The Demi-Monde: Summer (60 page)

LunarAtion:
The green light emitted by Mantle-ite, most notably when it is struck by moonlight.

Machismo:
The NoirVillian honour code for Men. The striving for Machismo suffuses and directs all the actions of Men once they have successfully navigated the Rite of Passage.

MALEvolence:
The theory developed by the Quartier Chaudian thinker Mary Wollstonecraft which postulates that war is caused by men but suffered by women. In her Theory of MALEvolence,
Wollstonecraft identified that men by their natural and undeniable inclination to obey orders given to them by superiors – no matter how nonsensical or barbaric such orders are – are susceptible to disproportionate influence by their more unbalanced peers and hence are inevitably and inexorably drawn towards violence as a solution to disputes. The muting of MALEvolence is the ambition which led to the creation of ImPuritanism. Consideration of MALEvolence was also instrumental in prompting Michel de Nostredame to identify the malignant Dark Charismatics lurking within the Quartier Chaudian population. A corrupted remembrance of the Real World word
malevolence
.

MANdate:
Signed between His HimPerial Majesty, Shaka Zulu and the Head of the IRGON, Rabbi Schmeul Gelbfisz, the MANdate states, ‘His HimPerial Majesty, Shaka Zulu, views with favour the establishment in NoirVille of a national home for the nuJu people, and will use his best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this objective, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing Shade communities. In return the nuJu people will provide NoirVille, on an exclusive basis, with such quantities of Aqua Benedicta as it might demand’. It was the signing of this document that paved the way for the establishment of the JAD . . . and for all the grief, hatred and violence that followed as a consequence.

Man
²
naM:
The practice of NoirVillian men who exchange essences in order to enhance their Manliness.

Mantle, the:
The impenetrable crust of the Demi-Monde situated below the topsoil.

Mantle-ite:
The indestructible material used by the Pre-Folk to construct sewers, water pipes, Blood Banks and the Mantle.

Master, the:
The author of both the iChing and the BiAlects is referred to only as ‘the Master’. Writing sometime around the fifth century BC (Before Confinement), little is known about the Master except that he (or possibly she) was an itinerant teacher who wandered the Demi-Monde before it was divided into the five Sectors. Such is the paucity of reliable information regarding the Master that there is uncertainty as to the Master’s gender and much controversy regarding his race. This somewhat unsatisfactory state of affairs has been compounded by the Master’s reluctance to divulge any personal information in the course of his writings, as exemplified by this apocryphal story from the Fifth Book of the BiAlects:

And the Master’s favourite pupil, Too Zi, approached him (or possibly her), saying, ‘Master, you wear a mask and a shapeless robe, which disguise your form such that no one is able to discern whether you be Shade or Chink, Man or Woman, young or old. Pray
unveil yourself so that we may gaze on your divinity.’

To which the Master replied, ‘Fuck off, you nosy bastard.’

[Fifth Book of the BiAlects, Verse 54]

Medi, the:
The area of the Quartier Chaud which has made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence and broken away from the tutelage of Venice and the Doge. The Medi comprises the Districts of Paris, Rome and Barcelona.

mixling:
The slang name for mixed-race Demi-Mondians. A corrupted remembrance of the Real World word
Mischling
.

MoreBien:
The Covenite name for Femme2Femme lovemaking.

MostBien:
The more extreme HerEtical belief that a state of MostBien – of the achieving by women of political, religious, economic, intellectual and sexual supremacy in the DemiMonde – will only be secured when the male of the species has been removed from the breeding cycle. Such are the unnatural and obscene activities of those seeking to usher in a state of MostBienism that they are lampooned throughout the Demi-Monde as ‘LessBiens’.

nanoBites:
The submicroscopic creatures which inhabit the soil layer of the Demi-Monde. They consume everything – except Mantle-ite – converting it to soil.

NoirVile:
The derogatory slang term for NoirVille.

NoN:
The official term in the Coven for a eunuch. A corruption/contraction of the phrase
he ain’t got none
.

NonaGram:
The iChing gives its advice to the soul consulting it by making reference to one of 512 NonaGrams. Three coins are thrown nine times to produce a NonaGram made up of nine lines (or, more accurately, of three TriGrams), the lines being either broken or solid – Yin or Yang – and the answer to the question posed as the coins are thrown discovered by reference to the 512 Epigrams – one for each NonaGram – described in the iChing.

nonFemme:
Covenite term for ‘man’.

Normalism:
The philosophy of nonViolence, Civil Disobedience and Passive Resistance developed by Norma Williams.

nuJuism:
The religion of the nuJu diaspora, this is an unrelentingly pessimistic religion that teaches that suffering and hardship are life-affirming, and are endured to prepare the followers for the coming of the Messiah who will lead them through Tribulation to the Promised Land.

Ordo Templi Aryanis:
The most zealous and uncompromising of all UnFunDa -Mentalist sects. Their belief is that the Anglo-Slavic people will not reclaim its oneness with the Spirits – lost after the Fall – until it is racially cleansed and all contaminating racial elements (the UnderMentionables) have been eradicated.

pawnography:
A term coined by HerEticals to disparage the erotic materials produced and distributed in the Quartier Chaud.
HerEticals deemed all such material to be a violation of female rights as it degraded women and encouraged violence against them. The HerEtical term for Erotic Material is pawnography as it is said to lead to Women selling (or pawning) their bodies to Men’s crazed lusts. Such pawnography encourages a belief in male superiority as it celebrates the power of the penis. A corrupted remembrance of the Real World word
pornography
.

Portals:
Places where Daemons can move into and out of the DemiMonde.

Preferred Male:
A Coven term for the male a woman allows to accompany her and to provide her with physical services and comforts.

Pre-Folk:
The semi-mythical race of godlings who ruled over the DemiMonde before the Confinement and who were brought low by the sexual connivings of the Seidr-witch Lilith. The demise of the Pre-Folk is known in Demi-Mondian mythology as ‘the Fall’. UnFunDaMentalism teaches that the Pre-Folk were the purest expression of the Aryan race. Also known as the Vanir.

preScience:
A Venetian school of philosophy dedicated to the study of (and the making of) prophecies and 4Tellings, especially in the areas of economics and finance. The greatest of all preScientists are Professeur Michel de Nostredame and Docteur Nikolai Dmitriyevich Kondratieff of the Future History Institute, Venice. A corrupted remembrance of the Real World word
prescience
.

Qi:
The energy flow which surrounds and permeates all living things. It is the unseen and unseeable
élan vital
which gives life and breath to the inanimate, thus making it animate. It energises the soul which resides in all things constituted by the Living.

RaTionalism:
An avowedly and uncompromisingly atheistic creed developed by the renegade Rodina thinker and ardent royalist Karl Marx, which strives by a process of Dialectic ImMaterialism to secure logical explanations regarding the Three Great Dilemmas. RaTionalism rejects all supernatural interpretations with respect to the Three Great Dilemmas and does not acknowledge any input that cannot be verified by the five senses.

reBop:
The argot prevalent within NoirVille, most widely used by enthusiasts of jad music.

Shades:
The slang term for NoirVillians.

SheTong, the:
A Covenite secret society dedicated to keeping alive the Confusionist beliefs of the ancient Coven.

Solidified Astral Ether:
Also known by the acronym SAE. The substance which makes up the soft tissue of all Demi-Mondians.

Solution:
A cocktail of vodka and soda with one or more shots of blood. Usually available in 5 per cent, 10 per cent and 20
per cent strengths of blood.

SS:
Soldiers of Spiritualism, the military wing of the Ordo Templi Aryanis.

steamers:
Steam-powered vehicles popular in the Demi-Monde.

Suffer-O-Gettism:
A contraction of Make-Men-Suffer-O-Gettism. The militant/terrorist wing of the HerEticalism movement, Suffer-O-Gettism is dedicated to the use of violence and intimidation to achieve female supremacy, the subjugation of men and the ushering in of MostBien.

Terror Incognita:
The area extending in a radius of four miles around Mare Incognitum and bounded by the Wheel River. A totally unexplored region of the Demi-Monde. No explorer venturing into Terror Incognita has ever returned. A corrupted remembrance of the Real World term
Terra Incognita
.

TooZianism:
Too Zi is one of the two mythical protagonists in the BiAlects. Traditionally Too Zi is portrayed as follows:
Aspect: Yang
Gender: Male
Symbol: The Drunken Man
Colour of Robe: White
Major Teachings:

The Proposition of unBelievability –
that the DemiMonde is a Virtual World and that our senses are about as much use as a chocolate fireguard when it comes to telling us what’s real and what ain’t.

DisEquilibrianism (or the Big Bang Hypothesis):
that the level of Qi is rising (in accordance with the 2nd and 3rd Laws of Qi) as the Demi-Monde absorbs Qi from the Spirit World. Qi will reach equilibrium at the start of the second millennium AC, thus ushering in the age of Ying.

The Concept of Inherent Badness:
that all DemiMondians are venal, evil bastards and that the Demi-Monde is Hel.

The Philosophy of Get:
that as there is no ABBA, there is no afterlife and hence there is no Purpose to Life. This being the case, there is absolutely no fucking point in trying to be good. So the whole point of life becomes to Get Laid, Get Drunk, Get High and Get Even.

ABBArationalism:
that the idea of there being an ABBA is just OmniBollocks and that no one with a fully functioning mind is going to believe in ABBA, a free lunch or a four-sided triangle. End of story.

Troubles, the:
The two-year-long civil war in Rodina and the Rookeries during which Reinhard Heydrich (aided and abetted by Lavrentii Beria) overthrew Henry Tudor and Ivan the Terrible. Heydrich subsequently merged the two Sectors as the ForthRight, uniting them under the single religion of UnFunDaMentalism.

UnderMentionables:
A catch-all term for all those considered by UnFunDaMentalism to be racially inferior and hence subhuman (including,
inter alia
, nuJus, Poles, Shades, HerEticals, Suffer-O-Gettes, HimPerialists, RaTionalists, those of a sexually deviant disposition, and those deemed to be genetically flawed). A corrupted remembrance of the Real World word
Untermensch
.

UnFunDaMentalism:
The official religion of the ForthRight, UnFunDaMentalism is a religion based on the philosophy of Living&More or life reform which espouses clean living, vegetarianism, and homeopathy and an abstention from alcohol, blood, tobacco and recreational sex. Heavily suffused with the occult and a belief in the existence of a Spirit World. Aleister Crowley is head of the Church of UnFunDaMentalism.

UnFunnies:
The slang name for UnFunDaMentalists.

Valknut:
The emblem of the ForthRight, comprising three inter-locking triangles.

Visual Virgins:
A Venetian order of Sisters established by Doge Oldoini as the Sacred and All-Seeing Convent of Visual Virgins. This Convent is dedicated to the selection and training of girls adept in Auralism (only virgin females have the power of Auralism) in order that they might be used to screen Men living in the Quartier Chaud and hence to identify Dark Charismatics masquerading as CitiZens. Visual Virgins practise fiduciary sex.

WhoDoo:
The cult religion of NoirVille, based on a distorted remembrance of Seidr.

woeMen:
The NoirVillian term for women.

WunZianism:
Wun Zi is one of the two mythical protagonists in the BiAlects. Traditionally Wun Zi is portrayed as follows:
Aspect: Yin
Gender: Female
Symbol: The Woman at Prayer
Colour of Robe: Black
Major Teachings:

Perceptionalism:
that the Demi-Monde is as it is perceived by the five senses.

Equilibrianism (or the Steady State Hypothesis):
that the level of Qi within the Demi-Monde fluctuates around an unvarying norm, this fluctuation of Yin and Yang creating the Ages of HumanKind which oscillate in a two-thousand-year cycle. During this cycle the Yang Millennia coincide with the rising of Qi in the Demi-Monde and the Yin Millennia coincide with the falling of Qi in the Demi-Monde.

The Concept of Inherent Goodness:
that all DemiMondians are inherently good and that the Demi-Monde is the Gateway to Heaven.

The Search for ABBAsoluteness:
that the aim of all
HumanKind is to follow the Way which leads to the achieving of
wu wei
, the control of Qi, the understanding of Li, the purification of the Solidified Astral Ether, the perfect union with the Holy Ghost and, finally, to the Oneness with ABBA which is ABBAsoluteness.