The movements of the stars and heavenly spheres are the music of ultimate reality. Through their shining and spinning, the fundamental rhythm manifests within all phenomenon and reflects the intent of the Heavens themselves. Caught between the force of expression and its mark, those that dance are the bridge between the most numinous and the beating flesh that is the physical body itself. Through the gestures of grace and frenzy, the dancer displays the arc of becoming, being, and destruction in a rapid and terrible cycle.
As performance, the expressed form is directly relatable as all bodies are common to one another. As ritual intent, the form is savage and ancient, capable of the most inhuman brutality wrought with the hammer of the human shape itself.
In the City of Pillars we were the sacred instrument of the temples. Between the passionless prayer-lines of the magi, we were the dancing hands that beckoned with needful intent
the powers that reveal our magic. I was the master of these postures and gestures and I remain the fleeting embodiment of divine lightning. The others called me Thunder Cage. To their eyes, my spinning and leaping were as the crushing march of a storm that had become bound within a prison of skin. I am this tempest of fury and grace and my crook and scepter are the becoming and unbecoming of heaven’s heart.
In the days of the latter aeonic cycles, our house is perhaps the most hidden and ephemeral. Although man is still driven to express his abandon though my wordless language, the sacred rite of the arcane choreographies are utterly lost except to a hidden, eccentric few. It is unlikely that those forms will spread across the earth as they did in the ancient days, but if one looks into the suffering heart of those who serve us, the steps of annihilation and form are laid bare.
The Master: The dances of Kehetkhat express the underpinnings of the name, the dynamic mystery that
conceals the hidden magic of meaning’s violence. They are the vacillations of repose, stirring, ecstasy, and frenzy that form the volatile heart of every act of sex and war since the beginning of time. The use of external mediums of language and pigment are renounced for the discipline of the bones, muscles, and flesh; the Dancer beats against his chosen
Deceived as a wave of molten metal crashes upon a shore of dry parchment. Stripping away the refined layers of dialectic and linguistic interpretation, those who dance become the thousand-faceted mirror of all selves, immediate and exposed. If the
Deceived of Kehetkhat do not submit, the mewling remains of the lesser spirit will be subjugated through relentless
nightmare visions that express the master’s discontent.
The unforgiving lathe of time has worn away much of that fervor that defined the Dancer’s
guild. The haunted secrets of their master form a tale of reckless indulgence and unwavering devotion twisted into a dreadful enslavement to the will of an unrelenting predator.
Nonetheless, the strangest mercy of Kehetkhat’s nature is his lack of interest in controlling the more rarified functions of the mind. The occurrence of complex psychotic qualities and that vacant, will-blasted affect of the more intellectually destined Deceived is rare among the Dancer’s few as it is their bodies and actions over which he demands uncontested sovereignty. There is often an unsettling contrast between a Dancer’s mental and physical displays.
The permutations of Kehetkhat seek to empty the self, abandoning individualized notions of freedom, so that they may more readily serve as bounding, twirling prisms that express the intent of the stars that burn as he does. That commitment is as nectar upon his lips and so indulgence in trances, ecstatic rites, and dangerous endeavor are frequently the practice found within his temples.
Stereotypes
The Philosopher: The clear and perfect rain falls upon the mountaintops and travels through trenches of dirt and stone before it reaches the river. By the time it arrives, it no longer resembles the crystal drops upon the peak.
The Poet: Like catching fire in a net, all words fail to grasp the true and unseen star. All these mystics do is cast a glass sphere around the infinite, revealing nothing.
The Musician: We are the Nile’s bed and they are its waters. Without our expression, the cosmic vapor of their work is lost to the void. Through us, their golden notes are given life in the realm of hard matter.
The Painter: Form with vigor, like bones frozen in stone. The absolute stars themselves would be lies without the truth of course and aim.
The Singer: The incantations of their chorus are carried through the passages of the unseen and snare the spells and realizations of the unmade world.
Although they intone the names, we become them.
The Keeper: There can be no doubt that our masters are of the same blood and that what we seek to harness is the same — one within, one without.
The Arisen: If form follows function, it is better their perfect Irem never was.
Shuankhsen: To feed the deepest self to the darkest force for the bounty of becoming is a path well known to us. But to be undone? Heresy.
Vain and lecherous, Kehetkhat vacillates between states of extreme narcissism manifesting through a predatory fantasy of self-indulgence and a bottomless, destructive nihilistic abandon that cannot be reasoned with. Shifting between a wide-open state of sensate submission and a coldly empty vessel of blood-minded aggression, those who serve Kehetkhat know his passing will quickly burn away all remaining sense of self and leave a gleaming husk that serves as his throne in the world of blood and skin.
It is important to understand that by many accounts, despite the physical aggression of those who claim this temakh (especially when in the throes of their art), the adept is a perfect, unstoppable steed rather than a commanding rider — moved by the direction of something mighty and unseen that does not require a refined mind, but rather a powerful horse to display its rider’s tyrannical and vicious power.
Names: The Thundering Cage, the Vessel of Celestial Motion
Adaptation: The art of dance in its modern forms causes great divisions in the ranks of Kehetkhat’s mummies. The so-called higher forms of fine dance in all its choreographed form is nearest in its notions to the ritual movements and carefully constructed routines that these mummies first knew. The Dancer believes that the secret to sublime mastery of his art lies in the mummy’s capacity for total surrender to the temakh’s force. The beginner and intermediate internalize the techniques until they are deeply embedded in muscle memory, as inherent as breathing. Once attained, the mummy gives up her own hold so that her form becomes an instrument of her master’s perfect understanding. This method creates powerful mummies that may skillfully apprehend the seba of their temakh (albeit at the expense of anything they once considered an individuated self).
For those who wish to embody their own vision rather than that of the great master, there is confusion and hardship. Even if the temakh’s command is subverted, the mummy encounters unimaginable difficulty as to command and follow simultaneously creates an outcome that most often results in madness or mediocrity. The mummies that do manage to overcome the terrible obstacles of this predicament often become figures of incredible renown even outside of their personal cults.
The being that calls itself Saahrada cultivated such mastery while imprisoned in darkness for aeons. She has since become one of Kehetkhat’s most fanatically devoted disciples.
Cult: The Dancer’s myriad agents are utterly disparate insofar as the institutions over which they hold sway. In the case of those who cleave close to Kehetkhat’s will, such cults shepherd long lineages of performers as to give
rise to legendary prodigies that unswervingly abide in the dogma of tradition and craft, achieving mastery with no deviation from the intended direction. Cults that have this culture are draconian in their methods and tend serve as home to the dysfunctional but specialized — beings that have sacrificed their bodies and lives to satisfy their master’s most neurotic and ludicrously specific visions.
This is especially miserable as such cults are often lead by a terrible sort of monster that is mostly absent from the group’s community in the interest of increasing the demand for their artistic insights. This is similar to the fashion in which trainers starve dogs so that the reward of meat generates maximum loyalty and devotion.
Seba: The Dancer’s chosen find nourishment only in trances: the extreme peak experiences of artistic gnosis achieved by removing the content of self and temakh as
Kehetkhat
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to eliminate all obstacles between the performer’s vessel and the edicts of the stars themselves. The method for collecting these seba can take one of two forms; either by performing the art that generates the seba itself, or by being the architect of such a performance. Either way, once the trance is captured, the performance loses all appeal to onlookers. The vigor and strength of the performers seems to fade into a gray malaise and the audience becomes lost in the monotony of the movements. Deceived who come into possession of these abstractions tend to manifest incredibly violent and impulsive personalities, enjoying both their inner fire of their own creativity as well as the essence of a stolen masterpiece.
Favored Traits: Manipulation and Strength (Attributes); Athletics (Skill); Wrath (Vice)
Mandate: Shed the self and expose the naked heart.
When the dancer’s mummy spontaneously shows truth through physical expression, he recovers his full pool of Ren. Although dance is the primary method for achieving this, emotional display and less organized physical release will do. This even includes exquisite acts of sex and pleasure as well as perfect deeds of spectacular and visceral violence. These truths are generally immediate and primitive, albeit universal and undeniable.
Kehetkhat’s reward is earned through appeasing his wanton and fleshy understanding. If the mummy, through purely physical means, compels another to recklessness, indulgence, or to fulfill some other raw need of the skin, one point in any Pillar is immediately restored.
Burden: Although the Dancer’s hold drives his mummy with severe intention, even the master himself
is ruled by his art. As such, the Dancer performs to the currents of music (as well as energetic ritual ‘currents’
that may or may not be embodied in music depending on the formula) not by imposing will upon form but rather by bypassing personality and getting it out of the way of something unimaginably vast.
There is a strange divide between willpower and perseverance when it comes to the strengths and failings of Kehetkhat and his devoted. To simplify, the dancers cannot resist that which they dish out. Although their capacity to command is far greater than that possessed by others of their kind, they are also far more susceptible to such compulsions. Instinctively given to surrender in the face of impulse and direction, the dancer’s inability to resist his own desires manifests in his children as a -2 die penalty to all checks in which the arisen is being compelled to take action by magical or other supernatural means.
Expression: The many forms of Kehetkhat are gifted with The Seven Steps of Black Honey. If a mummy possesses a sympathetic Vice or Virtue, he can compel her through a series of subtle but precise gestures and secret movements, to indulge her Vice or deny her Virtue. The subject must witness the techniques (a series of mudras and bodily undulations that are practically ungraspable with the rational mind and with mundane means of perception).
If this is the case, the mummy gains a +3 bonus when attempting any form of intimidation or control upon the victim. If the victim shares both Virtue and Vice, the victim will comply with almost any command that is not blatantly suicidal or the torture or killing of loved ones.