This is an online companion for The Mirror Breaks, book six of seven of the Second Edition of the The Stone Dance of the Chameleon. Material relevant to this volume—drawn from my more than thirty notebooks—is laid out in the sidebar, ordered according to the chapters in the book.
The tag cloud below provides direct access to the SDC Companion
SPOILERS
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unless otherwise stated, all images are my own work
This is an online companion for The Darkness Under The Trees, book four of seven of the Second Edition of the The Stone Dance of the Chameleon. Material relevant to this volume—drawn from my more than thirty notebooks—is laid out in the sidebar, ordered according to the chapters in the book.
The tag cloud below provides direct access to the SDC Companion
SPOILERS
accessing a page for a chapter you have not yet reached or use of the tag cloud may lead to spoilers
If you would like to hear from me and know what I am up to, please join my mailing list below
unless otherwise stated, all images are my own work
This is an online companion for The Chosen, book two of seven of the Second Edition of the The Stone Dance of the Chameleon. Material relevant to this volume—drawn from my more than thirty notebooks—is laid out in the sidebar, ordered according to the chapters in the book.
The tag cloud below provides direct access to the SDC Companion
SPOILERS
accessing a page for a chapter you have not yet reached or use of the tag cloud may lead to spoilers
If you would like to hear from me and know what I am up to, please join my mailing list below
unless otherwise stated, all images are my own work
This drawing predates the Stone Dance: a drawing of Carnelian even before I had really conceived of him; even now I can’t claim to fully understand its iconography
The mask Carnelian is wearing is of blue stone. It was of this material rather than gold that I orginally imagined all the masks of the Masters were made. Only towards the end of the writing of the Stone Dance did I come to realize that this blue face prefigured the end of the story
The breastplate bears at its centre the ‘nu’—the gylph for ‘desolation’—and around it other glyphs showing titles.
The glyph above the head of the figure identifies that this is Carnelian. In the first couple of registers are the components ‘stone’ and ‘blue’, over ‘face’: thus ‘blue-stone face’, which was how I originally wrote the Quyan ‘mahar’, meaning “a Lord of the Chosen”
The third register reads as ‘stone’ and ‘red’ which is ‘carnelian’. The final register has ‘face’ with the ‘stone’ component superimposed over it, and that reads as ‘marakal’ or ‘mask’, that at that time I thought wrote ‘marua’ or ‘House (of the Chosen)’
The final component is that of a dragonfly
Thus the glyph reads ‘A Lord of the Chosen of the House of the Dragonfly
The heraldic dragonfly is everywhere on the image. For a long time I believed that Carnelian was of the House of the Dragonfly, only later discovering that his sigil was the chameleon. Jaspar and House Imago inherited the dragonfly sigil
Voting processes are ubiquitous among the Chosen and are based on blood-rank. Only those who are of the Great are ‘enfranchised’ and, of these, women and minors are generally excluded. (In this case, the House of the Masks is to be considered to be of the Great.) Among the Lesser Chosen, voting systems do occur for votes carried out within their Houses, but these use methods not based on blood-rank.
Votes, then, are cast according to blood-rank and rise by factors of twenty in accordance with the purity of blood of the voter. Thus, a voter of blood-rank 1 casts a single vote; blood-rank 2 casts 20 votes; blood-rank 3 casts 400 votes and blood-rank 4 casts 8000. The latter two voters exist, except extremely rarely, only within the House of the Masks. He-who-goes-before is an exception, being able to cast 400 votes (on top of the ones he can cast in his own right) indicate that the holder of that post is, nominally, assigned a blood-rank of 3.
A woman’s votes are generally cast by the Ruling Lord of her House. This is also the case for minors – that is, girls, and boys not yet having received their blood-rings. This casting of votes by a Ruling Lord is called a Block Vote. Women of the House of the Masks can cast their own votes and, sometimes, also women of some eccentric Houses of the Great; but, in both cases, these votes can only be cast in ballots within a woman’s own House.
Specific circumstances in which votes can be cast are:
– conclaves: which are convened by a group of the Great with a view to determining a particular course of action. Block Votes cannot be cast here.
– in the Clave: here only Ruling Lords of the Great can vote and, when they do so, they cast a Block Vote for their whole House. Lords of the House of the Masks are not entitled to vote within the Clave.
– House internal ballots: these are carried out according to the rules of that House; however these rules may diverge from the norm, they will certainly favour a House’s first lineage.
– Imperial Elections: this is a ballot carried out in the Chamber of the Three Lands to elect a new God Emperor and is related to, and a special case of, the process by which a Ruling Lord is elected within a House of the Great.
This ballot to elect a God Emperor does have some peculiar characteristics:
– that the Great are entitled to vote: not only the Ruling Lords casting their Block Votes, but also the independent males of their Houses.
– that the women of the House of the Masks are entitled to vote as they will.
Ranga shoes maintain purity but also demonstrate rank. There are two kinds of ranga: those used in the outer world and court ranga.
The ranga used outside Osrakum are believed to offer protection from the contaminating earth. When the Wise wear ranga on the outer shore of the Skymere, it is because this is considered more impure than the Isle.
Court ranga are more complex mechanical devices, indicating rank in proportion to their height—as is shown in the first diagram with the following key:
none – Ammonites and the Lesser Chosen.
1 Lesser Chosen Ruling Lords.
2 the Great, Sapients.
3 Great Ruling Lords, House of the Masks.
4 Empress, Grand Sapients, He-who-goes-before, Jade Lords.
5 the God Emperor.
the smaller figure indicates a barbarian of average height.
court ranga
The second diagram shows the beginnings of an abandoned design project into the complex mechanics of the court ranga. I have an understanding of how they work, but decided it was better not to devote too much time to designing them in detail. Each different height of court ranga would require a specific mechanism
Court robes are worn by the Chosen and the Wise at the court of the God Emperor. Architectural constructions as much as costume, a court robe consists of a skin woven from precious metals and stones hung over a framework of tiny bones. These rough sketches give an indication of how they might appear
Note the extreme height resulting from the wearing of court ranga worn. Note also the sculptural integration of the crowns with the robes. The heraldic themes expressed in a crown is carried down the front of the robe in a vertical band
The second sketch shows He-who-goes-before with his two lictors; only the God Emperor wears taller ranga
He-who-goes-before in his court robe
Note the court staves, not only allowing the display of sigils representing the powers of the Lord, but also acting somewhat like ‘ski poles’ to stabilize the Lord on his high ranga
He-who-goes-before’s court staves bear pomegranate and lily finials, symbolizing command of the two Ichorian legions that control the Canyon of the Three Gates. Each stave also bears the rayed sun-eye that matches the mask worn by He-who-goes-before and indicating that he is the representative of the Great
Note also the pomegranate forming part of the crown
The first image is a sketch—that I made, I don’t know when—that is a precursor of the image that appears on the cover of the Second Edition of The Chosen. The second is a page from my notebooks, in which I worked out how such a crown might be constructed from various components. Both reflect my interest in symbolism as expressed by costume. The contrast between the aesthetics of the naked human body as promoted by the Ancient Greeks (and that has had such a profound effect on our sensibilities—particularly in the West) contrasts with Asian cultures, for example, in which the shape of the body is deliberately concealed so that costume becomes symbolic
crowns, including that of the Regent
Contrast, for example, the costume of a woman from Medieval Japan with its reliance on artifice, with the body enhancing fashions of the West. The first seems to me to be a projection of an interior, ‘virtual’ notion of femininity: the second the presentation of the ‘actual’ and physical
Nowhere is this ‘virtualization’ of costume more fascinating to me than in portrayals of power. The Chosen take this process to an extreme by using masks to remove the last vestige of their humanity—the face
The starting point for my elaboration of Chosen headgear is probably the double crown of the pharaohs of Egypt. The white crown of Upper Egypt sits within the red crown of Lower Egypt, both upon the head of pharaoh as a symbol of his suzerainty over both lands. I adopted this for my own Triple Crown that a God Emperor wears as a symbol of his rule over the Three Lands. It resonates with the papal triple crown or tiara
My focus on headgear is perhaps best shown by the chapter in The Chosen in which Carnelian, returned to his ancestral palaces in Osrakum, is asked to choose which of a variety of crowns he wishes to wear. The precious materials from which these crowns are made has something to do with the display of wealth and, in the exotic variety of the materials, demonstrates the extensive power of the Chosen, but what is more important is the symbolism embedded in a crown to communicate issues of power and identity. In this respect, the Chosen are no different from other elites throughout history, except perhaps to what extremes they are prepared to go to demonstrate their power
This is one of the first images I ever produced relating to the Stone Dance. It depicts one of the Chosen, and already contains many of the books’ core elements. Anatomically bizarre, the figure presages some of the themes of mutilation and freakishness. There is the complex symbolism of the nested crowns, with the feather-like ribbing, but abstract butterfly patterning. The mask is already there—though at that stage it was quite Art Noveau, as are the tresses that hang before the ear—though, later, my Chosen dispensed with hair altogether. The figure has, in its posture and mood, I feel, something of the arrogant remoteness of the Chosen. The focus on exotic materials—revealing fabulous refinement and wealth—is shown in a robe that, in some places, is transparent, but, in others, scaled; the whole striped like some animal skin. The strange instrument, as a finial on the staff, recalls the sigils of the Wise and, and resembles a ship. The sleeve bears a design that later became the glyph, mual, connoting zero and emptiness, but also—as does the circular element above the ear—recalls the crater of Osrakum—even though this only finally came into being more than ten years later.
Like other wealthy, courtly, caste-based societies, the Chosen adorn themselves in elaborate, symbolically complex costumes made from exotic and precious materials…
