“Let the ruling king always keep a clown about him and on his council, and let the fool babble on what he like, and relentless mock the king and all his grand and royal plans and designs at the idiot’s discretion. For there is no greater councilor than one who will clearly speak truth to folly.”
– “Fifteen ways of ruling”, DE 1559, attributed to Au, the Pankrator of the Yellow City of Vesh.
“Do you understand the true power of a sovereign? A raw man must kill with his bare hands. The battered warrior, a weapon. The commander, his bellowing voice, the conspirator, a whispered word. But all these pale compared to kingship. A true sovereign need not flex a single muscle in his body, and a hundred men die. A true sovereign may murder without a single impulse, or even intent, sight, breath, or even though of his murder. He is an idiot indifferent to his own violence. He has sublimed the act of obliteration.
That is the meaning of kingship.”
AU VAM, Pankrator of the Yellow City
Meti’s Sword Manual
Argument
1. Glory to the Divine Corpse, o breaker of infinities
2. I am Meti, of no house but myself. In my 108th year I am surrounded by fools. My compatriots cling obsessively to their destiny, and my only apprentice is an idiot speck of a girl with more talent for eating than skill with the blade. Therefore I have decided to die drowning in the boiling gore of my enemies, of which there are many.
3. My master was the greatest lord general to the king Au Vam, Ryo-ten-Ryam, who first coaxed me into learning the ways of turning men into ghosts. As his interest quickly turned to the wholly uninteresting and most useless parts of my body, I returned the favor and relieved him of his.
4. It is my personal opinion the straight sword is best if you can obtain one, but I also favor the sabre. The spear, stave, or club are peasant’s weapons of which I am wholly unfamiliar and so will not speak on them.
5. Upon meeting me, you might find that my appearance is quite dreadful and unkempt. I have been spat upon by priest, king, and merchant alike. I have no retainers, and possess nothing except a straight sword six hand spans (5 and a half kret) long (this is the proper length). This is because I am Royalty and the undisputed master of the principal art of Cutting. I will fight naked with ten-thousand men.
6. From the age of thirteen I practiced every day with the straight sword. I followed a strict vegetarian regimen, and harsh training of barefoot sprints (five) between cities, squats and breathing exercises (two bells), and sword drills and resistance training (three bells).
7. By the age of sixteen, my body was a steel edifice. I was so often mistaken for a man I began to wear my hair long with no pins and unbind my breasts. I could break stone with my hands with no effort, I could sprint between the Yellow City and the Lunar dominions in a day or less and barely strain my breath. My mastery of the sword complete, I enlisted in the Middle Army’s third legion, where I was widely respected as a swordswoman of incredible power.
8. When it came time to face my first real opponent, the Colossus of Pardos, in my youthful pride and immense skill, I brought all my training and mastery to bear. Scarcely half a day passed before my sword was shattered into thirty pieces, my right leg was almost torn from its socket, and my honed body was broken pathetically in a hundred and forty places. I defeated him by gouging his brains out through his breathing valves. My thumbs, in this case, proved far more useful.
9. At that moment, with my thumbs in his brains, I had a revelation. I had trained far too broadly. Existence and the act of combat are absolutely no different, and the essence of both, the purity of both, is a singular action, which is Cutting Down Your Opponent. You must resolve to train this action. You must become this action. Truly, there is very little else that will serve you as well in this entire cursed world.
10. I hope that by reading this manual, you will be thoroughly encouraged to become a farmer.
“It is a fool that mistakes a princess for a weakling, for she carries the tower in her heart, and upon that chthonic root dark and terrible edifices may grow.”
-Au Vam
“Dread those with the terrible star on their brow, for they are my kin. They trade in flesh, smoke, and star-knowledge. Their reins of power are made of coursing flame, and their chariot wheels trample the world in any direction they wish. When you see them you will know there are many ways to fill a man with death, and the walls of the world will feel thin to you indeed.”
-Au Vam, Pankrator of Vesh, ruler of the Yellow City
“The angel is a mighty judge, for his gavel is a fist of stone encasing a terrible and unforgiving fire. A corpse-ocean of criminals have been fed to that flame, yet oceans more shall never quell its unrelenting hunger.”
-15 Ways of Ruling
“Do not surround yourself with splendor. Spend your treasury sparingly. Stock the halls of your holdfast with sturdy and plain men, and do not adorn your walls. Abhor gold. If you sit next to the sun too long, you’re likely to go blind.”
-Au Vam, 15 Ways of Ruling
“You will know the rulers of the cosmos by two signs: first, the star in their brow, which is the mark of their lordliness, and shows you that they are my kin. Second, you will see that their chariot wheels are oddly shaped. Their rims are made of rough and heavy iron or steel, not at all like the polished and gilded rims which you see carrying mundane royalty. Do not be deceived by their simplicity. They are built this way for the express purpose of grinding the bones of men into a fine powder.”
-Au Vam, address to his councilors (dated 264 BSC)
“One man’s fortress is another’s prison.”
-Au Vam
“The king Au Vam was known for keeping a peculiar member of his council – a low-born scullion, who would serve tea for his grand war parties. This country maid kept the company of ten of the most powerful generals in the Yellow City, and was privy to their most tenebrous plans, yet was scarcely sixteen summers of age and educated not a whit.
Her purpose was thus: if the grand designs and monolithic schemes of any of these mighty and august men could not pass the base judgement of a girl of sixteen summers, they were immediately discarded.
Thus did Au Vam win nearly all of his battles.”
-Histories of the Yellow City, Vol. 32, paragraph 3 (A.S.C. 189)
“The cruelest of weapons aim not to kill, but to preserve life, in the most hideous and torturous ways imaginable.”
-Au Vam
“Many great men ask me why I keep such numerous, rare, and expensive flowers in my palace. This is to warn me of the habits of weak kings. A king should always be attentive to his flowers, and keep a great number of them. If he does not pay his servants enough to take care of them, they will pluck some in secret, and sell them in the market. If his servants do not care enough for their master or their service, they will willfully neglect his flowers, and they will die. If he forces his servants to water the flowers out of fear, the delicate flowers will be overwatered and they will die. If he keeps lavish flowers, he must educate his servants sufficiently to take care of them, or they will die. A king with wilted flowers, or no flowers at all is not worth trusting. This is the first measure I take of my rival lords.”
– Au Vam, Pankrator of Vesh, the Yellow City
“From this hour forward the gates of the city will be barred to my kin. Do not underestimate them. Do not commune with them. Do not give them offerings, or give them bread or Ajash if they visit you disguised. Many of them have a sweet countenance and a honeyed tongue. They will say their wish is to be a teacher of men, to spread messages of peace. In an earlier age, this was true. Now dogs and worse have crept into their ranks. Madness has consumed them. Their only passion now is a lust for blood and power.”
-Proclamation of Au Vam
“Let it never be said that I love spectacle. But to be loved, a man must become it.”
-Au Vam
‘A man must cultivate three tongues: one of iron, one of silk, and one of lead. All will be useful, in love and war.”
– Au Vam
“The ruling king must know the lay of his law as the lines on the back of his thumb. He must know it like a path he walks every day, like the house he grew up in. It is a beast he must nurture without fear of being consumed by it, as he surely will be some day if he is not attentive.”
– Au Vam
“Total victory is not found in the final sword blow. To perfect victory you cannot continue to spill the blood of a fallen foe, which only shows your insecurities to your many enemies. Instead, you must nurse your foe back to health, dress, and feed him, but not so much that he regains his strength. You must take away every aspect of him which originally seemed fierce and indestructible. In every aspect you must diminish and crush his spirit with affection, all the while maintaining your grip on his sword arm. In this way, kindness is the greatest cruelty.”
-Au Vam
“Chief among the concerns of any code of punishment is that it is important for the executed to have dignity. A man’s death must be treated with reverence and not treated at some soiled thing. It therefore transforms from a wrongdoing into a spectacle.”
– Au Vam, Pankrator of Vesh
“Au Vam chose his royal guard thus: he would whip the men fiercely for two hours. Any man that could endure such a hellish flogging was strong enough to protect the God-King and receive his blessing.
The men that endured this ordeal in complete silence were not appointed to the guard – they were instead banished from his realm. Au Vam did not trust any man who had become so intimate with pain. A man like that must be fed with blood.”
– Chronicles of the Yellow City
“The king that holds the chains of the world must make his peace with them, link by link. They are heavier than any man, and they will not hesitate to break his bones.”
-Au Vam, Pankrator of the Yellow City
“It is said that the Diktate Au Vam had a pillar four hundred handspans high set in the main marketplace of the Yellow City, and guarded by a man day and night. Upon the top of the pillar was a great stele upon which was engraved his name. Below were engraved the names of some four thousand lords, each of them of great standing, with large households and many servants. Upon Au Vam’s death, it was said the stele would be shattered, and the first name on the pillar crowned as the new king, and so on and so forth. But when the pillar was ground into the dirt, or the bearers of its names no longer alive, then there were no more men worthy in the city, and it would die a true and final death.”
– Ogdo, Tellar Historian
“In his fundamental nature, man fears what he cannot destroy. He allows this fear to burrow into his heart and in defense he obsesses over control. Abandoning this notion is the most important principal of kingship. A man can set a sail but can never get the breeze to blow on its own. If he tries, it shall surely drive him mad.”
-Au Vam