Eight Arms and the Mask

  This work is well-known to the scholar from frequent references in our near-complete sources, particularly the magisterial "Peregrina Prodigiosa Uleria" (Pilgrimage of the Prodigious "Uleria", for a discussion of the meaning of this see my article in the 'zine TILTED TILNTA ). But while it is not totally lost, it has only returned to us in definitely incomplete sources, primarily individual fragments preserved in the Jonstown Library and the Hilltown Cache. All of these are, of course, from variant manuscripts. After some extensive reconstruction and textual criticism, I am pleased to offer the first corrected text of a portion of "Personal Recollections of a Sutler with the Warm Sisters", (one of the few surviving examples of that finest of literary genres, the pornographic memoir,) what is generally accepted as Fragment 9.    We- Xorshid, Yanranda, Soritha White-mane, and myself- had been engaged in practice, what would be called "drill" ...

Our Goddess set forth her virile Moonson to be her representative on Earth, and he was obliged by responsibility to accept the offer of co-rule with Yelmgatha, and then to pass the Ten Tests and prove himself Emperor of Dara Happa. As the Sun on the Earth, the incarnation of bright Yelm, it is thus the case that any child of Moonson is in their own right a descendant of Yelm twice over- firstly, they are a first-generation child of Yelm via Moonson himself, incarnate as Emperor, and secondly, they are also descended from Yelm, a great-grandchild of the Sun through the Red Goddess and her own son. As this is so, it is therefore simple and inevitable and factual that these children are not merely noble in their own right, but also more noble, possessed of greater purity, than the majority of Dara Happan nobles.  Thus, it is only right and true that the Imperial Families should have precedent over all but the absolute purest of old nobles. When this was understood, there was much outc...