was inscrutable and utterly alien…
A plangent mechanical ticking rose through the igneous rumble of the Underspire, like the pulse of a monolithic clock. It was punctuated by the grind and whirl of some impossibly vast engine.
‘Arise in the Crucible Aeterna, Ariken Skarth,’ the phantom woman said. ‘We who watch over Redemption do not watch alone.’

 

I think we can assume that the third might be the Qareen?

 

Anyhow, Fehervari remains the master of mind:cuss:ery. I could cross-reference and revisit passages of his works all week and still come up with new clues, new contradictions, new conundrums by the hour. I love it.

[System Sound]

Spoiler

So can Satori somehow be Calavera? Or is that thread kinda dead already?

 

[DarkChaplain]

I would not dismiss that theory at this point. Timeline-wise (as much as we can talk about it at all), it would fit with his disappearance. Him also building a conclave by the time of Cult of the Spiral Dawn, after "recruiting" Mordaine on Oblazt, would fit him moving the pieces.

 

One thing to consider is also that the Calavera is described this way:

Quote

Then the stranger was standing over Mordaine and he understood that Uzochi was right, for it was death incarnate. The wind had whipped away its cowl, revealing a stylised bronze skull whose eye sockets were melded into a single dark aperture. A crystal orb burned in the recess, embedded just above the bridge of its nasal cavity, lending the harbinger a cyclopean aspect.

 

This reminds me of Jonah:

 

Quote

Or perhaps strength through sickness, Asenath gauged, recognising the haunted look in his grey eyes. For a moment she thought there was a third eye lodged between them, but it was only a circular scar, so pale it looked silver in the storm light.

 

And on top of that, Vedas has silver eyes, period. Silver, in general, is hugely important to Peter, it seems, with how often he mentions it in his works. It's a powerful color in the Coil.

Right from the prologue of RI:

 

Quote

‘Silver is a mark of purity,’ he said, clasping her hands in his own to still them. They felt fragile and cold, like the bones of a small animal. ‘Perhaps you’ve dreamt of one of the God-Emperor’s holy warriors. Maybe even a Space Marine.’

 

While Jonah develops an extreme hatred of the "silver-eyed bastard" after the prologue's events, he starts with the belief that it's a sign of purity. He might catch a silver bullet, but that's traditionally been a beastkiller, a slayer of myths, of the Other. In fact, here's a piece from the end:

Quote

Jonah could still see the mirror-blessed bullet, glowing silver in the void it had ripped open.

 

Going off on how big a role Silver plays, it might make sense that Jonah's "third eye", which opened him up to many things in RI, so to speak, could echo the Calavera's crystalline cyclopean eye, which replaces the biological ones in his mask.

Quote

‘I…’ The words arrived stillborn in Mordaine’s throat. It was as if the Calavera’s crystal eye could see through to his soul.
And who’s to say it can’t? Mordaine thought uneasily.

 

This sort of thing would make sense for Satori, who has been shown using mirrors to seek answers, looking into many reflections of reality, time and space. You could say that it blinded him to what's right in front of his eyes. And a crystal tends to offer multiple facets....

And that the Calavera conclave would be active on Vytarn/Redemption so much later is hardly a coincidence. It's where plenty of Satori's attention was focused on.

 

It's also curious that Jonah Tythe is called the Mirror-Breaker, while both Satori and Athanazius have been making use of far-seeing mirrors; the latter's even had a short story in The Thirteenth Psalm.

 

Another thing I just confirmed is that we've had multiple appearances of a/the crystal disc before, in The Reverie:

Quote

As if to punctuate the warning a voltaic screech vibrates through the web, rapidly followed by others. Darioc flinches as something soars through the air on his right – a glittering crystal disc, about three feet in diameter, spinning as it moves. Even dimmed by their guide’s nimbus, it looks shockingly bright. Within seconds the flyer is gone, passing through a snarl of fronds like a phantom, but more of the creatures have already appeared.

 

and in Requiem Infernal we obviously have the whole Darkstar disaster. Feizt is haunted by the thing even on the Blood of Demeter:

Quote

‘They’re coming,’ he warned as the glimmer burgeoned into a flat, rapidly rotating disc of liquid crystal. It was about a yard in diameter, its scintillant, shifting form almost too bright to look at, not that anybody else could see it anyway. Like the vermin, it was invisible to everyone except him.

[...]

With an electric screech the disc soared towards him, tearing intangibly through everything except the flies, which died in droves in its wake. Feizt closed his eyes as it passed through the hospitaller and engulfed him.

[...]

A large disc of liquescent light soared out of the web and streaked towards the squad, screaming electronically as it came.

 

And later in the Orrery, iirc. The disc is a thread that runs through these stories, but I believe Aria Arcana might be the last instance we see one appear in the timeline?

 

I'm also totally not upset that some ******* rated Aria Arcana 1/5 stars on Goodreads because he dislikes Fehervari's stories. Totally not.

[DukeLeto69]

@DarkChaplain that is some detailed and VERY interesting thinking. How in the Gods do you remember all that content spread across all those stories let alone make the connections?

 

I mean I am hoping it is down to searching on words and phrases in ebooks because my memory simply isn’t that good. I would need to re-read all of Fehervari’s stories again back-to-back to even be in with a chance! Actually I may well do that hmmmmm!

 

not read the latest short yet as I only break my “no to ebooks” stance for Fehervari shorts/novellas (oh how I wish for a paper anthology/omnibus collecting them all together to sit besides his novels). Will download this week.

Edited December 12, 2022 by DukeLeto69

[DarkChaplain]

It's both! I was sitting there cross-referencing, but based on aspects and wording that struck a chord somehow. Like that itching feeling of "I've read about this before", "this wording is too deliberate and brings to mind x". There are some things I wanted to look into still, but felt too tired to make headway last night.

 

At this point, I am definitely due a re-read of The Reverie and Cult of the Spiral Dawn. There are things that don't line up properly for me yet, so I have to revisit the books in full for sure.

[DukeLeto69]

9 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

It's both! I was sitting there cross-referencing, but based on aspects and wording that struck a chord somehow. Like that itching feeling of "I've read about this before", "this wording is too deliberate and brings to mind x". There are some things I wanted to look into still, but felt too tired to make headway last night.

 

At this point, I am definitely due a re-read of The Reverie and Cult of the Spiral Dawn. There are things that don't line up properly for me yet, so I have to revisit the books in full for sure.

The joy of reading Fehervari. To use a food analogy (clumsily)...

 

Some people want a burger = the majority of BL books

 

Some people want steak = the books from a select few authors writing for BL (subjective of course)

 

Some people want a 15 course fine dining tasting menu experience = Fehervari

 

Nothing wrong with a burger now and then. Nothing wrong with a steak. The fine dining is a very rich and big commitment on the palette that is an exquisite experience and not something you would want everyday. But when you do the effects can leave a lasting impression that you can discuss at length for many years.

Edited December 12, 2022 by DukeLeto69

[DarkChaplain]

You definitely need to go in with the mindset of wanting to commit, and be able to as well. If you can't make room in your headspace to pick up the threads, your experience will suffer.

 

That's also why I had big struggles to sit down and read Requiem Infernal all the way to the end; I think I read the first half-dozen chapters three or four times before I finally felt in the right state of mind to carry on, leading to biiiiig delays in finishing it. Turns out you only have so much bandwidth to engage with things (even - or especially! - things you adore) when you've got life giving you the midlde finger, you struggle with depression and your new neighbors can't manage to spend a single day without waking you in the middle of the night or disturb your evening reading. Who knew.

 

That is to say: You really have to pick your moments with works like these. You can't go into them being tired out, emotionally exhausted, or while in a noisy environment and still expect to make the most of them.

For many other BL works especially, I don't have the same requirements at all - like you say, a burger! There are novels I read standing upright in a hallway waiting for stressful appointments and the experience suffered none for it. With Fehervari, you're missing out. Although I have to say, reading Fire and Ice at the doc's, waiting for around two hours while dead tired and sick as hell to boot did add an additional layer of delirium to the story - not that it needed it!

[DukeLeto69]

Aria Arcana was a very good short story.  I am going to have to re-read Requiem Infernal now!

[System Sound]

Did any one ever bring up the names of Angels Resplendan?

 

Satori, Cervantes, Castaneda, Verlaine...

 

Is it just fancy naming referencing old writers and poets? Or they're works have more to do with this? Because doing some quick reading about the 4 mentioned above, some interesting ideas come to mind.

 

Or am I just reading to much into it and loosing my mind while on a coffee break?

[DukeLeto69]

37 minutes ago, System Sound said:

Did any one ever bring up the names of Angels Resplendan?

 

Satori, Cervantes, Castaneda, Verlaine...

 

Is it just fancy naming referencing old writers and poets? Or they're works have more to do with this? Because doing some quick reading about the 4 mentioned above, some interesting ideas come to mind.

 

Or am I just reading to much into it and loosing my mind while on a coffee break?

Nothing Peter Fehervari does is coincidence. Yes he wants the Angels Resplendent to have artistic tendencies but there will be yet more layers to that onion!

[cheywood]

3 hours ago, System Sound said:

Did any one ever bring up the names of Angels Resplendan?

 

Satori, Cervantes, Castaneda, Verlaine...

 

Is it just fancy naming referencing old writers and poets? Or they're works have more to do with this? Because doing some quick reading about the 4 mentioned above, some interesting ideas come to mind.

 

Or am I just reading to much into it and loosing my mind while on a coffee break?

It can’t be coincidence, every one of the Angels shares a name with a famous scientist or artist except for Satori, which is a Buddhist term for ‘enlightenment’. 
 

My personal favorite was the inclusion of both Verlaine and Rimbaud. 

[DarkChaplain]

We can go further, too. A lot of the sisters in Requiem Infernal are named after vampire-related people and characters. Bhatori is a reference to Elizabeth Bathory, who was sort of the inspiration for fictional vampires; the whole Iron Maiden thing is also often attributed to her, even though there's no factual evidence for her ever using one as far as I'm aware. She did, however, drain maidens of their blood to bathe in it, legend has it. Her first name, Akaishi, is both a mountain range in Japan and translates to something like "red stone".

Genevieve, Camille and Marcilla are also all vampire-related characters from fiction.

 

Xhinoa Aoikihara is a bit less obvious, and I might be mistaken here, but Xhinoa brings to mind Shanoa, the first playable female main character in the Castlevania series... which deals with the many resurrections of Dracula.

Aokihara is a -ga- short, but likely a reference to Aokigahara forest in Japan, which is deeply linked with suicides. It's where people go to hang themselves or the likes.

And I suppose there's no need to explain the Hagalaz rune connection.

 

Asenath Hyades also has both her individual name's meanings and links to HPL; Asenath Waite is a character in The Thing on the Doorstep (funnily enough, my entry point to HPL!) and her whole thing is that she's leading the narrator's artistic friend into madness, with the implication being that Asenath is not actually herself, but possessed by her father who replaced her consciousness within her own body, while despising the weaknesses inherent in his daughter's female form.

Does another entity riding a character's body while lamenting the original's weakness sound vaguely familiar?

 

The Hyades starcluster (named after mythology, as per usual) also features in the wider mythos, being tied to Hastur. It originated with Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow, via Cassilda's Song from the fictional play:

 

Quote

“Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
⁠In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
⁠Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
⁠Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
⁠Lost Carcosa.”

 

And I think it's worth looking into Athanasius of Alexandria, too. Especially his history of exiles. Considering The Sins of My Brothers, the link should be obvious.

 

...just some food for thought!

Edited December 17, 2022 by DarkChaplain

[DukeLeto69]

Requiem Infernal is most certainly “gothic horror” and definitely plays to the vampire gallery for those who are looking. Some of the plot beats also follow Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

[System Sound]

50 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

We can go further, too. A lot of the sisters in Requiem Infernal are named after vampire-related people and characters.

 

 

Huh, I thought that Genevieve was an interesting choice, but never made the connection for the other sisters.

50 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

Asenath Hyades also has both her individual name's meanings and links to HPL; Asenath Waite is a character in The Thing on the Doorstep (funnily enough, my entry point to HPL!) and her whole thing is that she's leading the narrator's artistic friend into madness, with the implication being that Asenath is not actually herself, but possessed by her father who replaced her consciousness within her own body, while despising the weaknesses inherent in his daughter's female form.

Not really connected to anything but, now we have a few HPL references in larger 40k. Halls of Leng being mentioned a few times in HH and the whole yellow king stuff with Eisenhorn.

50 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

And I think it's worth looking into Athanasius of Alexandria, too. Especially his history of exiles. Considering The Sins of My Brothers, the link should be obvious.

 

...just some food for thought!

How ironic.

 

So it goes.

 

 

I really need to do a supercut of all Peter's stories into one file. It's a damn chore filtering thought multiple ebooks just to find the one.

Edited December 17, 2022 by System Sound

[theSpirea]

23 minutes ago, System Sound said:

I really need to do a supercut of all Peter's stories into one file. It's a damn chore filtering thought multiple ebooks just to find the one.

Calibre has a full text search function, might help with that.

[DarkChaplain]

We really need that big PF omnibus at this point!

[Lord_Ikka]

Never really read any of Fehervari's novels before, but read the Aria Arcana and had to find some more. Just finished the Reverie, working on Requiem Infernal now- this is how Chaos should be depicted, insidious, glorious, horrifying, and transformative all in one. Very good writing, with plenty of depth to get stuck into (as I'm realizing having read some of this thread). 

On 12/17/2022 at 12:07 PM, DarkChaplain said:

We really need that big PF omnibus at this point!

Please!