S.C.M.M :V: The Crypt of the Self

And so the court swells with power. 

Brimming with energy; ignited by the fires of ancient archetypes. Like a forge of the Gods you will see your kingdom grow ever outward if you heed the words of your council, and understand that it takes more than one man to rule a truly great, and just kingdom. 

The Wolfhead King moves ever closer towards his goals, and sees the horizon expand in front of his holdfast. 

Yet for the time being his duty does not reside on the horizon. His future is his destiny, yet his future relies on the present, and the present must sometimes look to the past for the strength needed to unlock destiny. 

Fate is not a linear beast, and requires much more than a simple PAST>PRESENT>FUTURE equation. These properties double back, contradict, twist and writhe, and continue to hide from the hero until he is scorched and contorted beyond any discernible guess of the imagination. 

“Hooded, and veiled with their night-like tresses, The Fates shall bring what no prophet guesses.”

So often does the hero, or his predecessor become plagued by the past. “Why do you fear the past? You are Isildur’s heir, not Isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.” says Arwen to Aragorn. “That same blood flows through my veins” he retorts back in a concerned and defeated tone. 

Even Gods fear what the future might hold, and so Odin All-father frantically searches for the answers, and understands that fate is not a fixed entity, but a river that flows dependent on the contour of its surroundings. 

Do not fear the past nor the ghosts that lurk in the dark corners of your realm.

It is within the swarth of the Wolfhead’s keep that he will find these crypts. Step by step he must move towards the unlight of the silent realm of yesteryears. 

The crypt of the self houses many effigies still dimly lit. They stand guard over memory, and those that brought you to where you now stand.

Who were you once? Within one great man is the spirit and memories of many men he once was or wished to become. 

Those that once were -gone now they might be- deserve the King’s respect. They built what he now has.

:I am the Spear that guides the way:

:The Edge of GAR that does not sway:

Not only are you the sharpened point of all your ancestors, but you are the spearhead of the staff that has been honed by every version of yourself since birth. 

Who amongst us can say they are the same man they once were. Who amongst us is so bold to persuade other men that they have never learned from the death of some part of themselves?

Still, this is not enough. We must embrace the spirits that once were. We must look to the stone effigies within the crypt of the self. We must look into their cold lifeless eyes as the candles shudder and the halls exhale a cold wind from the outer realm. It is here we must bow our heads and remember what was.

For it is because of what was that all now is. For better or for worse, we owe those ghosts our time, and company. This is the truest council. This is the shadow court, where no archetypes but you might find the purest of refuge. 

No laws are made down there. No new ties to powerful allies can be found in the crypt of the self. Its truest bounty is the lesson of death and the promise of progression. The flowering cycle that all things are bound to. 

In order for a Hero King to exist there must be the fallen. The road to the throne is cobbled by corpses and failures that span out for miles across the desolation. We must honor them for what they achieved before we rose from their ashes tenfold. We are who they meant to become. And become they did.

Crypts have always been a temple to memory. But there is no need for us to differentiate the stone effigies of those sullen temples to the dead from those of the bountiful altars we erect in honor of the Gods.

So often the temples that man has made to house Gods become synonymous with hope for a future outcome, as crypts assume the mantle of memory. But this is the problem of lesser men.

Here in the grove of the S.C.M.M we assume all our peers to have a more refined understanding of these holy places. We do not delve into the crypts in search of anything. We do not prostrate ourselves at the knees of the Thunderer in hope he takes pity.

We go to those hallowed areas to be away from all others, and we do so to honor those parts of us that deserve honor. And those things that are still perhaps beyond us.