Cielcin

The Cielcin body plan is broadly humanoid: milk-pale skin, epoccipital crests of horn sweeping back from the brow with a scale-like texture at the transition from horn to smooth white flesh, thick white hair in a long queue behind the half-formed crest, enormous jet-black eyes (insensitive to red light), twelve fingers total with claws, four slitted nostrils, and glassy translucent fangs over black gums. Their blood is black as ink, freezes in frigid air, and is described as poisonous to grass when it soaks into the ground; Dorayaica's blood was quicksilver. They have two hearts. They stand approximately seven to nine feet tall. They are highly sensitive to light — shielding their eyes with long-fingered hands when emerging into even artificial daylight. Their myelin-like nerve insulation reduces the effectiveness of phase disruptors. The vayadan-general class is a chimera of organic Cielcin flesh and mechanical augmentation.

They have no fugue crèches; they breed during interstellar transit, arriving at destinations numerically stronger than when they departed. They evolved underground. They cannot perceive the color red. Their bony hide is bred to endure vacuum. They are totally sexless — no navel, no nipples, no body hair. They have six long bent clawed toes. They move with long legs bent, bodies half-crouched. They have black tongues and four nostrils that flare to express emotions. Cielcin can survive in hard vacuum without a pressure suit; their hair floats freely in vacuum. They require a mask to supply air. Their laughter sounds like a thin, high wail indistinguishable from distress to human ears. They cannot wipe their own faces when restrained. A Cielcin's jaw can unhinge so that its teeth angle forward and protrude past its lips; Cielcin can extend and retract their teeth, collapsing them back into something resembling a flat human-like face. Cielcin bones are like glass, with marrow that can replace blood. They are more physically durable than humans, surviving explosive blasts that would kill a human. Their ears are sunken holes like a lizard's, yet they hear more sharply than humans.

Worldships siphon hydrogen and helium from gas giants, separating them to use helium in fusion reactors and running hydrogen through accelerators to produce antihydrogen for warp. Worldships make refueling stops lasting years. Worldships require hours and days to reach warp readiness due to immense mass but can push to relativistic velocities while fleeing. A worldship falling from orbit destroys a planet. Worldships can be used as warp-speed weapons — an object traveling at superluminal speed rides a wave in spacetime, and because there is no difference between a bend in spacetime and gravity, the gravity wave from a passing worldship tears apart human ships. The Cielcin fleet at Gododdin numbered approximately 1,700 worldships. Dorayaica's infant child is described as a massive creature as large as a bull elephant, with a head large as a person and mouth wide enough to swallow a person whole, with very short horns.

Reproduction: they are hermaphroditic, parthenogenetic, with akaranta (active) and ietumna (passive) roles. A gravid Cielcin can implant a self-made embryo in another species member or foreign organism; the host's genetic makeup modifies the fetus through 'conjugation.' Females (or superior partners) can form children and then implant the gravid state into a subordinate partner. In normal births, the fetus forms a sac described as black-veined and gold, nearly two feet from end to end, hanging from the mother's body and putting out nematodes — thin, ciliated umbilical cords — that attach to the host for nourishment. At birth, the sac is torn open with a talon. The newborn is born blind, with milk-blue clouded eyes, long and spindle-legged, terribly thin, with no horns at birth and black hair behind the half-formed crest, and six fingers. Infants take their first steps as soon as they have finished their first meal. They mature rapidly: within about one year they stand nearly as tall as a human adult. Children are not named at birth; the child is expected to find its name by what it does. There is no Cielcin word for hope. Parthenogenesis in foreign organisms is considered a mark of shame reserved for the very lowest status Cielcin who have no slaves to serve as hosts. The ritual of consuming a dead companion is called Eka, reflecting a belief that the dead mate belongs to the survivor.

The Cielcin have a distinct spoken and written language. Their ritual language is an archaic form from the time of Elu with different phonology — the trill-to-fricative transition (R to H) is a non-Cielcin sound surviving in the old tongue. Their language has two grammatical modes: akaranta (active, performing entities) and ietumna (passive). These categories do not map onto human gender but stand at right angles to it. Their spoken language uses hard, grating consonants. Yukajjimn means vermin (applied to humans as a slur, meaning 'rats'). 'Petunnaa' means fall back or retreat. 'Ijanammaa' means hold. 'Vaanan' means within; 'iagga' means go. There is no Cielcin word for yes; affirmation is expressed by describing the action. Denial is 'bashanda.' 'Ba-eka' means 'mine.' 'Eijana' is the Cielcin word for the Irchtani. 'Darathare bi ti-darathare bi ush' means 'three lives for three lives.' The greeting 'Ba-Aeta-doh' addresses a supreme lord. Cielcin submission is expressed by pressing the ear to the floor or lifting the chin. Their salute to a superior involves baring the throat. 'Udatssa' means farewell. 'Paqqaa' means eat; 'biqqaa' means stop/halt; 'bayarraa o-totajun' means cut them off; 'junne' means kneel/submission/peace; 'daktaru' means clemency (the mercy of submission). 'Velnun' (war-chant) means 'he comes.' The name 'Cielcin' (Cielcin) means 'godsborne' in their own language; before Elu gave them their name and identity, no one knows what they were called. The Cielcin word for their spirit realm is Iazyr Kulah. Their language includes the phrase 'Ekayu aticielu wo' (I am not just anyone).

Their written script, Udaritanu, is their only artwork — nonlinear calligraphy (pictorial clusters of circular anaglyphs whose meaning is conveyed by relative position and size of marks) adapted from the Quiet's anaglyphs, worn on their capes and armor. Their formal language is not a single tongue but multiple, with words referring to old and rarely remembered dialects. They communicate using gestures as well as words. The Cielcin language was first decoded by scholiasts and lay interpreters working with prisoners; Orphan claims its mother was the first to break Cielcin speech and that human knowledge of the language derived from Vorgossos.

Cielcin society is organized around the aeta (chieftain-prince), a term with etymological connections to prince, maker, owner, and master. The vayadayan are slaves — all Cielcin who are not Aeta are slaves. All Cielcin belong to an aeta. Only a baetan — a storyteller, keeper of the people's sacred past and traditions (the word means a mountain's root rather than a tree's) — recounts tales to the aeta; fighters tell events to the baetan, who tells them to the aeta. A baetan belongs to its master and people and to no others; if it is defiled, its people are defiled. The concept of hasimnka denotes an untouchable caste — those who belong to no scianda, own no one, and are most unclean; merchants fall into this category. Ndaktu is a formal mercy-killing obligation requiring the person who caused dishonor to end it. Returning home permanently injured constitutes disgrace. The concept of kasamnte means nothing — the lowest social valuation. The masculine pronoun o-kousun is grammatically anomalous when used for an aeta. Uidyryu means unclean (serving multiple masters). The term ushan belu (beloved) is reserved between an aeta and its vayadayan. The word akrana denotes a personal bond of master/lover/superior distinct from the hierarchical aeta relationship.

Clan structure involves thirteen surviving blood-clans (itani), each tracing lineage through branchings (uatanyr or uatanyya) from one of Elu's original clan-chiefs. A branching occurs when a dynasty falls through violence and fractures into successor lines — each fracture is counted and numbered. Syriani is of the Eighteenth Branching of the House of Zahaka. The archaic word for blood, izhkurrah, differs from the common word ikurran and is used to claim hereditary descent from Elu. Ritual law forbids aeta from slaying aeta within Elu's temple — violation results in blood debt and the attainting of an entire clan-line. Submission rituals include prostrating face-down, crawling backward without rising, throat-baring, and allowing the dominant party to step upon the face or shoulder. Approximately seventeen hundred blood-clan princes gathered at the Aetavanni in Akterumu — the largest Cielcin gathering in history — before being massacred by Dorayaica's human allies.

The title Aeta Ba-Aetane (Prince of Princes) has not been held since Elu brought the Cielcin to the stars. The title Shiomu Elusha means Prophet and King. Dorayaica holds both titles and is in the process of becoming a higher-dimensional Watcher organism (the Izhkurrah — the Blood of Elu). The scions of Dorayaica's court wear bands of gold and golden rings on their horns and arms.

Their migratory fleets, called scianda, each average approximately ten million individuals. Worldships are called oscianduru. They use hollowed-out asteroids as habitats, building deep and in layers rather than in open rotating cylinders. They do not build upward as humans do; they burrow downward. Their ship interiors are cave-like tunnels of rough chiseled stone, rounded, ribbed, and undulating, following non-Euclidean patterns with floors that rise and fall in waves. Interior spaces include textile factories where alien worm-like creatures produce silk, communal dwelling chambers with no chairs or cushions, and holds used to store captured ships.

They abjure firearms traditionally, carrying crude blades and cudgels, though Dorayaica's forces have adopted personal shields and other Extrasolarian technology. They fight using nahute — toothed mechanical serpent drones of steel whose fanged drill-bits chew through armor and flesh, commanded by radio frequency and can be killed by computer sorcery. They use white ceramic swords (also described as bone-colored scimitar swords, zirconium-pointed, hooked and milky, requiring two hands to wield). Their siege towers are dark towers roughly a hundred feet high dropped from Class-8 ships. They have a coteliho (ceremonial herald) carrying a broken-circle and six-fingered-hand staff. Their banners are deep blue displaying the clawed White Hand. Their war-chant 'Velnun' means 'he comes.' Berserker tactics include charging on all fours with horns lowered in confined spaces; using shielded berserkers as a ram in formation; sacrificing their own boarders when tactically advantageous. Their war cry activates something ancestral in human soldiers who hear it. The Cielcin also deploy millions of missiles and use their worldships as warp-speed weapons.

The dominance-submission dynamic requires a dominant to place a foot upon the bared back of the head of the submissive, where coarse white hair grows behind the horned epoccipital crest. Cielcin subordinates are called slaves by their commanders. Among the Cielcin, there are no equals. They have no concept of peace — their idea of peace is humanity destroyed. By Cielcin law, killing a commander confers the title Aeta on the conqueror: by killing Aranata, Hadrian became Aeta ba-Yukajjimn (the Rat King).

They do not cook their meat, preferring to age it — rotting passes for cookery, rooted in fuel scarcity of their cave-dwelling origins. They eat the flesh of dead enemies in battle. Retrospective accounts describe behaviors including Cielcin who served humans and Cielcin alike plated and served at table, slaves mutilated for the sake of art, partners maimed as a mark of status, and the Black Feast marking the coronation of their dark lord — behaviors described as natural rather than evil to the Cielcin, the product of a fundamentally alien nature. They have held the ISV Merciless captive as a food supply, systematically pulling sleeping soldiers from fugue pods. They constructed a twenty-foot monument of hundreds of human skulls in the ship's cubiculum, intricately bound with alien silk and metal rods and decorated with Cielcin glyphs. They have not been found to establish planetbound colonies. Their color perception differs from humans — what appears black to human eyes may bear hidden patterns in ultraviolet visible only to Cielcin. They cannot perceive the color red. Warriors compose poems to their scimitars. Baetayan carve their histories on palace walls. The court assembled in a cavern on Dharan-Tun numbered in the millions. The Cielcin name for their spirit realm is Iazyr Kulah.

The Cielcin were uplifted by the Watcher Elu, who taught them to build ships and weapons and turned them into an army; before Elu, they were small creatures found by Miudanar beside poisoned water. Kharn Sagara gave them faster-than-light communications approximately a thousand years before the narrative — telegraph devices each no larger than a coffin with an enclosed antimatter reactor core — finding them as scattered, divided, aimless nomadic tribes; Sagara covertly installed a second secret telegraph in each device to monitor all Cielcin communications. Their religion centers on the Watchers, whom they call Caihanarin or Genanarin, and whom they call the Watchers or gods; Cielcin priests offer sacrifices at altars of bone to pale, boneless entities that slither from dark portals. The religious canon (baetayan) teaches that Utannash is false. The Cielcin consider themselves the Dedim (the Second), having developed on a former Vaiartu colony world, calling the Vaiartu the Enar (the First). The Cielcin have worshipped the Watchers since the beginning, before humanity left Old Earth. They have been actively searching for living Watcher worlds for thousands of years. Hadrian reflects that the Cielcin have lived under the Watchers for tens of thousands of years — more than a thousand generations — and that this co-evolution has made them what they are, removing their capacity to choose freely. Ramanthanu is described as the first of its kind to turn away from Cielcin darkness. The rite of Eka — consuming a dead companion — reflects a belief that the dead mate belongs to the survivor. The Cielcin word for their spirit realm is Iazyr Kulah. Children in human settlements play a game called 'Playing Pale' in which they wear antlers or paper horns to represent Cielcin.

The Cielcin first attacked a colonial fort at the edge of the Marinus Veil in ISD 15792 — the Battle of Cressgard — sending word across the Imperium. They have been at war with the Sollan Empire since, taking nine hundred ninety-eight systems and sixty billion lives. Their homeworld Se Vattayu is described as gone.

Before Sagara's intervention approximately a thousand years before the narrative, the Cielcin were scattered, divided, aimless nomadic tribes. The Watcher Elu uplifted them, teaching them to build ships and weapons and turning them into an army. In Miudanar's memories, the Cielcin are identified as the descendants of small creatures by poisoned water that Miudanar found and shaped, calling them his own people. After Elu's empire fell, the Cielcin turned on one another across the millennia until encountering humanity at Cressgard.

Kharn Sagara traded with the Cielcin for five hundred years before official first contact and gave them faster-than-light communications approximately a thousand years before the narrative, allowing them to unite from scattered nomadic tribes. Sagara covertly monitored all Cielcin communications and was prepared to destroy them if necessary — her alliance was strategic rather than sincere.

The Cielcin have raided and razed colonies across the frontier, including Bannatia, Lycia, Idun, Tyras, Rustam, Carteia, and Marinus. They sacked Suren (Rustam), killing approximately two million. They attacked Carteia approximately twenty years before the final events, killing approximately ninety percent of the population. Grand Vayadan Vati Inamna commanded the fleet that attacked Nessus. Dorayaica consolidated sole rule as Shiomu Elusha after a neurotoxic gas killed all assembled princes at the Aetavanni on Eue. Dorayaica deployed seven worldships at Siraganon and Perfugium, destroying more than a hundred Imperial ships. They deployed thirty-two worldships against Nessus. They destroyed Forum with five hundred worldships. They have been dormant for approximately a century; their last recorded attack before the silence was the raid on Dakara in which two worldships made off with an estimated twenty million people.

At Gododdin, the Cielcin fleet of approximately 1,700 worldships employed a new tactic: driving their worldships at full warp through the assembled Imperial fleet, using gravity waves to tear apart human ships. They destroyed Gododdin by driving a worldship into the planet at warp. Nine Cielcin worldships were destroyed at Danu — the largest single victory humanity had ever struck against the Pale. The fleet was largely destroyed by the supernova at Gododdin, along with the Watchers Miudanar and Ushara. A few survivors remain — outrider clans deployed to other systems and recusant clans who refused the Prophet's call — but their numbers are few and they are hunted by the Emperor's forces. In later years Cielcin are seen in chains and prison camps on half a hundred worlds, made to labor as humans were made to labor by them. Hadrian's final words state that his fight with the Cielcin is over and finished.

Makisomn was executed at the Borosevo Colosso on Emesh. Uvanari is the captain of the Cielcin raiding party that crashed on Emesh; it is capable of fighting at full speed immediately after prolonged torture and blood loss. Tanaran is baetan to Aranata Otiolo, held frozen aboard the Balmung; it recited a liturgical account of the Watchers guiding the Cielcin underground. Etanitari, Oanatoro, and Svatarom are among the Emesh survivors held frozen on the Balmung. Aranata Otiolo is Aeta of the Itani Otiolo clan; it led the assault on the Imperial delegation at the Demiurge and was killed; it once hinted to Hadrian that it was over a thousand years old; it carried and birthed a child named Nobuta, making it ietumna in that role despite being akaranta in authority. Ulurani is a Cielcin prince killed by Hadrian in single combat at Aptucca. Syriani Dorayaica is Aeta Ba-Aetane and Shiomu Elusha (Prophet-King, Scourge of Earth), of the Eighteenth Branching of the House of Zahaka; its blood is quicksilver rather than black; it has been in the process of becoming a higher-dimensional Watcher organism (the Izhkurrah — the Blood of Elu); it studied and disassembled human swords to forge its own blade; it is described as more cunning than any other Cielcin prince. Iubalu is a vayadan-general chimera fusing organic Cielcin flesh with mechanical augmentation, serving Dorayaica; its badge of a six-fingered hand is described as alien to standard Cielcin cultural practice. Iedyr Yemani led the Cielcin attack on Marinus. Bahudde is a Cielcin commander active at Berenike. Hushansa is an Iedyr Yemani commanding ground forces at Perfugium; it can puppet chimeras remotely via MINOS. Vati Inamna is the Grand Vayadan who commanded the Cielcin fleet that attacked Nessus, standing on the steps of the Magnarch's palace. Attavaisa is a Cielcin commander whose forces dress in dry-bone gray armor with a cobalt clan badge rather than the black-and-white of the Prophet's army; it is described as all Cielcin, not machine-augmented. Nobuta is the child of Aranata Otiolo. Ramanthanu is a Cielcin from Sabratha who swore fealty to Hadrian at the Battle of Sabratha; it is described as the first of its kind to turn away from Cielcin darkness; it calls Hadrian 'Oranganyr ba-Utannash' (Champion of the god their fathers despised); it helped build the planetary engines of Vorgossos; it refers to its companions Bikashi, Otomno, Egazimn, and Atiamnu as its slaves. Darathama is a young Cielcin born during the narrative — Ramanthanu's child — with short round-headed horns indicating juvenile status; it matures rapidly and speaks Galactic Standard with a very human sound, having been raised among humans. Miudanar is the Watcher who uplifted the Cielcin from small creatures beside poisoned water, calling them his own people; Miudanar and Ushara are destroyed by the supernova at Gododdin.