#tlt necromancy

[thechekhov]

The 3 Main Schools of Necromancy.

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #necromancy #tlt #tlt fanart #doing a thing #cant post yet but i am proud of this one #chekhov draws tlt #chekhov draws the locked tomb

[mechorrhizae]

I had the uncontrollable urge to animate a skeleton breakdancing so here is Harrow animating a skeleton breakdancing

#gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #gtn #gtn fanart #my work #tlt fanart #tlt shitposting #tlt #ik this is a lot of tags i just want to share my stupid animation with tha community :) #the locked tomb #gideon nav #harrowhark nonagesimus #i love using blender but i hate that you cant directly export ur work as a gif #necromancy necrodancing

[cipheramnesia]

The Locked Tomb and Dungeon Meshi both share the feature of "lesbian necromancy isn't actually the weird part."

#tlt #dungeon meshi #those lesbians sure can make necromancy horrifying

[nightmaskart]

"We do bones, motherfucker."

#gideon nav #gideon the ninth #harrowhark nonagesimus #harrow the ninth #the locked tomb #tlt fanart #necromancy #gideon and harrow

[ignitesthestxrs]

there's something about the way people talk about john gaius (incl the way the author writes him) that is like. so absent of any connection to te ao māori that it's really discomforting. like even in posts that acknowledge him as not being white, they still talk about him like a white, american leftist guy in a way that makes it clear people just AREN'T perceiving him as a māori man from aotearoa.

and it's just really serves to hammer home how powerful and pervasive whiteness and american hegemony is. because TLT is probably the single most Kiwi series in years to explode on the global stage, and all the things i find fraught about it as a pākehā woman reading a series by a pākehā author are illegible to a greater fandom of americans discoursing about whether or not memes are a valid way of portraying queer love.

idk the part of my brain that lights up every time i see a capital Z printed somewhere because of the New Zealand Mentioned??? instinct will always be proud of these books and muir. but i find myself caught in this midpoint of excitement and validation over my culture finding a place on the global stage, frustration at how kiwi humour and means of conveying emotion is misinterpreted or declared facile by an international audience, frustrated also by how that international audience runs the characters in this book through a filter of american whiteness before it bothers to interpret them, and ESPECIALLY frustrated by how muir has done a pretty middling job of portraying te ao māori and the māoriness of her characters, but tht conversation doesn't circulate in the same way* because a big part of the audience doesn't even realise the conversation is there to be had.

which is not to say that muir has done a huge glaring racism that non-kiwis haven't noticed or anything, but rather that there are very definitely things that she has done well, things that she has done poorly, things that she didn't think about in the first book that she has tacked on or expanded upon in the later books, that are all worthy of discussion and critique that can't happen when the popular posts that float past my dash are about how this indigenous man is 'guy who won't shut up about having gone to oxford'

*to be clear here, i'm not saying these conversations have never happened, just that in terms of like, ambient posts that float round my very dykey dash, the discussions and meta that circulate on this the lesbian social media, are overwhelmingly stripped of any connection to aotearoa in general, let alone te ao māori in specific. and because of the nature of american internet hegemony this just,,,isn't noticed, because how does a fish know it's in the ocean u know? i have seen discussions along these lines come up, and it's there if i specifically go looking for it, but it's not present in the bulk of tlt content that has its own circulatory life and i jut find that grim and a part of why the fandom is difficult to engage with.

#tlt #the locked tomb #i don't really have an answer lmao this is more #an expression of frustration and discomfort #over the way posts about john gaius seem to have very little connection to the background muir actually gave him #like you cant describe him as an educated leftist bisexual man #without INCLUDING that he is māori #that has an impact! that has weight and importance! #that is a background to every decision he makes #from the meat wall to the nuke to his relationship with the earth #and it also has weight and importance in the decisions that muir makes in writing him #it is not a neutral decision that he's known as john gaius lmao #it's not a neutral decision that the empire is explicitly of roman/latin extraction #it's not even neutral that this is a book about necromancy #it's certainly not a neutral fucking decision that john was at one point a māori man living in the bush #when the nz govt decided to send cops in #like that is a thing that happens here! that is a reference to nz cultural and political events that informs john's character and actions #and with the nature of who john is in the story #informs the narrative as a whole #and i think the tiresome part of this experience is that #in general #americans are not well positioned to understand that something might be being written from outside their experience as a default #like obviously many many americans in online leftist & queer spaces are willing to learn and take on new information #but so much of the conversation starts from a place of having to explain that forests exist to fish

[katakaluptastrophy]

You know how it goes: through some incredible circumstances, God and a young woman living under the shadow of an oppressive empire have a metaphysically unusual baby who grows up to be a general nuisance, won't stay dead, and sports a few additional holes...

It's the third Sunday of Advent and I'm a little concerned Bible studies for weird goth kids might be turning into a series... Let's talk about the Blessed Virgin Mary and Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead Kia Hua Ko Te Pai Snap Back to Reality Oops There Goes Gravity.

Wake was probably never described as "gentle", "meek", or "mild", but there are a few similarities: distinctive outfits, snazzy shrines, commitment to putting down the mighty from their seats, and of course babies with great and terrible destinies niftily conceived without sex.

On the topic of conception, let's clear up a common, uh, misconception: the term "immaculate conception" does not refer to Mary becoming pregnant with Jesus. It's Mary's own conception.

Why are we talking about how Mary was conceived and what does this have to do with lesbian necromancers?

To answer that question, we have to go back further still, way before Mary's conception. Back to these guys and their unfortunate snack cravings:

Remember how last time we talked about the concept of being in a state of grace? Well, the Christian read on Adam and Eve is that a state of grace was, as it were, the factory setting for humanity. They were fully in tune with God, there was no sickness or death, there was no sin. Until, that is, the whole unfortunate business with the apple. The first sin. The world is fundamentally altered. Humanity is expelled from paradise, burdened with sin, death, disease, patriarchy, and work. Worse, this sinful human nature turns out to be sexually transmissible: every human being is born tainted by this "original sin" of Adam and Eve.

This is why Catholicism is so big on baptising babies: even if they're many years off being able to commit any sins themselves (a sin has to be something consciously chosen and understood), they're still contaminated by that original sin of Adam and Eve. Baptism is understood to erase original sin, wiping the slate clean.

Bear with me, we'll be back to necromancers soon I promise. Have a picture of Mary beating up the devil while an angel holds baby Jesus:

OK, but what does Adam and Eve's danger snack have to do with Mary's conception?

The "immaculate conception" refers to the idea that unlike every human being between Adam and Jesus, Mary was conceived without the contamination of original sin. The rationale for this is complex, but essentially boils down to something like the saving power of Jesus not being bound by piffling things like time and space and thus saving his mother before her own conception and allowing himself to also be conceived and born sinless.

But the important bit is that something specific about Mary means that she is uniquely able to be pregnant with Jesus.

You may be starting to guess where this is going...

Because while unconventional pregnancy seems to have been the plan from the get-go for Jesus, it was not with the artist formerly known as The Bomb:

“I had the baby,” said Wake. “The baby I’d had to incubate myself for nine long fucking months, when the foetal dummies these two gave me died.”

“Oh, God, it was yours,” said Augustine, in horror. “I thought you’d used in vitro on one of Mercy’s—”

“I said they all died,” said Wake. “The dummies died. The ova died. Only the sample was still active, no idea how considering it was twelve weeks after the fact, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“So you used it on yourself,” said Augustine. “Anything for the revolution, eh, Wake?”

We have to assume the foetal dummies plan was hatched by Mercymorn, a brilliant scientist with a myriad of experience. If the problem encountered by Wake were as simple as Lyctoral infertility, I suspect Mercy would have spotted that long before.

But what do Wake and John have in common that Mercymorn or any of the other ova-having residents of the Mithraeum did not? They are both (to some extent at least) factory setting humans: unlike everyone else in the Dominicus system, they never died and were resurrected, nor are they the descendants people who were. John's abilities, while macabre, are not straightforwardly the necromancy otherwise practiced in the Houses. That necromancy is a direct result of one specific act of taking that resulted in the very nature of the world changing: a thanergetic system, inhabited by human beings who, necromancer or not, are fundamentally tainted by thanergy and by the after effects of that action of John's. You might call it a sin. An indelible sin. He does.

It's not an exact parallel, but necromancy certainly occupies a space not dissimilar to original sin: the result of a single action, tainting every descendant of its progenitors regardless of their actions of abilities.

And then enter Gideon, born in space away from the thanergetic energy of the Dominicus system to a mother lacking the 10,000 year intergenerational burden of the resurrection and necromancy. The child of Jod, born to die.

#the locked tomb #tlt #tlt meta #awake remembrance of these valiant dead #commander wake #gideon nav #john gaius #Sin will not survive the second coming of Jesus so what does that say about necromancy at the end of the series?

[sharpace]

. ˚ · ✫ Mercymorn the First, Saint of Joy, Second Saint to Serve the King Undying ✫ · ˚ .

Part two of a three part commission for @malicious-gay! Happy birthday, Nim!!!

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#the locked tomb #tlt #mercymorn the first #mercymorn #i was told leyendecker necromance and catholic aesthetic vibes literally the ideal commission trifecta

[torpublishinggroup]

Have you read Nona the Ninth yet?

One flesh one end…bitch.

Nona the Ninth is the latest entry in the epic science fantasy series The Locked Tomb. Mixing humor and dark subject matter, The Locked Tomb contains swashbuckling action, waves of bones, and lesbian necromancers in space.

#tlt #tamsyn muir #the locked tomb #fantasy #science fantasy #necromancers #putting the romance back in necromancy #nona the ninth #harrow the ninth #gideon the ninth #tordotcom publishing #tordotcom #bookblr

[montymollusk]

i’m relistening to gtn and i caught something interesting

during the scene where gideon goes for tea with the eighth, silas comments that she might be originally from the third house because of the color of her hair (which is always described as outrageously and unnaturally red)

that plus the fact that corona and ianthe have violet eyes makes me wonder if maybe necromancy-fueled genetic engineering is a major thing on the third? it’s already canon that necros can give themselves bigger asses via necromancy, so why Not be able to alter their DNA to change the color of their eyes or hair the same way…….. or even do necromantic plastic surgery!! the third house is already written to be very vain as a culture, so it wouldn’t surprise me if cosmetic necromancy was developed there…. many thoughts.

#i’ve always been a supporter of the “ianthe used necromancy to give corona a phat ass” theory #mm says stuff #maybe the third is the house that supplies all the vat womb babies to other houses? who can say #gideon the ninth spoilers #the locked tomb spoilers #the locked tomb #tlt #gideon the ninth

[racefortheironthrone]

TLT World Building: The Nine Houses and the Logistics of Space Empires

Building off my earlier post about stele-and-obelisk travel and the River, I wanted to talk about something that's been rattling around my mind for a while, which is subluminary travel and the logistics of the Nine Houses. One of the things that has been brought up as a criticism of Muir's world-building as far back as Gideon the Ninth is that the Empire seems to have very, very fast non-FTL travel, such that Gideon and Harrow travel the 3.3 billion miles from Pluto to Earth in an hour, without using a stele. How, it was asked, does an Empire whose military relies on swords and whose medical knowledge is incredibly uneven at best, accomplish a technological feat of that magnitude?

I think we got an answer for that in Nona the Ninth:

“That ship’s not big enough for a stele. Don’t know if it’s big enough for subluminary travel, even. How did it get here?” Crown leant back in her chair, staring at the projector screen, head balanced in the crook of one golden arm. Nona noticed that her biceps showed even through her shirt, and that there were rubber bandages wrapped around one palm. She said, “Oh, that’s big enough for subluminary travel, Millie. See the double struts, and the massive exhaust? That’s a Ziz-class.” ...Crown continued, “The Ziz isn’t Cohort standard. And it’s not as big on the inside as you think. Look at the windows—see how there’re none on the back end? It’s mostly engine. Not plated either. It’ll get to sublume without many problems … but it definitely doesn’t have room for a stele. Camilla is right. It can’t travel by obelisk anchor.” Pyrrha said suddenly, “Crown. How’s the fuel consumption on a Ziz-class ship?” “Thirsty,” said Crown, brightening up at being asked. “Its cell would be totally drained after a day in subluminary. It only takes the powerful stuff too—thalergy-enriched, not just hydrogen blend. Hydrogen blend stuffs up the engine.”

The answer is necromancy. (Because of course it is.) The Empire infuses shuttle fuel with thalergy - and we know that the necromantic specialty of the Second House is to "drain thalergy from any living source and use it," so the Empire can treat thalergy as a fungible resource that they can extract, store, and then use somewhere else. Moreover, we know that the necromantic specialty of the Fourth House is "exciting thanergy into a state of fission" in order to produce explosions.

Since necromancy can easily convert thalergy into thanergy, I think that the Empire's higher-end shuttles are powered by necromantic pulse propulsion, such that shuttle fuel is burned to produce thrust, but then at the same time the thanergy is turned into a massive fission explosion behind the shuttle, producing even more thrust.

I think this also explains why the Second and Fourth are so disproportionately represented in the Cohort, because in addition to producing soldiers for the front lines, they're heavily involved with making the Cohort Fleets move. (I'm going to further speculate that the Fourth make up a lot of the Fleets' pilots, since that would fit their necromantic specialties, the nature of their planet, and their image as gung-ho "go fast" types.) This leads me to a few conclusions:

it explains why the Empire is so focused on short-term extraction; it's essentially stripping the thalergy for fuel to power subluminary transportation in the Dominicus system and beyond, in the same way that we're burning fossil fuels to power our economies today. There is a profound irony in that Mr. Environmentalist John Gaius has so precisely recreated the dynamics of the carbon economy through necromancy.

it explains how logistics in the Nine Houses work. If you can use necromantic fission drives to get from the outer edge of the Dominicus system to the core that quickly, than most of the logistical complexities of running a multiplanetary economy fall away. All you have to do is get your transport shuttle full of goods from the colonies to a stele at the edge of the Dominicus system, and then necromantic fission solves the "last mile problem" of getting your Necro-Amazon "just-in-time" deliveries to the hungry markets of the Third or the Fifth. You don't need to worry about the fact that you can't produce a lot of organic resources on thanergetic planets (especially ones that are space stations and the like rather than fully terraformed), because you just have everything delivered.

it similarly explains how logistics out in the colonies work. Even if you're at the edge of the stele network, necromantic fission shuttles can transport goods between planets in the same solar system with relative ease. It only becomes an issue when you're a ways out from the edge of the network, because that involves burning more thalergy-enriched fuel. Hence why Corona talks about "the Cohort movements didn’t make sense to her...shepherd planets got more costly the further the Houses extended themselves."

This makes me think of necromancy in a different way than I had before. Rather than just being about magic and warfare, necromancy is essentially the technology of the Nine Houses (aside from some legacy technologies that they have left over from pre-Resurrection), the tool that they use to solve all of their problems and make their society and economy and government function.

#the locked tomb #tlt #world building #necromancy #space logistics

[saddest-girl-in-the-whole-world]

I always come back to how fucking weird Ulysses and Titania are to me post resurrection. Like there's something fundamentally wrong about them and I really need to know what it is.

John said that when the nuclear apocalypse happened he held everyone's soul in place, as they died he made sure to preserve them so later he could go on to resurrect them, right?

But how did that work for Ulysses and Titania? They were dead long before John even got necromancy in the first place, there's no way he could have held on to their souls, but they were still part of his saints post resurrection? Can John get souls that are already dead back? I mean fuck I don't even know if the river existed back then so? Did he lie about something again? Are they just constructs? Are they his weird Necro Cav OCs that he controlled to have insight on what would be brought to a lyctor but not god?

I mean, man, we talk about how fucked up it is he rewrote his friends memories and gave them new names but U— and T— were just... some people whose bodies were donated to help with earths last hope. And he just makes them his servants and turns their legacy into the galaxy's biggest factory for child soldiers?

That's just weird, man.

#also? im running a high fever #like none of the options here are particularly pretty #Puppets or construct or brainwashed kids? #Pick your poison John Gaius #I really hope Ulysses becomes relevant again in AtN somehow even if i doubt it #I want Johns first act of necromancy to be what dooms him #symbolically or otherwise #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #tlt spoilers #ejg #emperor john gaius #ulysses tlt

[cassiopeiathe1st]

so as a biology major, here's some things i've been chewing on after reading the unwanted guest. this post is brought to you by the part of my brain that saw the 7th's hereditary blood cancer and thought ok but what KIND of cancer is that.

the phrasing of "permeability of the soul" makes me think of semipermeable membranes and diffusion. diffusion is a passive process -- our molecules, when left to their own devices, want to be everywhere because entropy, but the semipermeable membranes that make up cells organelles etc make life possible by keeping things organized. this dividing & filtering process is required to keep things in place. with me so far?

to me, this concept of permeability emphasizes that souls are objects with boundaries. there's a line somewhere, however blurry (clearly very very blurry) or porous, that divides self & other, and! and!! that line only exists because it is somehow constructed, maintained, enforced. see: ianthe working so hard to convince herself/pal/the hypothetical audience of this play she's putting on that she's just ianthe with no babs mixed in. or john's ritual of retelling his story to alecto/harrow in NTN. something something being the unreliable narrator of your own identity.

palamedes calls the process that merges him and camilla to give us paul grand lysis vs. the "petty", incomplete lysis of eightfold word lyctorhood. lysis = the disintegration of a cell by rupture of the cell wall or membrane. the boundaries of their souls are sliced open so their contents can be poured out & mixed together to make someone new. but even in conventional lyctorhood, there's some kind of exchange of whatever material makes up the soul between cavalier & necromancer. as our boy tells ianthe at the end of the unwanted guest,

This is the real truth of Lyctorhood, Ianthe--it's not some bloodless swapping-out of batteries. It's grafting; transplantation. When you absorbed Naberius Tern's soul, you didn't swallow a diamond. You swallowed a piece of meat...and the longer you digest that meat, the more its proteins and lipids and molecules mix in with yours, until you can't tell them apart anymore.

idk where i'm even going with all of this, i'm just rotating it in my head, but:

tamsyn muir is so precise with her necromancy jargon & anatomical terms that i feel like there's definitely meaning to be found in the imagery here. there is poetry in biology, the universe is made of stories not of atoms, etc etc

it turns out lysis is also the title of a dialogue of plato on "the true nature of loving friendship," so if any classics enjoyers have thoughts on that connection i would love to hear them!

if lyctorhood is transplantation, is it possible for that transplant to be rejected? can the graft refuse to take?

souls are contained within their edges not unlike how a cell membrane contains its cytoplasm. or how a capri sun pouch contains its juice. and lyctors slurp that shit up and digest it baby

why choose to link the soul so closely with water? (the river, bubbles, currents & waves in the river, nona saying the water of the river "doesn't want to touch us.") contents of souls = liquid in the same way that the river is a liquid??? the river = spirit version of the primordial soup???

dulcinea refers to the river having two shores, not just a generic "shore", so it sounds like they're different in some meaningful way. but that may be conditional on what happens in alecto ("if this ends well you'll find that out")? is the point of the river the river itself, or is the point of the river to separate those two places?

#tlt meta #the unwanted guest #the unwanted guest spoilers #the locked tomb #tlt speculation #on lyctorhood #the river #tamsyn i am in! your! walls!!! #(if you have thoughts on any of this please do engage i'm SO interested to hear other people's interpretations) #my posts #necro science #necromancy studies

[15-lizards]

If I had a nickel for every time I loved a book series that included a pair of fucked up, codependent blonde twins that have (at the very least) incestuous vibes and they both begin as “antagonists” but one is redeeming themselves and the other spirals into insanity I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice

#asoiaf #tlt #the locked tomb #coronabeth and Ianthe are kind like if Jamie was a girl and Cersei had necromancy #Cersei should get necromancy. as a Treat #antagonists in quotations bc gtn corona wasn’t even trying to do evil things she just had FOMO and wanted to join in #Ianthe was the one exuding dark energy every time she walked into the room

[homestuckenjoyer666]

Jod’s propoganda

#tlt #the locked tomb #tlt trilogy #john gaius #jod #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #gideon the ninth #nona the 9th #harrow the 9th #gideon the 9th #i will be a skeleton #skeleton war #necromancy posting

[zombie-bait]

I can't believe the universe provided me with even more body horror lesbian necromancy through Delicious in Dungeon right after I just finished reading The Locked Tomb series, fucked up sapphics truly do keep winning

#delicious in dungeon #the locked tomb #delicious in dungeon spoilers #dunmeshi spoilers #falin touden #dunmeshi #marcille donato #falin x marcille #griddlehark #necromancy lesbians #i love you #devastated that its not canon in dunmeshi #but oh well #i can live in gay denial #tlt however is very gay #so I highly recommend #its also intense and heartbreaking

[bojanus]

Harrow the Ninth spoilers but holy shit NOBODY is doing it like Harrow she literally put her OWN FUCKING BONE MARROW into soup to make it burst from her enemy's chest like the fucking Alien.... Like ma'am the dedication? The skill? The DRAMA of doing it in front of God and everyone??? Literally nobody doing it like her

#harrow the ninth #htn spoilers #the locked tomb #tlt #tlt spoilers #when i read she was practicing soup #i was like 'aww okay might be good #for her to connect with something #outside of necromancy' #like wow healthy queen #and then ahahaha #PSYCH perfect murder plot #omfg she is perfection #I'm only partway thru reading plz no one spoil #bojanus chats