The History of the World, Part 1

Where do we begin?

Perhaps with the Japanese legend of Amatsu-Mikaboshi, the August Star of Heaven, a shapeless creature of pure evil born from the shadows before time. An anomolous creature with a humanoid avatar, barely mentioned except behind the mists of time. The Japanese scholars sourced in the book "The Shapeless Star", note that Mika might be a distortion of Iga — squid. Amatsu-Mikaboshi was destroyed when the primordial darkness shattered and become chaos — life and time. Yet the Mikaboshi still remains and corrupts everything. "The Shapeless Star" is a little known book, published in 1962. There are very few copies of it left, mostly in private collections, such as Thages. But this was before the beginning...

Or maybe we should start with the book "Primitive Beliefs on the Faceless One, or A Treatise on the Social Ramifications of Children Born with a Caul in Primitive Cultures" by the unknown British anthropologist Edward Myercroft. No, you haven't heard of him. Before his first book was published, the warehouse storing the copies burned down. Then the publishing company went out of business. Then he died. There aren't any records of him outside this manuscript, as far as I can tell. In his book, he talks about Native American and Aboriginal variants of the same legend. He cites examples from secondhand accounts of Chesepian legends from the Powhatans, and other accounts of myths told by the Tasmanian aborigines. The Cherokee say even the Little People fear it, the Faceless creature that they barely speak of. The basis of the myth is very similar in many cultures, but is not often spoken of.

The basic gist of it is as follows;

A nameless creature appears on the earth.

It causes decay to the mind, body and soul.

The grass is scorched where he walks.

The trees bend to his will.

One variant says he descended from the sky, others say he emerged from the mists, others say that he is a living shadow.

There aren't any other written records of these legends because the natives "do not speak of him".

"To speak of him is to bring plague and invite death."

Today many know nothing of these myths, perhaps because he doesn't need them to define him any more, or perhaps...

Norse mythology had several creatures that may well have been based on our Gentleman. I spent some time reading through the 17th century re-translation of Amer Falstad ibn Abdel's "Belief of the Northern Man", original date of writing unknown, little known about the original author, but most likely in the 8th or 9th century. Amer Falstad ibn Abdel recounts traveling with a group of men in the deep north, when they encountered a "Tall, spyder formed creature of many limbs... God help me, I knew not of such fear as when I saw that pale, cold mockery of the form of Man." [sic]

He goes on to account the belief that his companions, the Norsemen, had. They believed the creature was a "serpente beaste" that "gnawed at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree of life". "These men beliefed the creature was more than a villain from theyre own halls, but a beaste from beyonde gods themsefes".  

Or talk of the Sun Cross, from the bronze age, used to ward away evil even before that. A cross encircled.

Or in Egypt another text, claiming to be a translation of part of the Book of Coming Forth by Light or the Book of the Dead from the fifth kingdom, talks about a faceless man, taller than even the Pharaoh, who killed any at will. "If he ever designs for the death of the world, we will call for even Apep to save us..." "Responsible for the deaths of so many." The same text provides description of the 10th plague from the Egyptian point of view-- "Was not a god of any sort. The Slaves lathered the blood of the lamb over their doors in the shape of an x, surrounded by a circle. That night a man walked the streets and killed thousands of our children. In the chaos of the next day, those slaves escaped."

The early Coptic Cross has a worrying resemblance to the Operator Symbol, and a manuscript from the same region says it was used as a protective symbol against the devil's agents. Even after that, in the 1200's, prominent Cardinals were known to carve their doors with the sign of an "x", though they burned the books alluding to the Gentleman we know. Perhaps they weren't fighting against him...

An account of a French knight in the Crusades, who was found impaled on a sword of bone after saying he would find away to destroy "the faceless demon". His heart was found in the place of his brain, and his organs were stretched out across the ground he lay dead upon.

The book "A Study Of Chaos in the Civilised World", a book hardly legible, stolen from Church archives in Germany and translated into English by a madman talks of chaos in many different countries. In China there is a recurrence in villages claiming to have been visited by Hundun, the incarnation of Chaos, or a faceless being. The Western Han dynasty had currency "marked with 'x' to save them", according to the researcher who appeared to be losing his mind. Though many interpretations of the Taoist texts lead one to view Hundun as a human-like being, there are definite references to our own Gentleman, particularly in reference to the time before, and being a god of fire. Chaos echoes throughout Greco-Roman history as the primordial something, the rude and undeveloped mass before everything.

An unsourced French fragment of parchment, scorched at the edges- "Goya saw."

Papers recovered from the Monks in plague devoured Ireland spoke of "The Eternal Stranger" who "rests [them], brings the plague, and acts as the shadow of death, crueler and more the devil than Lucifer himself..." The Monk who wrote this died, and his work was confiscated and mostly burned due to the immense blasphemy within. "A dullahan, whose head was right, but face was not." This would be around 1350, when the Black Death was reaching a zenith. A paper recovered in Italy around the same time spoke of "Plague doctors faced the plague itself, a shadow creature, nevertheless embodied death. But som[e] others... stayed by the side of the monster, inviting death itself into our cities, chanting Templum Durent..." "Out of all the daemons this was the most malicious, most brazen, icy as the rest, clad in black, inviting us to a place worse than hell, though I could not see his face..." 

There is a German manuscript, untitled and without an author, describing the evisceration of a man as the result of attempting the ritual outlined in "The Book of Abremelin". 

A version of the Japanese noppera-bō myth, repressed around 1879, though still found in a few little known manuscripts, talks of a man "like the noppera-bō he was faceless, but was not playful. Though his first aim was fear, it was not the only one. He held out his arms and people walked to him as though he were an old friend, and only the Man in the Mask held back." "He had no need to wipe off his face," another manuscript says, "for either it was their or he was not."

Then the poem, De Erlkönig, by von Goethe;

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Erl King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl King, with crown and with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
For many a game I will play there with thee;
On my beach, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl King now breathes in mine ear?"
"Be calm, dearest child, thy fancy deceives;
the wind is sighing through withering leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care
My daughters by night on the dance floor you lead,
They'll cradle and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl King is showing his daughters to me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it alright,
'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou aren't willing, then force I'll employ."
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
For sorely the Erl King has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He holds in his arms the shuddering child;
He reaches his farmstead with toil and dread,—
The child in his arms lies motionless, dead.

 

 In 1908, a woman burned to death in her bed without the bed itself sustaining any damage. 1897 had a "jig-saw murderer" who scattered his victims bodies around the Boston harbour. Or the case in 1966, when a Brazillian boy found two men wearing lead masks, dead in a field, after eating mysterious capsules. Were they fighters? Or the lost, unknown man, whose briefcase only had one word "Taman shud".

I brought this information together after a few days of nonstop reading through Thage's translations and notes. So many books. But what does it mean?

It means he's been here for thousands of years.

It means people have tried to fight him before.

It means none of them succeeded.

But then again, we gave him a name, didn't we.

So let's be the first.


...

I need a freaking drink.