For aeons they have wandered through black sands, down city streets, and into the lavish courts of whatever monarch man reveres for the age. Their identities concealed by masks, veils, and lustrous pigments, they are like dark chimera spawned from a nightmare or the most wondrous of dreams. Le Troupe Noir, as they are called, are a thousand things and more to those damned by luck enough to bear witness to their otherworldly performance.
The musicians and other artists that compose Le Troupe
Noir account for some of the strangest and intriguing among the Deceived movements. Although very select mortal cultists are counted among the supporting roles of the theatre company, only the Deceived themselves are actors (of which there are only four at any given time) and the most powerful among them composes and directs their surreal and magically-loaded performances. Despite this hierarchy of role, the lives of mortals among the small but elite movement is rumored to be of a much higher quality than that of other Deceived cults as all members are viewed as integral members of a tightly knit family;
albeit a mind-bendingly licentious and incestuous one.
According to the oral record of the Troupe’s long and prolific existence (contained in an odd and winding epic poem known as the “The Reverie of Meskhenet”), the movement was founded by five Deceived, each inspired by a different temakh, the most powerful of which was a Poet who bore the name Ngozi. The litany states that on the morning following the Great Betrayal, the existence of a magnificent seba became to Ngozi in a dream and filled him with the comfort of his ecstatic temakh and the nectar of inspiration poured from his lips and quill. He then told a musician, a dancer, a singer, and a philosopher of the great light that had filled him and made them swear, as the truth of it filled the eyes of each with tears as hot as blood, that they would abandon themselves and the City of Irem until the great black star was revealed and apprehended. Concealing their identities forever with black-mirrored masks, they took only their servants and tools of their art, and have wandered the Earth until this very day.
Declaring themselves entirely free of the burdens that trouble other Deceived, the members of this movement are loyal only to their mission, their art, and the alien being known as “The Playwright”. Although this being is rumored to be the very same Ngozi that once realized the purpose of the Troupe in ancient Irem, there is no mummy among the movement that would confirm such a thing (even if faced with unimaginable tortures or the most skillful of interrogations) and there is no mortal even vaguely ancient enough to confirm such a legend. Nonetheless, the Playwright seems to experience an endless, unbroken inspiration that takes shape of a mad story of dark beauty that conceals magical formula, mystical realization, and the secrets of a terrible, soul-eating darkness.
The actors that embody this insane tale are likewise believed to be that original quartet with whom Ngozi first shared his revelation. Two are men and two are women, two young and two old. They are never named and only spend time with the Playwright and each other, served only by the most tight-lipped and nonintrusive of the
Minor Movement: Le Troupe Noir
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mortal cultists. When performing, they are like hurricane specters of a hundred forms, capable of conveying the most realistic of characters one moment, and then terrible abstractions and blurs of elemental force the next. Some say that they conceal their identities so that their sense of self becomes so atrophied the temakh can pour through them entirely unimpeded, manifesting with godlike force
when in the throes of creation and ecstasy.
Has Le Troupe Noir ever found that once-dreamed-of seba that initiated their founding and fueled their deathless hearts for so many ages? There is perhaps no matter about which the movement is more guarded and silent.
I moved upon the stone with feet as light as long spun clouds. I strode across the great river and the flames beneath me did not waver.
I stood and watched the endless waters as the stars fell upon them a thousand thousand times over.
I learned each beat and patter of light that was folded into the darkness, and above me the spheres passed about one another and tied the knots that held the heavens together. I dropped to my knees and onto my hands, let my jaw fall open, and felt as empty as the sky before the stars were made.
An urn spun from devotion, I was conjured between four directions and sucked down the waves of infinity, the stars still bound within its shining depths. I drank and drank until I was made to burst. It was this surrender and destruction that made me eternal.
As I rose, I shook, and took my respite as I leaned against the ancientness of Lord Earth and Mother Night. Between them I wept and became the thousand-step beast. My eyes bled, my skin shivered, and I was cut like a heart from the commands of my own intention, ordered to hunt for the truth of a bodiless passion and those puppeteer strings from which the whole universe hung.
I opened and became. Fire tempered my limbs and made me strong as the crocodile’s
jaws. The rocking of waves entered my veins and made of my heart a limitless sea. The black earth shook and became the rhythm that would echo in my every step.
And so it was that the song which would one day be yoked by my brothers became my only sovereign, and I paid homage to it with my every shred. I stomped and shook, and swayed and spun, and made and unmade the forms of the sacred with fury and with ecstasy. I left myself to soar between the stars, and when I returned my power had been made plain, words and rule laid low beneath my bloodstained feet. Reason burned in pools of dark pitch at my passing and the priests stood ashamed in the lewdness of my doing, terrified by the distance between themselves and my kingdom.
Betrayal was a gift meant as deception, but none can deny the boons of the endless dance.
I do not cease beneath the waters of death. I do not submit to the devouring maw. I am splendor beyond the reckoning of chains, and as I was shattered, so too did I come to dance within the many golden vessels of my beloved.
I am the Thundering Cage, the Vessel of Celestial Motion,
I am Kehetkhat, I am.