Mister Wisp/The Forge and the Vineyard
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Contents |
Background: The Precipitation of the Aeon
While searching for a means to understand Wisp's condition and Fetch's goals, allies in the Phoenix Insurrection began to research exactly what it would take to resurrect someone who had been lost in time. Their research led to this:
The subculture of occultists is traditionally known for being secretive, but even they would agree that alchemists take secrecy to a whole new level. It's not just a matter of their fondness for ciphers, their reluctance to write entire formulas, or the fact that they seem to enjoy devising a symbolic shorthand for nearly every chemical process one can imagine -- it's that they do all of that and then add a layer of poetic imagery on top. The work of dissolving a metal ore in acid becomes, in the hands of an alchemist, a painted landscape populated by multi-colored corpses, two-headed lions, self-devouring pelicans, flowering peacocks, trumpeting children, and figures that might make Hieronymus Bosch say, "That's a little over the top, don't you think?"
A lengthy anonymous poem from the late 1700s entitled "The Precipitation of the Aeon, or, The Work of the Labourer Amply Rewarded by the Generous Master of the Vineyard" is a fine example of such writing. It's in English -- page after page of forced rhymes, allusions to Classical literature and the Bible, horticultural metaphors, and Many Capital Letters, but English nonetheless. Buried in its pages are a few useful pieces of information:
- the author claims to have improved on the work of Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus, and Zoroaster by not only perfecting a means for restoring the dead to life, but for doing so without need for a body;
- his technique requires that the alchemist have been present when the subject died, and seems to describe a way of distilling ("precipitating") the experience of that event into a physical form;
- buried deep in the poem is a digression into how the alchemist discovered his method: it came to him while he was dreaming about an endless laboratory or forge (the imagery doesn't make it clear which). In his dream, he had an assistant -- a diabolic creature in a red-hot mask -- who, despite a fearsome appearance, proved to be invaluable in helping its master's research. It was the assistant who showed the alchemist how to distill experiences into life;
- and finally, there's an extended metaphor at the end of the poem that seems to describe the slow transformation of the world (represented as a vineyard) into a fiery forge. The author believes this to be a good thing.
The Forge and the Vineyard
Beneath Mont Diable, the demon Bat'Zul is bound in a fiery lair. On Thorn Isle, the demon Caleb circles and guards the Thorn Tree. As powerful as these entities are, they are only the servants of still-greater beings, each representing a particular demonic vision of the world.
The Master of the Forge, Barzabel, seeks a world in which everything and everyone is fuel for the fires: everyone is a potential component for his grand designs, subject to being thrown into the forges until they emerge as representations of his nightmarish art. In a vision granted to the Seer Melissa Dems, Barzabel was described as "God's fallen craftsman. The Mask-wearer. The chain-maker. The forger of counterfeit souls."
The nameless Master of the Vineyard, on the other hand, wants everything to grow and merge in a mockery of Nature: his world is one of perpetual orgiastic transformations unconstrained by any sort of vision at all. The same vision that revealed more about the Master of the Forge described the Master of the Vineyard as "The thorn in the rose. The bone that breaks the skin. The vine that chokes and the wine that steals sense away."
These Masters are engaged in a contest millennia old, with the eventual goal of re-creating the entire world to match their visions. Their instruments are the mortals they lure into their service, and the lesser demons they bend to their wills. At the moment, the Master of the Forge has the upper hand, but in the games of demons, victory is fleeting.
Twenty-five Gates to the City of Brass
Wisp's artificial body consists of three main parts: a brazen head designed by Jabir al-Hayyan to see the intricacies of time; a skeleton and organs inscribed with names from the Teknikon Ioannes, with each name invoking an angel to give the part life; and a heart that may or may not be a key to the legendary City of Brass. Individually, these objects are talismans of no small power, but basically harmless. Combined, as they are in Wisp, they may both open the gates to the City and provide a living conduit for whatever inhabits that place. Since a glimpse of what lay beyond the gates suggested that the City of Brass is the home of Barzabel, it makes Wisp's fears that he was tricked into designing his body more substantial.
The gates are already slightly ajar. It seems only to be a matter of time before their various parts align to open them entirely.
Another Interpretation, Not Necessarily Accurate
"So they left him and fared on till there appeared to them, afar off, a great blackness and therein two fires facing one another, and the Amir Mousa said to the Sheikh, 'What is yonder vast blackness and its twin fires?' 'Rejoice, O Amir,' answered the guide; 'for this is the City of Brass, as it is described in the Book of Hidden Treasures. Its walls are of black stone and it hath two towers of Andalusian brass, which appear to the beholder in the distance as they were twin fires, and hence is it named the City of Brass.'" -- "The City of Brass," A Thousand and One Nights
In A Thousand and One Nights, the City of Brass is a metaphor for the vanity of human desires, and the uselessness of wealth or power in the face of human mortality: a place filled with treasures and magical wonders, but whose inhabitants all died when drought struck their land. The journey to the City is overshadowed with stories of King Solomon and his binding of the Jinn, and the ultimate goal of the explorers is to find one of the brass bottles in which Solomon bound his servants after he was done with them. This, they eventually do, but only after learning that even such tremendous power is fleeting.
This is not the way the mages of Oranbega tell the story.
In their own scattered references, they describe the rise of a faction of Oranbegans called the Barzabites, who served a powerful entity known as the Master of the Forge. The Barzabites believed in their Master's vision of a world of perfect mechanical order, a world in which bodies and souls would be hammered out in fire according to design and set to work as cogs in a single, universal machine. After a clash with the rulers of Oranbega, the Barzabite faction was virtually wiped out: the Master of the Forge was sealed inside an extra-dimensional prison dubbed the City of Brass and his strongest demonic servant, Bat'Zul, was bound to the will of the mages. Bat'Zul continues to serve the mages indirectly, although it is currently bound under Mont Diable.
Few details about the City itself survive in the writings of the Thorns; they seem to have been reluctant to set it down in writing, in case someone should accidentally provide any surviving Barzabites with help in releasing their Master. Here and there, one can find references to its elaborate lock -- a constantly-changing combination of magical names inscribed on thousands of turning wheels, intended to foil any attempt by the Master of the Forge or any of his followers to guess the correct one that would open the gates and free him. But there are hints as well that the Master already knows that, at some point, the turning wheels will align and release him, and so has turned his attention to preparing a proper vessel to inhabit for the time when he is freed. Elsewhere, there are suggestions that there exists a key to the City, in the form of a brass flask on which are engraved magical "passwords" that will undo the lock, but still other authors are convinced that this key was destroyed long ago.
"He had two great wings and four arms, two like men's arms and other two as they were lions' paws, with claws of iron, and he was black and tall, with hair like horses' tails and eyes like blazing coals, slit endlong in his face. Moreover, he had a third eye, as it were that of a lynx, amiddleward his forehead, from which flew sparks of fire." -- description of a spirit bound to a pillar of brass in "The City of Brass," A Thousand and One Nights
This passage matches some of the descriptions of the Master of the Forge. Elsewhere, he appears in human form, recognized only by a mask of polished (or sometimes red-hot) metal that he wears.
