The Unvanquished: Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, 2120
"The settlement had the records; even the simple disposition of Indians begot in time a miniscule of archive, let alone the normal litter of man's ramshackle confederation against environment -- that time and that wilderness -- in this case, a meager, fading, dogeared, uncorrelated, at times illiterate sheaf of land grants and patents and transfers and deeds and tax- and militia-rolls and bills of sale for slaves and counting-house lists of spurious currency and exchange rates, and liens and mortgages, and listed rewards for escaped or stolen Negroes and other livestock, and diary-like annotations of births and marriages and deaths and public hangings and land-auctions, accumulating slowly for those three decades in a sort of iron pirate's chest in the back of the post-office-trading-post-store, until that day thirty years later when, because of a jailbreak compounded by an ancient monster iron padlock transported a thousand miles by horseback from Carolina, the box was removed to a small new lean-to room like a wood- or tool-shed built two days ago against one outside wall of the morticed-log mud-chinked shake-down jail; and thus was born the Yoknapatawhpha County courthouse: by simple fortuity, not only less old than even the jail, but come into existence by chance and accident..."
One of Trinity's main difficulties for the beginning GM (read: me) is that it is very broad in scope. A GM can go nuts trying to keep track of global and interstellar events -- the price of a game with a theme like "Unity". But Unity doesn't necessarily have to mean "the big picture." In fact, the small picture is just as important, if not more so. So stories like Faulkner's provide one of many "counter-stories" to the global machinations of the pro xies (yawn) the galaxy-spanning war against the Aberrants (bor-ring) and the intricacies of Trinity/Order relations (ho hum).
History is important in Faulkner's world. To some characters, it is overridingly important. In the history-starved world of Trinity, this creates essentially an aching hole which must be either covered over or filled, if not with the real thing, with an acceptable substitute.
1970-2000: Late Twentieth Century
Like much of rural America, Jefferson, Mississippi suffered from theflight of wealth to the cities and the urbanization of the world. More than any war or catastrophe, nothing has ever brought Jefferson closer to being a ghost town than simple social pressures. These pressures would bring themselves to bear several times during Jefferson's development, and persist even to the present-day Trinity setting. 22nd century Jefferson is not a large city by even 20th century standards -- it pales in significance when you compare it to the overstuffed arcologies and metroplexes.
2000-2046: The Era Of The Nova
During the age of Aberrants, rural America kept its head down. Without the high population of the cities, few novas appeared -- those that did generally quickly left for the "big-time". However, this (ironically) started a small resurgence in the strength of rural communities, portrayed by the media once again as being an example of "the simpler life". (Media portrayal of small-town and small-city life has always cycled between the nostalgic and the accusatory.) Also, improvements in genetically cultured agricultural strains made it easier for the small-scale farm family to me a living, though competition from giant agribusiness firms was still fierce.
One notable exception to the "mainstreaming" of rural America was the rise of radical splinter groups who came to occupy the few remaining geographically isolated spots in North America. Some were Aberrant cults, some anti-Aberrant militia groups, some were traditional right- or left-wing militias and religious cults. Though the problem of these factions never actually reached the level of danger which politicos and executives used as an excuse to militarize the federal government, as every observer of history knows, not every fifth column is a conservative bugaboo.
It was during this time at the confluence of the Yoknapatawpha River and Stone Creek, about half a mile from the Stone Creek Bridge, that the anti-Aberrant right-wing militia known as "The Third Cavalry" or "3C" began operations. There is no Second or First Cavalry that anyone knows of, and they have chiefly exchanged their horses for skimmers now that they have "made it big". However, in the beginning, this group was not more than a small group of rather frightened families with their horses, guns, and supplies in a small prefab compound hidden in the wilderness, their traders coming into town but rarely, always attracting attention in their plain, largely unadorned gray uniforms.
2046-2061: War
"Old men had been telling young boys about wars and fighting before they had discovered how to write it down: and what petty precision to quibble about locations in space or in chronology, who to care or insist 'Now come, old man, tell the truth, did you see this? Were you really there?' Because wars are wars, the same exploding powder when there was powder, the same thrust and parry of iron when there was not -- one tale, one telling, the same as the next or the one before. So we knew a war existed; we had to believe that."
-- "Raid", 1938
It used to be that you could mark periods in Jefferson's histories by wars. Since Kuwasha erased so much of history, though, it is harder to tell how true this is, anymore.
During the war with the Aberrants, Jefferson had to cope with the flooding of the Tallahatchie River, and the massive emigration of refugees from Florida and the Blight. Rural areas attracted the farming families and migrant workers of the Midwest more than expatriate Floridians. The FSA established a refugee-processing center out by the old cemetery, under the watchful gaze of the statue of Colonel Sartoris. That center would eventually fall into official disuse, but remains inhabited even to the present day. The squatter town would eventually be built up and improved by its inhabitants slowly but surely. Today it is called Coffinton, after Wycoff, whose devastation drove the families to build it, and after the coffins still buried under the streets.
However, it is still true that when you talk about "the war" in Jefferson, you are not referring to the Aberrant war, but to the Civil War. Nobody knows much about the Civil War -- it has been stripped of almost all of its historical significance and is now the closest thing to a secular religion that the deep Southern states have. Stripped of all its significance by the passage of time, The War is a glorious cultural icon and not a real thing at all.
2057: The Return of the Chickasaw
The Chickasaw inhabited northern Mississippi prior to 1832, when they ceded their lands to the United States and were relocated to Oklahoma. As a result, there was very little contact between white settlers and Indians after 1832, despite their presence in some of Faulkner's novels and stories. When asked where he got his Indians from, Faulkner reportedly said, "I made them up." Cruel and serene, like the country they inhabit, the Chickasaw returned to Mississippi in great numbers following the eruption of the Blight. Perhaps more accustomed to hardship than the ordinary refugees, a strong resurgence of Chickasaw religion and culture has resulted in the founding of a tribal settlement about five miles west of Jefferson and made the tribe an accepted, hardworking part of Yoknapatawpha County, usually compared favorably to the Coffintown "squatters".
2061-2100: Rural Production Administration
During the fall of America, most of the "Troomers" radical enough to think of themselves as such went west to join the Resistance (some families may even say that they have kin who are "off at the war", though they have presumably died long ago.) This left a relatively moderate level of resistance to FSA authority among the traditionally radically insular farmland. The Rural Production Administration was founded during the urban food riots of 2095. Though the arcologies supplemented their vast needs for food with hydroponic domes and genetically-engineered food, the vast majority still came from the heartland, and after the Blight appeared to be permanent, the heartland was not producing anymore. The strain began to tell in the South, and after a few wage wars amongst the various farming families, small and large agricorps, the FSA military stepped into control and direct rural production, establishing the RPA.
The RPA is perhaps one of the most draconian and militaristic of the FSA's draconian and militaristic bureaucracies. Strict quotas and controls are enforced against all farmlands, by acre, down to the third decimal point. Across the new breadbaskets of North America, big corporations and small families alike are faced with instant nationalization, eviction, deportation, and even criminal charges for deviating in even the smallest way from the schedule of production laid out from the RPA. The RPA takes its job very seriously -- it sees failure (rightly?) as directly causing starvation in the gigantic arcologies, and the lives of the less numerous rural inhabitants just, in a mathematical sense, do not add up.
The short stint of the RPA in direct control over Yoknapatawpha County was nonetheless so devastatingly traumatic that it is still remembered with horror by citizens of all ages and social class.
2100-2121: Third Cavalry
"She told him that she was forty one years old and that she had been born in the house yonder and had lived there ever since. That she had never been away from Jefferson for a longer period than six months at any time and these only at wide intervals filled with homesickness for the sheer boards and nails, the earth and trees and shrubs, which composed the place which was a foreign land to her and her people."
-- Light in August, 1932
In 2100, there was a change in the Provisional Presidency occasioned by corporate concerns that military programs were being inefficiently managed. One of the many agencies targeted was the RPA, which had focused overmuch on a pair of corporations that had caused a lot of trouble in the Northwest and had thrown a small scare into quite a number of other corporations. Therefore, it was determined that in many areas, the RPA would subcontract its enforcement and distribution authority to local military units. One such unit, a veteran group of the Aberrant war, was Yoknapatawpha's own Third Cavalry.
3C today operates somewhere on a level between roving bandits, medieval knights collecting the taxes of a feudal land, and particularly brutal policemen. They do not brook interference from outsiders, including the FSA military state, the RPA, outside corporations like Orgotek, and busybodies like Æon.
It should be noted that if all of the player characters are psions, they will likely make up about a third of the psions in the county and have a poweful influence over the actions of their Order (and Æon) in the area. The important thing about this is that they need not be particularly powerful psions (in fact, it may be counterproductive in a lot of ways if they are). They should be as close to the ordinary population as they can, so as to gain acceptance and loyalty.
What attracted Æon's attention about the Third Cavalry was that unlike other militia companies given control of RPA districts, 3C has more or less been a native to the area for almost a century. They also distinguished themselves in the Florida conflict -- they have little bravado and are very efficient.
There are also some small signs of liberalization -- a willingness among some to give the RPA some trouble instead of the farmers if production is low one week, a stringent code of honor protecting women and children so strong that no 3C member has ever broken it and lived, and the slowly growing potential of re-establishing the traditional American legal system (see below). However, the amount of power focused in 3C is tremendously large, and they will be unwilling to give it up willingly without some extremely good reasons, and definitely under no circumstances quickly.
Yoknapatawpha is therefore seen as a prime area for Æon involvement. If 3C could be wholly reformed and rehabilitated without alerting their FSA handlers, the county could be used as the seed by which reforms could be spread throughout the South. Not everyone in Æon sees this as a realistic goal -- some that see it as realistic estimate that it will take nearly 20 years to accomplish, an unacceptable timeframe for freeing the people of North America from the iron grip of the FSA. Despite these misgivings, Æon (along with the orders, as noted above) has devoted some resources to what is essentially a battle of public relations.
The Third Cavalry: If you don't look too closely, 3C looks like any other FSA military unit. It is grossly over-equipped to deal with the relatively low-end kind of crime that is generally practiced in the area. It gets its pay and provisioning by essentially stealing it from the populace at gunpoint (under the Emergency Taxation Provisions, this is legal), and it spends most of its time trying to cook up new ways to impose their will on the populace. However, on further examination, this is found to be an inaccurate picture. 3C is made up almost entirely of locals -- it is hard to be too abusive to someone who you grew up with for your whole life. Many of 3C have become uncomfortable with enforcing the more arbitrary of the FSA's laws and tend to enforce them disproportionately against outsiders.
I have taken much of this geographical information from the excellent Faulkner Glossary Site. The rest I have taken from the map printed in the frontispiece of the Vintage Library's "Essential Faulkner" collection. I have tried to update the information to 2120 without altering it too much -- the constancy of the world is also a theme of Faulkner's. There should be a lot of 2120 that is familiar to the twentieth century player, little details that remind them of how little things have changed. Take the time to describe these details -- conversely, give your players the time to describe what their characters think and do, in whatever detail they like and without rushing them. Faulkner's prose moves slowly: yours can too.
"Beat Two": The southeastern section of Yoknapatawpha County, where the hamlet of Frenchman's Bend is located. The "Beat" language of describing the length of the Yoknapatawpha (it is never used on the Tallahatchie) is one way in which locals are able to identify which people are outsiders and which aren't. (The term has fallen into disuse outside the county. The official term is the "French Section".)
Frenchman's Bend: A small rural settlement in southeastern Yoknapatawpha County, located on the Yoknapatawpha River, twenty miles southeast of Jefferson, in the county division known as "Beat Two." It is the area indicated by the title of The Hamlet, where it is described as "a section of rich river-bottom country ... Hill-cradled and remote, definite yet without boundaries, straddling into two counties and owning allegiance to neither." According to Gavin Stevens in Intruder in the Dust, "in the valleys along the rivers, the broad rich easy land where a man can raise something he can sell openly in daylight, the people named Littlejohn and Greenleaf and Armstead and Millingham and Bookwright [lived]." The area was named Frenchman's Bend because all the land there had once been owned by Louis Grenier, one of the first settlers in the county, and the first slave owner and planter there.
Old Frenchman's Place, The: The name given to the plantation originally established by Louis Grenier in southeastern Yoknapatawpha County, in the area later known as Frenchman's Bend. According to The Hamlet, it originally consisted of an enormous house (featuring oak floors, walnut newel posts and stair spindles), stables, slave quarters, and gardens, and local legend held that Grenier had buried his money somewhere on the property when General Grant crossed through the area during his Vicksburg campaign during the Civil War. The house was destroyed in a refugee's food riot in 2064, but the legend persists that silver and gold coins are buried somewhere on the extensive grounds.
"The Cave": A cave, about 130 miles from Yoknapatawpha County. Described as "a black hole in the hill which the spoor of wild creatures merely approached and then turned away and which no dog could even be beaten to enter," the cave was used as a means of testing young Indians' "courage to become men, because it had been known among the People from a long time ago that the sound of a whisper or even the disturbed air of a sudden movement would bring parts of the roof down." For example, it became the object of Ikkemotubbe and David Hogganbeck's competition for Herman Basket's sister: whoever reached the cave first, fired a pistol inside the cave, and made it out safely would win her hand. This crumbling cave has become one of the spiritual (but definitely not geographic) centers of the resurgent Chickasaw nativist movement.
Coffintown: The local name for the refugee settlements near and on the site of the old cemetery. Though the refugees have tried to keep the old cemetery in as good a condition as they can, their crushing poverty continues to keep them from being able to advance in the consumerist society of the FSA.
Coon Bridge: A bridge on the Tallahatchie River, north of Jefferson. Built by a grant from the Vallejo Trust.
Crossman County: A county bordering Yoknapatawpha County, probably to the east, based apparently on the real Pontotoc County, Mississippi. It has two small settlements near the border, Glasgow and Hollymount.
Grenier County: A neighboring county to Yoknapatawpha County.
Harrykin (Hurricane) Creek: The common local way of pronouncing the name of a creek running through the Sartoris Division.
Haven Hill: A country crossroad village about 30 miles from Frenchman's Bend.
Hickahala Bottom: A low, broad valley near Sartoris Division, covered in low brush, unsuitable for agricultural use and largely still wild.
Hog Bayou: A small agricultural community in the midst of a swamp.
Hoke's: A small settlement and Agricultural Deployment Center. At one point in the distant past, it consisted of: "a sawmill and comissary and two stores and a loading-chute on a sidetrack from the main [railroad] line" that leads to Memphis. The railroad line has been re-opened with a high-speed freight-tram, to help ease the burden on Yoknapatawpha County's ancient, crumbling roadways.
Holston House: The first hotel in Jefferson, established by Alexander Holston. It is mentioned frequently in novels and short stories. It still exists, though the building is not the original building.
Hurricane Bottoms: A swamp four miles from Jefferson.
Inverness: A small settlement near Frenchman's Bend.
Jefferson: The county seat of Yoknapatawpha County and situated in almost the exact geographic center of the county, about seventy-five miles southeast of Memphis. The town originated around 1800 as a Chickasaw Agency trading post, the first agent at which was Doctor Samuel Habersham; during the town's early years it was called "Habersham's" or "Habersham." In 1833, the community was named "Jefferson" after the mail rider Thomas Jefferson Pettigrew to appease him for taking the lock from his mail-pouch to put on the door of the jail. There is a southward-looking statue of a Confederate soldier before the county courthouse. According to Faulkner, Jefferson is located about forty miles from Oxford, Mississippi, home of the University of Mississippi.
Memphis Junction: A town to the north of Yoknapatawpha County.
New Hope: A small settlement near Frenchman's Bend.
Nine Mile Branch Bridge: A bridge on the road between Beat Four and Jefferson.
Okatoba County: The county directly south of Yoknapatawpha County, whose county seat is Mottstown, based on the real Yalobusha County, Mississippi, which is south of the western half of Lafayette County (the principal model for Yoknapatawpha County). Apparently, Okatoba County at one time enveloped all or part of what was later Yoknapatawpha County.
Renfro: A town not far from Jefferson.
Sutpen's Hundred: The name locals give to Sutpen Division, to the northwest of Jefferson.
Tallahatchie River: An actual river in Lafayette County, Mississippi (where Faulkner lived), and the northern border of Yoknapatawpha County. According to the map included in Absalom, Absalom!, the river runs through a section of Issetibbeha's Chickasaw Grant. Fishing rights on the Tallahatchie is one of the main goals of the revitalized Chickasaw tribe.
Yoknapatawpha County: Pronounced "Yok nuh puh TAW fuh." A county in northern Mississippi, the setting for most of William Faulkner's novels and short stories, and patterned upon Faulkner's actual home in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Its county seat is Jefferson. It is bounded on the north by the Tallahatchie River (an actual river in Mississippi) and its southern boundary is the Yoknapatawpha River. It consists of 2,400 square miles, the eastern half of which is pine hill country. In 1936, the county's population was 15,611, of which 6,298 were white and 9,313 were black. The same approximate racial divisions exist in 2120, though the county's population has swelled to approximately three times that size and now includes about five percent Chickasaw and two percent Puerto Rican (refugees from Florida). According to Faulkner, Yoknapatawpha means "water flowing slow through the flatland."
The county seat of Jefferson lies in the dead center of the county, and is the intersection of major roads to the north (towards "Memphis Junction"), south (towards "Mottstown"), east, and west, with additional roads leading northwest toward Sutpen's Hundred, northeast (MacCallum Division), and southeast, where the hamlet of Frenchman's Bend lies along the Yoknapatawpha River.
Yoknapatawpha River: The southern boundary of Yoknapatawpha County. The hamlet of Frenchman's Bend is located along the river. Slaves from the first plantation in the area straightened a nearly ten-mile stretch of the river to prevent flooding. Despite these efforts, the river often floods, washing out all but the most modern bridges.
Near Sutpen's Corner, 10-year-old Norman Schmid erupts and becomes a fairly powerful Aberrant. He uses his new godlike powers to shape the world to his 10-year-old will. The Third Cavalry and the people of Jefferson lay aside their differences to kill Norman, which they do, in a pitched battle of about a dozen casualties. This is all over before the player characters enter the scene.
Norman's body fell in a cornfield out behind his family's farm, and a little mini-Blight of Taint spread around it and where his plasma-burst powers left scars across the roads and town. The crows won't come near his body, and it isn't decaying. So where will the Aberrant be buried?
Norman's parents would like him to be buried up in the Old Cemetery of Jefferson, in the family plot, but the idea of burying an Aberrant under the benevolent gaze of Colonel Sartoris and within sight of the Coffintown slums grates on the feelings of both influential Jefferson citizens and Coffintown Blight refugees.
Æon would of course like to take Norman's body for testing to Switzerland, though most locals will also think this is a bad idea. Their distrust of Æon combined with their feeling that whatever Norman became, he was on some level still a "local boy" and does not deserve to be cut up by a bunch of graverobbing vitakinetics. Appeals to "Unity" will especially fall upon deaf ears, because what "Unity" means to Yoknapatawpha is that the County helps Æon and Æon gives a big lot of grief in return. The FSA, if it eventually finds out about the fight (communication is poor between the Third Cavalry and the FSA's research division, since the former inaccurately see the latter as a bunch of untrustworthy city eggheads and the latter inaccurately see the former as a bunch of bumpkin savages), will also want the body for testing, though it will run into much the same problem as Æon.
The Third Cavalry would like to see him carried as a trophy back to their headquarters and displayed as a "warning" there. On one level, Æon would almost like to see this as a second choice -- it might provoke further Aberrant attacks on the Third and would alienate the locals still further. On the other hand, locally-posted psions are unlikely to want to support this grisly measure. Norman's parents are likely to vocally oppose it, and the locals are likely to be uncomfortable enough with it that the Third will have to think seriously about it.
There are a substantial number of other factions. Some will want his body buried where it lay. Some will want him cremated. Others will want him put in a coffin and floated down the Tallahatchie towards the sea. What people think of what should be done with the Aberrant's body will in many ways reflect what they believe about their own deaths and their own place in the community. The GM should select a number of options and give some thought to what the player characters believe about death and what comes after.
Reference Work: "The Sound And The Fury"
The Coffintown slums are the ghettos of Jefferson -- as such they tend to bear the brunt of 3C's more brutal physical excesses. The First Church of Coffintown, run by a discredtied clergyman, is based right along the edge, not far from the clinic. The clergyman's reputation used to be very solid in Jefferson and he had a very large congregation, but he was ruined by rumor and scandal.
An important Coffintown leader and organizer is beaten and exiled from Jefferson by 3C, but the Church continues to sneak the organizer across the city limits to attend services. A conflict begins to grow between 3C and the church. Some members of 3C are uncomfortable with keeping a man from worhship -- others think the church is flaunting 3C's authority. Some members of the church think it would be best to avoid the conflict, others believe the church should just move its services into the rural areas, still others welcome the opportunity to lock horns with the hated 3C. Is the clergyman seeking revenge or redemption?
Reference: "Light In August"'s Reverend Hightower
Faulkner's stories are replete with love affairs that go hideously awry, and with affairs that go awry but come out all right in the end anyway. This is not so much a plot as it is a possible subplot. Faulkner's treatment of romantic love is extremely varied. There are healthy and unhealthy love affairs. Sometimes love survives and prospers, sometimes it withers, dries out and dies, sometimes it changes into something completely different.
Love's handmaiden in Faulkner stories is Obligation. The obligations of class, family, race and sex can serve to keep love at bay or fuel its fire. A love subplot should always trigger obligations in the lovers.
I would recommend a few chapters of "Light in August", and especially the short story "An Odor of Verbena" for examples of the intertwining of love and obligation. Lest you think Faulknerian love is a dried and dessicated thing, you might read "A Rose For Emily."
A romantic subplot or at the very least, romantic elements add an intensely personal touch to Yoknaptawphan roleplay. A sweetheart may react differently upon finding out her lover is a servant of Æon or a 3C man may find his beloved is trying to change and reform his organization. Coffintown girls, they're plump and a little bruised, but they can light a fire under the oldest, richest plantation owner if there is love between them.
(Let's put all that worthless metaplot stuff to a good use, shall we?) A large event a long way away is an important element of a lot of Faulkner's stories. For example, he never wrote what you would call a traditional Civil War story, but "Raid" is perhaps one of the most tragic, funniest, and altogether moving short stories around the Civil War.
Pick some event (the return of the Upeo, the Colony's more concerted attacks, the slow closure of the Blight, the destruction of the Chitra Banhu, or whatever) and build a miniature of reactions to the event in the County, or a reflection of the events themselves. Give the PCs, or their NPC associates a stake in the outcome of the events but give them no control and little information about them -- use the big events of the world as a likeness of the little events of Yoknapatawpha.
If you are using Yoknapatawpha County as a "springboard" to get depth into your PCs before turning them loose into a "larger game world", this strategy will be doubly helpful, as it will make them keep in touch with their roots even after they leave -- if these big events are anything like the big events they remember.
Reference: "Raid"
The high-speed freight tram between Jefferson and Memphis is a favored means of transportation for those without the required passes to cross State District lines. The ordinary flow of vagrants is more or less equal in both directions -- corporate uniformity has made one place along the rail line as good as another. Though the corporate pennypinchers who are responsible for the tram complain about freeloaders, the usual practice is to look the other way: even a few dozen trammers provide such a miniscule difference in the weight of a fully-loaded multi-ton tram that nobody really cares. The RPA, of course, has a different idea.
When a great exodus begins from Memphis (perhaps on the persistent rumors of Aberrant sightings on Beale Street), the RPA begins to round them up for deportation -- bureaucratic screwups (and the total lack of proper identity papers on most of the vagrants) delay the processing of the tramps. 3C, who administrates the camp, begins to come under pressure from local farmers in need of labor to expand their own production. Although they can't actually hire out the men without running into strict RPA regulations of who can work in the fields and who can't, 3C can force the prisoners to work whenever they want.
This could be a crisis that precipitates a sea change in 3C, or it could be the one that ruins either their relative acceptance in the Yoknapatawpha community, or their power under the reorganized RPA. PCs will have to step carefully. Why are people coming down from Memphis? Is their arrival a good thing or a bad thing? What should be done for them and with them? What if they want to put down roots -- does that matter?
Remember that if a PC is an "outsider", they were once where these vagrants are.
Reference: "Seeds" by Bruce Springsteen (Okay, so I listened to music by a New Jerseyan when working on a Mississippi setting.)
"Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
"He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed; love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
"Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."
So stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Aberrants-are-superior!
I would like to, as usual, thank the Trinity mailing list at trinity@telelists.com for their helpful input and suggestions for future development. Another thank-you is due to Steven Otte for his encouragement in completing the project and hosting the html version.
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