Al igual que para el Escenario , el modelo de Crane Global ha sido en esta frecuencia el que

Look to the natural world and you will find me. Cities, whether formed of pillars or glass, are illusions. Man has made a cage of the world as he has made a cage of his mind; the cage of reason. Irem was the first of these and it has burned itself onto the soul of man. They are forever in toil to recapture a greatness unmade by our design. What is this all to prove? That life is not an ever-hastening plunge into an open grave? That death is not a doorway to a prison crafted by mad gods?

Toil scarab... and learn.

Before the first pillar of Irem was complete I knew we had consigned ourselves to a miserable fate. I wandered the wilderness hoping to keep true to the old ways, but Irem of the Pillars would always find me. Once she grew beyond the expanse of the world I had called home, I returned to the heart of the city and set about her ruin.

She had swallowed the world and it pleased me to see her choke and thrash, even if it meant my own enslavement.

And so I burrowed into the heart of the heart.

While some called me “flesh scratcher,” others called me master, but all I offered was the truth. Madmen, mystics, beggars, and oracles were my students. Adorned in rags, I probed the minds and souls of my friends and confidants.

I touched their hearts with henna-stained fingers. Why must reason be our master? What man-made reason drives the hawk or the lion? If the gods demanded cities to be built in their honor, then why did the baboon build so few?

We were the scarred vermin that sprawled before the steps of the temple and gibbered and shook as primal power possessed us and raced through the labyrinths we had inked upon our flesh. It would take more than stone gods and stolen incense to reshape the world.

Irem was a lie. And unlike the truth, lies always serve a purpose.

The Master: The end is much like the beginning. The fate of all things made is to be unmade. As much as we try to scratch some mark of our passage onto the walls of existence, all traces will fade in time. These are the revelations of Hakkar-Zozer, and despite the vertigo of the recoiling mind, they cannot be denied. All towers fall and all pits are filled, whether by dirt or by corpses. Even the difference it makes to the worms will be fleeting.

O scarab, if you must build monuments, build them within yourself.

Here is a tale within a tale of our master and teacher who had returned to Irem to pull down its pillars.

Hakkar-Zozer’s first pupils came to him and demanded to know what art was to be theirs. And they said to him: This master had claimed the banging of drums, that one the stretching of limbs, and another the snoring recitation of lies. “Teacher,” they lamented, “Let us choose an art or we shall be left with none to call our own.” To this shameful bleating, Father Scarab responded only with the story of the heron and the crocodile.

Although admirable in many ways, the heron was a picky eater and could only take from the river those fish that could fit down its delicate neck. But the crocodile’s jaws were wide. To be like the crocodile is to fill your belly by any means. The method is important, but the goal is king. For Hakkar-Zozer, this truth rules over all.

And so, as snakes and centipedes we writhed and circled in the dirt of doomed Irem. We carved, in stone and wood and bone and flesh. We drew, with gypsum and ink, deep in the caves of the earth and deep in the flesh of our adherents. As we heard the old stories of man and beast, the shadows of both circled around the fire. The fire lit by the Hive-Soul, lit by Hakkar-Zozer.

Names: The Hive-Soul, Father Scarab

Adaptation: The Keeper is both a force of conservation and a force of innovation. Hakkar-Zozer keeps true to the old ways, so that his pupils learn never to trust the false and seemingly immutable world that has risen around them. For the Keeper’s pupils, Irem has been reborn in every great city on the earth. Every skyward tower and bloated monument is an echo of the lost city. As the Sothic Turn progresses, visions and portents of a more literal rebirth of Irem abound amongst Hakkar-Zozer’s students, and they increasingly incorporate motifs from the fallen city into their work. In short, the pillars and labyrinths have returned.

For these Deceived the body has been a canvas from the start. Hakkar-Zozer’s focus on personal revelation and confronting the truths that souls bury within themselves naturally draws his students to mediums that redefine and subvert the human body in its natural state. Scarification, branding, and traditional tattoo have a special resonance for them as the Keeper centers them through the pain and sacrifice of the flesh. The inner self revealed as the false self is cut and burnt away and then the shell is further illuminated with design and color. As they move from body to body, the Keeper’s pupils often find themselves with a fresh canvas to explore and recreate, although they prefer to practice these arts on others.

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When the Keepers use installations to express themselves they often turn to materials such as bone, stone, and wood.

Attempts at incorporating fire and water have also emerged, but in the case of fire these attempts are usually limited to generating the light necessary for a short shadow play. This openness to

disparate methods has created a temakh that is unassumingly loyal to their master’s goals, but poorly equipped to gather their seba.

Cult: Most of Hakkar-Zozer’s pupils aspire to emulate their master, and though he was keeper of all that scuttled or crawled, above all else he was a teacher and truth-teller. These Deceived seem to take pleasure in building mystery cults that exult the power of nature over the civilized world. The goals of these organizations can become muddled as the Deceived can become attached to those members who have truly grasped the truth of the Keeper’s message. Those who try to avoid such entanglements by running more secular organizations often grow bored and regularly slide back into their pedagogic comfort zone.

Seba: The Keeper’s few are empowered by revelations: the sudden realization of the firmament’s prophetic content without the interposing barrier of the ordered self. The method for collecting these seba varies, but is most often gathered by stripping away a willing subject’s sense of self through a combination of demonstrative parables and trans-formative body art. A few of Hakkar-Zozer’s students have captured seba by the use of meditative inner exploration and ritual scarification. These mummies are often at odds with the master’s teachings and seek an understanding unobstructed by their intellect and reason. Once the revelation is captured, the rational memory of the insight is lost and it is immediately subsumed to strengthen the inner self. Mummies who gather revelations find it impossible to verbalize them and often prefer to remain in bemused silence, as if the world around them was little more than a flickering projection on a stained screen.

Favored Traits: Manipulation and Stamina (Attributes); Animal Ken (Skill); Gluttony (Vice)

Mandate: Reveal the truth of the natural world concealed by the conscious mind and bring forth the wisdom of the unthinking heart. When Hakkar-Zozer’s mummies use only primitive methods or natural materials to reveal the truth, they recover their full pool of Ren. Expressions that rely too heavily on language or speaking will not grant this benefit, if any explanation or narrative is used by these mummies it is often

Stereotypes

The Dancer: Our brothers. Bone, blood, and sweat…

these are the tools we like best.

The Philosopher: Through a twist of nature the mind has become sovereign, but truth lies beyond thought.

For thought is the master’s whip. It is the crutch many fear to do without.

The Poet: They come close to the fire, but their words hold them back. We fear that for them, metaphor has become the purpose instead of the tool.

The Musician: Their art bypasses reason and quivers through the channels of the flesh. At their best they loosen the chains of the mind and the howling void within answers the call.

The Painter: There is power there, but is there truth?

The Singer: When trapped in language these brothers are blind; when they shed such forms they place their hands upon the hammering heart.

The Arisen: Shadows of a lifeless statue, they stole our fire so they could continue to cavort upon a shit-smeared wall. They played their part — now we must play ours.

Shuankhsen: Death, murder, pain. We leave the poetry to others.

in the form of riddles, questions, or oblique fables acted out in the natural world or by animals. Fittingly, these mummies prefer to focus on truths related to nature or existence, but any truth that gains its authority by bypassing reason is prime fodder.

Lastly, the mummy is rewarded with a restoration of one point in any Pillar when he confronts another with the irrational side of her nature, often forcing the other to acknowledge the inherent baseness and/or futility of her own existence or point of view.

Burden: Hakkar-Zozer calls to the natural world, rejecting the sovereignty of the mind over man and the kingdom of man over beast. In his students this manifests as an intrinsic rejection of rational thought and order that is often mistaken for madness. The Keeper’s Deceived are uncomfortable around the customary trappings of logic and reason. Sitting quietly in a modern library, their borrowed skin crawls; forced to wear a suit, they cannot help but squirm as they’re draped in the trappings of man’s false authority. Hakkar-Zozer’s chosen cannot regain Pillars or Willpower for the remainder of a scene if they have spoken falsely or disguised themselves in the vestments of order or pure reason. Those who must interact with others often speak in riddles and often emulate the dress of the lowliest mortals.

Also, animals seem sensitive to the so-called burden of these mummies and often react with uncharacteristic docility in their presence. Insects, vermin, and reptiles in particular seem almost compelled to gather and pay homage to the mummy, and mortals tend to find the reaction of these beasts to the mummy particularly disconcerting.

Expression: Hakkar-Zozer embodies the The Sublime Awe of Nature, and those who walk in his footsteps can tap into the unthinking and howling pit that lies beneath the skin of reason. With subtle gestures, cryptic fables, and the flash of an intricately tattooed arm, the Keeper’s pupils can free those around him from the stifling grip of the false world constructed by the mind.

In truth, the mummy is granting them a vision of the hammering heart — a psychotropic journey through an animistic and primitive nightmare wherein the victim is in turn committing and witnessing rituals that mortals can only regard as atrocities. Those who accept their role in the natural world are at once invigorated and broken.

Victims targeted by the mummy’s expression may regain

one Willpower point, but immediately gain an active derangement of the mummy’s choosing. If a victim shares a Virtue or Vice in common with the mummy, they may regain all of their Willpower points, and in addition to gaining a derangement they regress into an unthinking state, unable to act rationally for the remainder of the scene. If a victim shares both Virtue and Vice with the mummy, the victim gains an active derangement as above, even if she refuses to regain Willpower points. Those that do choose to regain all of their Willpower are afflicted with an active derangement as before, and regress into an unthinking, waking dream state for the remainder of the story. It is possible that a victim could be awakened earlier from this state with the help of the mummy or other supernatural forces.

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Kehetkhat