The Principles of the Obscure

We, who have been given the name "Dark Aesthete," hold that the time has come for all Shapers of the Art to cast off their slavish commitment to Spirit-Media, for such is an old legacy from the worlds that have come before Oun, and is not in our inherent Ounish Nature to manipulate the leavings of others. As a great teacher once said, "Do not make your home out of the rubble of your father’s."

In forging a new aesthetic for Art-Shaping, we must look to two places.

First, and most contentious, we must look to the only universal birthright of both high and low citizens of Oun: Essential Nature. It amuses us to consider that a Patrician or Matrician who, batting not an eyelash at the artificed creations that allow their Essences to return unharmed from the Gates, nor at all the infinite manifestations of conventional Shaping-Craft which allow that same Essence to persist in its Embodiment for a multiplicative number of years beyond their natural span, will recoil, eyes rolling, at the suggestion that Shaper-Artists should be allowed to mold their own Essential Natures (harming none), or to create new essences out of Oblivion (relieving them of the curse of Non-Existence). More pointedly, consider the birth of a child whose Essential Nature is marred by atonality! Are we not obligated to Re-Shape that Essence so that the child does not depart from their life? How many of us, indeed, owe our existences to such Intervention? Unless we be silenced by a cacophony of cries such as "Gentle-Craft" and "Healing-Science," let us assure any Lay-Reader that these interventions are the least gentle of all Essence-Craft! We have seen Natal Essences so misaligned and in such want of cohesion that, when the "Gentle-Craftsman" was done with them, they bore little to no resemblance to the poor, ephemeral spark that lay waning in its Shaping-Berth. Some of us have suggested — there being no greater expertise in Essential Nature than that which is found among us, if I may be so bold — that more than one Intervention has been nothing short of outright Sentience-Making itself! We understand this to be a damning accusation, but consider soberly how many Intervened "Soul-Lights" (as the vernacular would have it) are nothing more than the spontaneous and Unconscious recapitulation of the "Nascent Wholeness" the "Healing-Scientist" believes is latent within the child’s Essence? But, no, there is no such "Nascent Wholeness;" a dying and malformed Essential Nature, however tragic and seemingly in parallel with injuries and malformations of the Flesh, is in itself already whole. In Shaping it (or "Twinning" its "Coursing-Threads," if we may be indulged in technicalities), it is remade entire. Look, then, no further than your Essence-Healer’s Berth for the most radical of all Dark Aesthetes!

We reshape no natures but those we have created ourselves, those that do not enjoy existence save for the workings of our Artifice. Though it is well within the power of an accomplished Art-Shaper to create, from Oblivion, an Artificial Essence equal in all ways—in complexity, beauty, and Sentient apprehension—to spontaneously born Essences, and, further, to embody that Essence in a Flesh-Form exactly perfect in its mimicry of the "Natural" human form,  we choose not to do so! Indeed we create no sentience at all in our Arts, though some of them may approach such if viewed with an unschooled eye. Let us be clear that we make no judgment on the creation of whole Sentience (none of us blame, nor would any of us censure  or restrict any Natal-Shaper… a sentiment they do not reciprocate), but in the interest and service of our Art, we have chosen this limitation as an aggressive and forthright commitment to the uniqueness of Sentient life. Nothing that we create, it can be assured, no matter its seeming apprehension of the world or capacity of judgment, no matter its facility in movement and in the manipulations of its Secondary Artifice, bears a Sentience for which we must be concerned of its suffering or Self-Will.

Secondly, and in this regard only the most conservative and hidebound Elder Patricians and Matricians would seek our censure and lay charges of Perversion on us, we must look to the ancient Flesh-Crafters for inspiration and wisdom. Though we are quick to reassure our readers that no "Dark Aesthete" would ever Embody the admittedly brutal and tortured creations of  our predecessors, we can nevertheless learn a great deal about the creation of Fleshy Structure and the bewildering variety of Life-Forms which they created and altered as effortlessly as we draw breath. The Flesh Crafters, of course, have one glaring and startling lack in ll of their revealed knowledge: they, to all evidence, did not believe  in the existence of Essential Nature! Their art was in the manipulation of Flesh alone, and though our Historians have uncovered and Sealed Essences and Soul-Echoes from ages far older that that [Ikes Note: I believe this should be "than that". But as I have asked other I shall keep this transcription true to the original script] of our immediate predecessors, we have none such, at all, from the Flesh-Crafters themselves. Some Scholars have naively suggested—in myriad ill-conceived apologias—that the Flesh-Crafters, in so completely neglecting the study and betterment of their "Soul-Lights," and all ephemera relating to such as is found in Pastoral Religion, that there is no wonder that we have no evidence of them. These "Scholars" fall just short of decrying the Flesh-Crafters as the smitten recipients of some revengefull "God-Power," but their intent is clear. More reasonable (though still Wrong-Thinking in our view) is the idea of "Differential Attunement," which holds that for reasons unknown at the present time, the Flesh-Crafters (who in this model did indeed possess Essential Nature) bound themselves in tight proximation to some Splinter-World such that their  Essences  were drawn in , upon death by the Fete of such a place.

The truth, we believe, is much simpler; the Flesh-Crafters did not believe in Essential Nature because they did not posses it, for only those with "Soul-Lights" are concerned about them. Now it can be said that many a learned reader will balk at this statement:  we cannot imagine an Embodied Sentience that lacks Essential Nature (Sentience without essence is like unto the famous paradox of the Tower which is both moving and Un-Moving). Because we cannot imagine it, however, does not mean it is untrue. In accepting this fact — and fact it is, despite Scholarly outcry and Censure against those of us who have published on it — then we come to a fuller Understanding of the motivations of the Ancient Flesh-Crafters, as well as clearer justification for our rejection of Spirit-Media.

It lacks controversy to speak of the Flesh-Crafters as eschewing manipulations of Spirit-Media; they have many engravings clearly conceived towards the end , and they have left Living-Minds whose sole purpose seems to have been to decry Spirit-Matter all through the dark centuries between their Age and Oun’s. Owing to the famously parasitic nature of Spirit-Matter (again uncontroversial; has your Manipulatrix been Licensed and Bonded by the Gray Watch this cycle, Citizen Spirit-Worker?), and the great age and expanse of Flesh-Crafter civilization, their neglect of the former led to the complete quiescence of Spirit-Forms during their long reign.

So, two questions then: why do the "Dark Aesthetes" shun manipulations of Spirit (in rightful emulation of the towering wisdom of our predecessors, however brutal they were) while wholly embracing manipulations of Essential Nature (which was completely rejected by the Flesh-Crafters). The answers are simple and forthright: we reject manipulation of Spirit-Media because it is Conventional, Un-Original, and, in emulation of our intellectual ancestors, morally dangerous to continue to use Powers (however Re-Forged) whose Natures are so predatory and seductive in relation to our own. For evidence of the latter, we need look no further back in History that the scant decades since the unspeakable incident among the Citizens of the Southern Spire. We embrace manipulations of Essential Nature because, although the Flesh-Crafters did not possess it, we do. none of us believes for a moment that the Ancients would have rejected the exploration and manipulation of Essences — as they did Flesh — if they but had them to explore! We do have such Essential Nature, the power to explore it in all of its bewildering complexity, and the wisdom to understand it despite the prejudice and Dull-Thinking conservatism of the Governance. It is in frightful neglect of our Art, the Pre-Eminence of Ounish Shaping, and the Natural Curiosity of all Citizens, from Patrician to Gray Watchman, Art-Worker to Body-Laborer, Gate-Crafter to Spire Governor, that any of us quail at its exploration.

—Ophidius