173
edits
Changes
→Principles
== Principles ==
Moth is for the Name-as-Self, as much a core feature of the being as it is a simple mask, removable and replaceable in a whim. Most human words and titles are of this category, which the Cantharide excels at affecting. When a lawyer or a politician plays upon words to get away, when a spy creates a cover, or a writer designs a character so fake it’s real, their phrases are anthems to the Cantharide.
''The Mechanism and the Cantharide both are oracles, bound to reveal truths to those who beseech them, but also able to warp the truth they scry.''
Lantern is for the Name-As-Truth. The Lantern is the platonic ideal, the unstainable and perfect Truth hidden in the meaning. Those are not the mere names used by humans and their mutable selves: those are the names and titles of deities, the transcendent tenets of their legend, be they awe-inspiring or terrible, alluring or gruesome. Such appellations are true and unchanging in any point of any History. The Cantharide can’t modify or replace them, for theyre written in the ink of the Glory, but it’s within her power to exalt them, or subvert them, ever so slightly. For beings involved in the occult, When poets or scholars sing praises, when journalists slander, there grows the seeds of the Cantharide.
''The Captain discovers the truth during his journeys: but for to those truths, he gives no Names. The Abbess purges the souls of the deceased: but save for their sins, she doesn't name any part of them The Eye sees all, but speaks not. ''
Grail (or Knock) is for the Name-As-Call. In all esoteric traditions, the true name of a being is a way to bind it, to appeal to it, to access its secret nature and merge. The Name-as-Call is Ecstasy when shouted in pleasure: it is Addiction when obsessively repeated. When your lover calls to you in a muffled moan of pleasure (or a shrieking shrill of fear), when a witch spits it in a curse or whisper it in blessing, the weight of their claims on you is the Cantharide’s.