The Scolopendra Myth
In the common telling, and in the dungeon, the nine-tier attack is nine rapid devastating spells rolling out from the beast. The earliest translations say something else: there were nine attacks, but not all of them were physical. Some were psychological — rapid social movements, shifts in philosophy — which makes for a bad fairy tale because it is too complicated to explain to children. Attack one is taking control of the infrastructure. The second and third are social, and in the old histories they have names: A Parade of Horribles, then This Inevitable Ruin. The fourth is Bedlam, and it gets fuzzy after that. The myth's frame is the creation of the center system: Scolopendra wakes, charges her attack and tries to end all life; another of her kind tempers it; civilization barely survives, rises, and the cycle repeats. Many believe the Apothecary is who tempered it. In the fairy tale a princess takes the all-tree by killing it, kills everyone she loves doing so, saves the galaxy and plants the next tree. It is a tragedy, and the historian telling it says it is happening again.
Book 8 appearances
- Chapter 99 — Laid out live on air: the attacks are named in the histories, the Eulogist is where the original came from, and the escaped Earth system AI is the source of the new one — which, in her reading, began the moment it took the tunnels.
Related entries
- Scolopendra (Creature)
- Quest: The Nine-Tier Attack (Notification)
- The Eulogist (Lore)
- The Inevitable Ruin (Lore)
- A Parade of Horribles (Floor 11) (Place)
- Sydnee Iglacia (Character)
- The Apothecary (Character)
- The System AI (Character)
Browse
- All Dungeon Lore & Know-How
- Everything debuting in Book 8, Chapter 99
- All of A Parade of Horribles