Judgements
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Beyond this point lie major spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include endgame or major Fate-locked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here. |
"Look ahead, to the light of the Judgement. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."[1]
Judgements are the ultimate power in the universe, which we know as the stars.
Look to the Stars
"But the laws of the Judgements, whose mask is God, are present even here beneath the earth. Lightly present, but present. And a reckoning, as the saying has it, will not be indefinitely postponed."[2]
As powerful celestial entities, the Judgements oversee the lesser beings that exist beneath them. They are the ultimate lawmakers of the universe, and all under their eternal light adhere to their rules.[3] Every star in the night sky, even our own Sun, is a god to their respective planets and subjects. Few beings exist entirely outside their influence, such as the inhabitants of Parabola and those who resent the Judgements' complete dominance of the universe.[4] For those who merely live outside of a Judgement's gaze, as is the case for most denizens of the Neath, the laws may become... er, strong recommendations rather than mandatory rules.
Like all beings, Judgements have souls, known as Judgements' Eggs; these may function as their spores, their offspring.[5] If such souls manage to escape being used in dark rituals and other quests for power, they may hatch into stars of their own.[6]
Intriguingly, Judgements are also multicellular, and their insides are composed of flesh and bone; in fact, they appear to be vertebrates.[7][8]
Judgements communicate via the Correspondence, a particularly incendiary language.[9] They often use Couriers, such as the Echo Bazaar and the House of Rods and Chains, to send messages to each other.[10] Furthermore, Judgements adhere to an immensely strict hierarchy, called the Great Chain of Being, which is similar to a caste system. All entities are set to a certain rank, and contact is strictly professional (in most cases).[11] The Judgements do not take kindly to the breaking of this rule,[12] and it is part of the reason why the Bazaar is here in the first place (and to a lesser extent, us humans).[10]
To those of a more... revolutionary bent, the Judgements are not unstoppable; quite the opposite in fact. Through arcane research and dedication bordering (and often well past) the bounds of insanity, the anarchists are slowly devising methods to make the lights go out, as part of their quest to achieve the Liberation of Night.[13]
By 1905 in the Sunless Skies timeline, it had become apparent that the Judgements were dying off, with someone or something killing them one by one. The British Empire chose to take advantage of their deaths, abandoning London and colonizing the Judgements' empty domains.[14] There are still some alive, like the Sapphir'd King, who rules his Blue Kingdom with impunity.[15]
Known Judgements
- The Sun is the Judgement of the Earth and of Mankind, at least for those dwelling on the Surface.
- The Sapphir'd King is the Sun of the Blue Kingdom, where he rules as king of the dead.
- The White is the spymaster of the heavens.
- The Red and the Gold are mentioned in relation to the White; not much is known of them individually.[16]
- The Garden-King was the Regent of the Reach until his death. The Reach has overgrown in his absence.
- The King of Hours was regent of what is now Albion until his death.
- The Halved is the Sable-Sun of Eleutheria, formerly known as the King who Wars.
- The King Who Speaks was the Halved's sibling. Together, they were known as the Binary.
Beings similar to Judgements
- The Dawn Machine is an ambitious and dangerous artificial Judgement, built by the Admiralty.
- The Clockwork Sun is the Admiralty's second, more successful artificial star. In the Sunless Skies timeline, it reigns over Albion in the King of Hours' absence.
- Salt is a former Judgement who left its past behind. Also called the Sun-Beneath-the-Sea, it lurks to the East, where new scents arise.
- The Mountain of Light is the daughter of the Sun and the Bazaar, making her a half-Judgement. Zailors know her as Stone. Her daughter, a quarter-Judgement, is Mt. Nomad.
- The Black is not a Judgement, gives no light, and does not exist.
Interstellar Politics
"All st-study of the suns is difficult. The Judgements are vast. Ancient. Beings of incomprehensible complexity. Any investigation is also an act of t-translation, rendering their concerns and structures into analogies we can comprehend."[17]
In the Sunless Skies timeline, thanks to the Royal Society's magnificent telescope, the behavior of Judgements among themselves has finally come to... er, light.
Judgements can form groups of various sizes - factions, even. Minor ones, called constellations, consist of three to four stars, and are often formed by neighboring stars, resembling clans. Conjunctions, on the other hand, are much, much bigger,[18] and are founded on the principles of an ideology or philosophy. So far, three Conjunctions are known to exist:[17]
- The Chrysanthemum Conjunction is concerned with new beginnings.[19]
- The Amaranthine Conjunction believes in endings and conclusions.[20]
- The Nepenthine Conjunction advocates separation and isolation.[21]
A group led by the Prophet Exile tried to form the Solonacean Conjunction by petitioning the Binary to join them; it would have followed an ideology not unlike the modern Liberation of Night.[22] However, after the nascent Conjunction assassinated the King Who Speaks, the remaining half of the Binary slaughtered the proto-Conjunction, and condemned the ambitious Fingerking at its head to the Well of Wonders.[23]
The Courtesy
"Once, the stars went to war with themselves. The Courtesy was the agreement that ended it: thereafter, the stars were permitted to kill each other so long as they adhered to the formalities and procedures set out in the Courtesy."[24]
What is killing the stars? They're killing each other. Some massive insult has provoked a cosmic war among them, with the Courtesy, the Judgemental "rules of war," being constantly invoked.[24] The suns understandably don't want anyone lower on the Great Chain to know that they are prone to just as much lethal politics as mortals, so they specifically assigned a Logos to hunt down anyone who learns of it. This logos, called the Fire that Follows,[25] manifests as an electric-blue flame that relentlessly pursues and punishes the intended target until they draw their very last breath.[26]
