More actions
The Unkindnesses were the true forms of creatures who, in normal time, appeared as ravens who roosted around Tower Hill and the Tower of London. Unlike all other living things, the ravens of the Tower of London lived through the endlessly-looped eleven days of 1752 which became the Faction Paradox's Eleven-Day Empire. There, in that abnormal state of reality, their true, monstrous forms as large, talking entities were revealed, and the Faction sometimes called upon their prophetic abilities.
Nature
Within the Eleven-Day Empire, although they crowded around Tower Hill, the Unkindnesses primarily resided in the "wildernesses of lost time" at the edge of Eleven-Day Empire. (PROSE: The Book of the War) They had the inherent ability to look into the future by picking through dead flesh. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire) Members of Faction Paradox would offer the Unkindnesses carrion in return for prophecies, such as Godfather Morlock. Morlock had an interest in the Unkindnesses, whom he studied. He believed that they ate their dead. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire)
History
Whilst the Beast of the Hours was rumored to exist as well, (PROSE: The Book of the War) it was said in one account that the ravens of the Tower of London were the only living things in the Empire besides the Faction. Only the elders of the Faction understood why the ravens were exempt from the rules of time. (PROSE: Interference - Book One) According to one Faction Paradox legend, the Unkindessess were drops of Grandfather Paradox's blood from the Act of Severance. (PROSE: The Book of the War, Tonton Macoute)
Anastasia Romanov once offered the Unkindnesses the corpse of a Siberian firebird in return for a prophecy. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
While searching for exotic meats to whet his appetite, Tonton Macoute did the blasphemous deed of killing an Unkindness, tearing off its wings, and eating it. The Faction punished him for this by imprisoning him in Cyclone Tracy. (PROSE: Tonton Macoute)
On the day that Lolita and the Seventy-Ninth Sontaran Assault Corps invaded the Empire, Justine McManus came to the Unkindnesses with a dead dodo. They predicted the destruction of the Empire and Justine's escape. (AUDIO: The Eleven Day Empire) All the Unkindnesses flew away shortly before Lolita consumed the Empire. (AUDIO: The Shadow Play)
Behind the scenes
- The word "unkindness" is the collective noun for a group of ravens.
- The illustration of Unkindnesses from The Book of the War was reused in the background of the title pages for all of the Mad Norwegian Press Faction Paradox novels and the two issues of Image Comics' Faction Paradox series.
- Conceptually, the Unkindnesses appear to be an inversion of the Ancient Roman practice of reading the future from the entrails of birds — being birds who read the future themselves through entrails.