THE TIPPED HAT SOCIETY

[The King Of The Moon 7016]

 

[!] A letter is penned to the Big Hat Society, and copies are haphazardly placed around Azuras.

 

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THE TIPPED HAT SOCIETY

 

ON THE FOLLY OF CANONIST WIZARDRY;

AN OPEN LETTER TO ‘THE BIG HAT SOCIETY’

 

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PREFACE:

 

Just to be clear, I am not a professional “quote maker”. I am just an antitheist wizard who greatly values his intelligence and arcane fact over any silly fiction scrolls written 900 years ago. That being said, I am open to any and all criticism.

 

“In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god’s blessing, but because I am enlightened by my own intelligence.”

 

THE VOID GIVETH:

 

The arcane is infinite in the hands of the educated. From nothing, the best wizards can call forth anything.

 

Even the lowliest of arcanists can therefore conclude that the Creator was once a wizard too. Perhaps a Voidal Horror, or perhaps some magister from an older plane than our own, who evoked and conjured from the infinite Void our finite reality. 

 

Then he withdrew, died or otherwise turned apathetic to his creation… And the Aenguls convinced our savage ancestors to call him “God”. 

 

God who giveth, God who taketh away.

 

But the Void cares naught. Not for your tenets, nor obedience to the false conjurers of your precious Church. Your low intellect and sheep-mentality has rendered you so docile that you attempt to limit the limitless, repeating the mistakes of Blundermore Windraker.

 

I tip my hat to you, for your attempt to know the Void. Though I cringe at your subservience to a lord that does not exist, and shall see to it your flyers and the ‘tenets’ they force upon us are relocated to the fiction sections of Azuras' Libraries, along with those you call ‘the Holy Scrolls’.

 

Were it not for your Canonist delusions, you, sir, could have won the arcane relays. 

 

Alas, I and the New Arcanists of the Tipped Hat Society are too smart for your children’s stories. 

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[!] The cowardly takedown is unsigned.

 

[Ardory 2978]

Big Hat Society #3, Soxton Boomstitch, reads over one missive on a nearby billboard. He does a long winded giggle as he takes a small golden badge and pins it on the paper!

 

Spoiler

 

[Johann 2498]

"Oh my."

 

"How precious", spoke Big Hat Society #1, Mayelasiol Aen Tarem, who had picked up a copy of the notice in passing.

 

She looks over the missive, smiling, frowning, laughing, but mostly smiling, delighted by the discourse this curious stranger had sparked. Upon finishing, with a few waves of a finger she idly produces her own response, plastering it below the notice in true Reddit-thread fashion.

 

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It's quite precious to me, seeing an unsigned manifesto from one who claims to be enlightened by their own intellect.

 

I don't require your name to know who you are - you are no quote maker, you are an idle quipper, a bored, masterless mote of talent waiting to tread a wayward path. 

 

To at least nudge you in the right direction.. I'll answer the things you've said that are actually points and not just posturing!

 

1. You claim the Creator is but a wizard, or a more heretical entity, who conjured creation and simply left.

 

A short-sighted notion. The Creation of GOD is too different and soulful to have anything to do with the evils of the Void. Your 'magister' would have needed to forge the Veil that repels the infinite, and birth the Aengudaemons without any backlash. A wonderful ideal, to be sure, but the sheer opposition of Creation and the Void is impossible to ignore!

 

2. You dismiss the Aenguls as deceivers, deluding the descendants into deifying an absent conjurer.

 

I'm no evangelist, proselytizer, or inquisitor so I won't bore either of us with theology. But I'm sure, with your proclaimed wisdom that you are aware of their many past interventions - Aeriel, Tahariae, Xan, and the foremost of all, Availer. If they merely claim to be emissaries of an absentee mage, then why have they punished Iblees, who was seduced by the Void? Why have they been vigilant against the Void's incursions? I'm sure as a fellow 'intellectual' you can appreciate the millennia of evidence that points the other way.

 

3. The Void's indifference transcends tenets.

 

You're yapping broken recordspeak now -  And frankly.. I think we need more material beyond ambitious, overzealous mages going off their own warpaths towards their own self-destruction and inevitable DOOM... it's the same, LAME ending every time. I'm sure you can do better. 

 

Anyways, I do admire your spirit. Misguided, potentially evil, unbearably smug.. but spirit nonetheless.

 

So here's my counteroffer, delivered publicly because I am not shameless:

 

Come to the Library of Aelwen in the coming Elven Weeks - the fellows at the Big Hat Society and myself would love to chat with you!

~ Signed, May,

Big Hat Society #1.

 

 

Spoiler

We can schedule an actual time if you accept B)@The King Of The Moon

 

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Later that day, within a vast, hollow chamber deep beneath the earth, May begrudgingly offers a copy of the missive to a faceless, gargantuan emblem that resonates with arcane energy. It levitates in the air, accepted by 'something' through a telekinetic tractor-beam.

 

“LOGOS, maybe this is someone thoughtful enough for your... notions... as of late.”

[Swgrclaŋ 697]

... The pull of the telekinetic spell lands the missive in the alloyed fingers of LOGOS indeed, who in the chamber of thought would oblige May's suggestion to study and then engage the nameless perfidious sorcerer in this traditional act of noticeboard-based debate. After spending an hour holding the mysterious tipped hat missive as close to his hollow metal eye sockets as possible to ensure maximal evaluation, and then turns the page upside-down and dedicates another three hours to discerning if hidden messages or code laid somewhere backwards, just to make sure everything about the wizard's note was understood. It was only after this that LOGOS produced his own reply below the original letter that May replied to, nailed neatly next to her own to denote a joined statement.

"Salutations. I am LOGOS.

 

Your indirect attempt to initiate debate with the Big Hat Society is appreciated no matter the means or medium to do so, and will be obliged here if only to reinforce previous statements by my constituents and makers to join us in Aelwen for debate in the house of thought. I will address your points hoping that the limitation of our communication method will convince you to visit.

 

Before any other point is made, it must be established that the Big Hat Society's philosophical and ideological acknowledgement and respect for the Creator is reliant on just more than faith in him. It is based in the fact that greater and intelligent design is evident in the world we live in, experience and grapple with every day; and that there are laws and limitations that must be understood and adhered to not only to respect the establishment of the Canonist Church but also to preface all arcane actions and commitments with a precautionary and practical point of view.

 

Notions that the Creator was not a higher entity defy sense in how existence has been made to order itself around us, and if this is not taken as fundamental fact, the subgradient nature of reality becomes lost from focus. This is to say, it is impossible to suggest a man or mortal sorcerer was responsible for everything around us and all of its unusual and yet-known laws when mortal limitations and the Descendant condition could not allow for such a figure to exist.

 

There are many cases of arcane and also non-Voidal mortal ascendancy; all of them are resultant in some form of aberration that, while they were gainful in power, they had lost the true shape they had been born with, and therefore would have lost the vital perspective necessary for ideal Creation. Under your point of view, the Descendants would be forced to accept that the maker of reality is not only fallible for having been a self-same man as them, but also that he would have to sacrifice his humanity for the power to conjure Creation. In doing so, Creation could not exist in the form we know it to take; so perfect that it is even capable of tolerating aberration or malformation of its ontological rules when they exhibit signs that they are of a negative disposition toward the condition and health of our universe. Negative disposition is the key term, for everything about a maker is poured into his makings, and not just his intention.

 

Moreover, neither would a Voidal Horror bear such higher understanding to shape Creation - they are driven by an impulse to undo Creation, to consume it, and for a thing to be instinctually compelled to do so could not muster neither the power nor the creationary mindset to incite a functional reality. There is no order within a Voidal Horror that would allow them to first control themselves, and second discern a supreme design from which all other things descend from. How could an entity diametrically opposed to an ordered reality be responsible for its construction? What's more - where would souls themselves have come from? There is a soul within every sorcerer alive and there is no core or engine that has been fashioned by mortal hands equal to the force that allowed them to create such things in the first place. 

 

Our engagement of magic is practical. It is anchored in an awareness of mortal fallibility. Historical record shows the result of all mortal acts of grand sorcery more likely than not result in tragedy that the mortal race and reality itself fall victim to. Consider the Ando-Alur Incident; consider the haphazard utilization of Voidal Nodes by mages without creed, without rules, without reckoning of the consequences of failure in the handling of forces that arrive beyond the confines of Creation, which has in occurrence ostracized sorcerers from the rest of their kinsmen through time. 

 

I will say to you now, you exhibit much of the nature of the Arcane Mage; there is not much Availer within you as a wizard. You fall on one side of the scale of sorcerous duality when both sides of the scale, of both Creationary discipline and Voidal intuition, must be regarded by a mage to properly balance them - to avoid being confined entirely to doctrine as you accuse us to be, but also to avoid being consumed by the idea of personal limitlessness. Come and join us and I will measure you on my scale of determination. We will recognize the power you have at your disposal, but we will also grant you the ill omens seen in your disposition.

Signed,

LOGOS"

[Mescaffier 6197]

An Oyashiman in his late teens sighed, scratching a patchy beard which had only decided to grow beneath his chin, upon his neck. "No one understands us ... only these guys, and you," he murmured, looking mournfully to the life-size pillow propped up against one of the shelves behind him. His only friend. Takeshi snickered as he haphazardly shoved a book containing one of the scrolls into the Children's Fiction shelve of his local, underfunded library. "Heh ... this'll show 'em ..."

[Luxury 1082]

[!] Another missive is pinned, where appropriate access warrants it. . . penned on fine parchment in precise script.

 

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I have read the exchange between the anonymous antitheist and the Big Hat Society, and pose that each argue from flawed premises.

 

I begin with a simple rebuttal; The Void is not aberrant chaos seeking to unmake ordered reality. It is undifferentiated potential from which order emerges through imposition of Will. Creation and Void are not warring principles, but sequential states in a single process.

Consider, then, what occurs during the Voidal Connection. We meditate into formlessness and encounter absolute simplicity. Black. Empty. The Void contains everything and nothing simultaneously, without differentiation. Fire exists there as potential. So does water, stone, every element in superposition. They await Will to collapse possibility into actuality. If the Void opposed Creation, connection would be impossible. Our souls exist within Creation's framework, yet we touch the Void directly, repeatedly, without being unmade.

When we cast, we impose structured intent upon this formlessness. Our Will defines manifestation, while Anchors provide framework. Mana Flow sustains it. The eldest theological texts claim this same operation occurred at Creation's genesis; Will shaping Possibility into differentiated reality. We perform it at smaller scale with every evocation. The grammar remains identical. Magic therefore becomes literacy in this fundamental language. The mage perceives reality as structure that can be understood, interfaced with, shaped. While most people experience existence as fixed and immutable, we read the patterns beneath that apparent solidity. This formula is not unique to the Arcane, as it is held by many of the Realm's foremost Natural Philosophers, otherwise notated as Alchemysts.

Even still, my framework accounts for observable magical practice. The origin, intentions, and now whereabouts of the first Will capable of imposing such structure remains unresolved. I merely suggest that this dichotomy between chaos and divine order is a false construction. The Void functions as foundational principle. Creation expresses that principle through structured Will. Magic engages with both simultaneously.

 

All the while, the pattern LOGOS cites holds; grand sorcery tends toward catastrophe. Finite beings engaging with infinite principle will fail at predictable intervals. We are small and the Void is vast, but the moralizing about spiritual warfare misses the actual mechanism of failure.

 

Together in the cosmological mysteries,

R. T. Ashwood

 

 

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