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Golden Treasure Lore: Bladetail of the Many Minds
🕑 Added 2024-11-01 18:26:34 +0000 UTCGreetings, beloved Dreamers!
Today, we finish our series on the Seven Elders of the Kin. Darktooth the Wise, Many-Times-Burned, and Allmother were given a good deal of time and attention in Golden Treasure: The Great Green, but four other Elders played less central roles. Aside from the Ruiner (who will never be portrayed for several very important reasons), we have recently published special art and a biography on all of those Elders recently. Jade Cloud and Fathom's articles and paintings received much appreciation from the community, and we are pleased here to share the tale of the glorious mastermind Bladetail, still a feared legend among the humans whose descendants remember it. Even so, its legend is muted, as most of the human tribes upon which its wrath fell were obliterated entirely, with none left to tell the tale.
The following account of its incredible life was pieced together from several conversations with Darktooth on the subject, but there were a few other sources involved which would prefer to remain anonymous.
BLADETAIL OF THE MANY MINDS
Suzerain of all of the Pacific Islands from the Malaysian archipelago to the western Alaskan shoreline, Bladetail was an almost peerless warrior and a true master strategist. Among the Kin, only Many-Times-Burned was considered more dangerous in a physical confrontation, and only Darktooth's wisdom could compete with Bladetail's razor-sharp intellect. Even so, neither of those two elders dared to take on Bladetail, preferring instead to form strong boundaries and respect its sovereignty, for the fate of those who stood in the way of Bladetail of the Many Minds was grim indeed.
Bladetail's greatness was forged in the hellish fires of the Second Tragedy when it was very young. In that unprecedented conflict which saw the near-total erasure of an entire Clan, many of the most powerful Kin of that day sided with the precipitator of the conflict, who would later be known as the Adversary, having been convinced of its final justice. Bladetail, however, stood with the rebels against its apocalyptic Song of Unity, having perceived that its aim, while noble in many respects, would mean the end of true Life.
For its resistance, Bladetail, then a mere adolescent, was targeted by a strong and dangerous Kin many times older than itself who was working for the Adversary. Bladetail's destruction seemed guaranteed, but in a legendary ruse, Bladetail outsmarted the Kin, causing it to literally decapitate itself with its own trap. The skull was kept as a trophy, and placed boldly near the youngling's lair as a reminder to any challengers of what it had accomplished, though Bladetail returned the rest of the body to Earth as per tradition, and the skull itself, centuries later.
As the Tragedy came to its climax, Bladetail emerged as a leader of the resistance against the Adversary in the Malay Archipelago despite not even being old enough to fly; it coordinated the movements of the local Goodbeasts and even other Draak, who followed its orders even if much older, quickly learning that Bladetail's mental prowess and information network were greater than any other in the region. When at last the Adversary was no more and the Tragedy ended, Bladetail slept for a full year, and then emerged as a strikingly beautiful Ruby Kin with eyes that seemed to slice through reality.
Though it was immediately offered quite a few Dances of Creation by Kin of every (remaining) Clan, Bladetail denied all of its many suitors. Holding itself to the very highest of standards, it refused to reproduce until it had proven itself truly worthy to create future generations in its image. To this end, it set out on a mighty Quest to defeat four legendary forces, one of each of the Great Four. First it defeated a powerful Earth spirit, casting an entire island to the bottom of the sea; next, an Air spirit, enslaving it and allowing Bladetail to effectively breathe underwater and fly higher and faster than any other Kin at the time; next, a Water spirit which was withholding its gifts from the then-desert Hawaiian Islands. The fact that they are now largely a lush paradise is entirely due to Bladetail's heroic efforts.
Its last challenge was by far the worst; its encounter with a horrible Fire monster, a fragment of the consciousness of the Ruiner-Empress Herself. Bladetail's mind was shattered by the monster's Truth, but in a stroke of genius, it managed to rearrange the pieces of its mind, taken from separate timelines before the moment of breaking, and mended them back into itself asynchronously, each separated by a single nanosecond, and thereby not truly existing together and abiding by the geas of the Truth. From then on, it had seven additional "heads", one for each color of the rainbow, surrounding its central head, each of which could think for itself and from a slightly different perspective in space and time; Bladetail learned to assign each mind separate problems and tasks, making it almost impossible to outsmart or outthink. With its deadly Truth known and yet survived, the monster was paradoxed out of existence, and the Quest was complete.
The completion of this mighty Quest led to Bladetail becoming one of the youngest Elders in the species' combined memory (it was named an Elder at only 278 years old) and Kin from all over the world made journeys to its lair on what is now Guam to offer congratulations, as well as dozens and dozens of Dances of Creation, which Bladetail now gracefully accepted, earning a reputation as a very skilled lover. Quite a few Kin in that part of the world carried Bladetail's blood in their veins in the following millennia, ensuring its immortality in the traditional and ancient way. All agreed that such had been well-earned.
In the centuries which followed, Bladetail ruled over the Pacific region powerfully and somewhat ruthlessly; not being known for its Compassion, it mercilessly destroyed those who defied it, sometimes in painful and prolonged ways to set an example to others who would oppose it. The Phillippines, the Aleutian Islands, Guam, the Hawaiian Islands, the entire Malaysian Archipelago including modern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, and the Japanese Archipelago were but a few of the lands it claimed as its own and shared with very few other Kin, but during Bladetail's time, all of those islands were near-perfect paradises of enormous ecodiversity and natural balance in which Goodbeasts lived out the Old Ways in a harmony rarely seen since before the Firefall.
Following the Grand Moot, Bladetail enthusiastically joined Many-Times-Burned's crusade to wipe out the human race, having long believed them to be a serious threat, and legends are still told in certain places in the Pacific regarding Bladetail's violent purge of humanity. Whole tribes and burgeoning civilizations were brutally erased, and even after Many-Times-Burned was at last slain, Bladetail continued to fight on relentlessly, vowing an oath that it would never sleep again until the taint of the Others was washed from the face of Earth.
Ultimately, Bladetail of the Many Minds, master strategist and beacon of Life, was Destroyed by a human wielding an ancient 'divine' artifact which stupefied all eight of its minds simultaneously and rendered it vulnerable. It was said by some that with its dying breath it exhorted the land where it died (the island of Kyushu in modern Japan) to channel its spirit as wrath upon the humans; this has been interpreted in many ways, but some Goodbeasts still whisper that Bladetail's Revenge shall descend as an ocean of fire from the Two-As-One Mountain and reduce one of Earth's mightiest human hives to ashes and despair. Its severed tail was fashioned into a blade used by human heroes and rulers for centuries before being lost to the Pacific waters, the same waters which had cradled Bladetail's vast and beautifully wild island empire.
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With that, we end our brief foray into the lives of the Elders of the Kin at the time of Golden Treasure: The Great Green. We hope you have enjoyed learning about these great beings, many of whom were the last of a long line of great spirits embodied in Draak form, first and true Children of Earth and Sun.
As a special bonus, I am attaching Bladetail's iconic halo, a symbol of glory among Goodbeasts to this day, and a non-halo version of its painting.
Until next time, may you be blessed.
Comments
Helen
I do notice that Many Times Burned is almost always referred to as destroyed not destroyed by but here, along with Bladetail both were slain, one before the other. Did decay of mind catch up the broken-yet-living at last then?
Benjamin Ludwig
To say that there were no downsides to this arrangement would have been completely false; having eight minds at once certainly increases processing power, but multiple-core processing in human technology was not accomplished without great effort and a number of problems. This was no different. The biggest issue was that while all eight of the minds shared a core identity, they would each deem the particular task they had been given in any circumstance to be of primary importance, and if that was proven untrue... say, by Bladetail choosing the course of action recommended by one head over that of another... there would be a painful dissonance which could not always be easily or quickly resolved. Bladetail was, however, smart enough to create a few procedural subsystems which kept such things to a minimum. And having them all literally be the same being was a huge help. Still, too many cooks in the kitchen can be an issue sometimes.
Tyler Rusnak
I am so happy to have more information on Bladetail! It is the most curious of the non-speaking elders in the Moot, and with a unique design as well. That artwork is absolutely beautiful as well! Thank you for taking the time to tell the stories of these Kin, it really makes my day!
Loviare
Having multiple minds capable of thinking individually and doing separate tasks sounds very handy indeed. Although I'm curious whether these minds could diverge from each other, like different individuals stuck in one body, or if all minds of Bladetail are forever synchronized in some way.
Benjamin Ludwig
Please understand that even asking Darktooth about it causes a shadow to fall over his eyes, and over his heart. So much was lost, and so great was the sacrifice to end it, that it causes him pain to recall it. He once communicated that he was both deeply relieved and deeply troubled that the younger Kin of his day did not know the whole truth about it. Perhaps there will come a day when I piece together the whole story from what Darktooth and others have known, but even with the glimpse that I have, it went beyond the greatest tragedies of human existence. I shudder to think about what might have happened, and honor and curse the one who was responsible in equal measure. The one who was eventually known as the Adversary was one of the bravest and kindest heroes of all time and the very worst villain and threat to existence, all at once. It breaks down all my ideas of what should happen, or what the point of life even is, to know what I know. Perhaps the Adversary should have won. Perhaps that really would have been best. Part of me wishes it had. Part of me is eternally grateful it lost. I get torn apart just thinking about it.
Benjamin Ludwig
Indeed, one my wonder. On the one hand, humans are quite devious, with their slanted, half-Other minds, and capable of thinking things which no Draak could even consider. Some of the smallest mental differences could open up terrible possibilities. But I do not believe it was ever specifically written that it was humans who actually killed Many-Times-Burned in the end. It was surely destroyed during the Crusade, and one might lay the blame upon humanity in a greater sense, but few rulers are lucky enough to be killed directly by their enemies on the battlefield. More often, something else... something from within... brings about their final end. I wonder if Many-Times-Burned was really so fortunate as to be killed by its enemies. It had not been favored by fortune in the past. I suppose we can only hope that it was, in the end, so lucky as to be defeated by what stood before it and not what stood behind it.
Lizzie
I'm curious to know more about the Second Tragedy and the sides. Bladetail is beautiful, especially it's halo.
Solus
Amazing artwork! I love bladetail's backstory too, though it does make me wonder how the humans were able to finally kill MTB
