Pre-narrative Briefings (short story): Difference between revisions

[[Fifth Wave]] agents were exposed "to aspects of The Enemy's anderenseelenallein" (uniqueness and singularity) and the metabriefing forms a narrative out of these experiences. The agents are recovering from contact with The Enemy, so are stored orthogonally in time and relive the experiences they had prior, sharing memories with other agents in the same state.

[[Irma Ebbinghaus]], an early [[20th century]] human member of [[House Lineacrux]]'s [[Strategist Guild]], states that The Enemy is not a world, or a species, nor are people consistently of The Enemy. Rather, you must ask who benefits, those who create or those who consume, and the most sinister belief is that things not only could have been different, but might still be different. Of course, this is only the representatives of The Enemy. Behind that is, instead, a different kind of entity, a different experience of what it is to be.

[[Michael Simpson]] comes out and compares the [[Great House]]s to the [[Whig]] party, or, specifically, to having a specifically Whig view of history. [[Faction Paradox]] challenges this, disrupts the metanarrative, but at the same time depends on them so as to subvert them. The Enemy is the cold light of day of reality, the fact that the Great Houses aren't the center of the universe. The Great Houses being what they are, only have the way of thinking that this is an attack and that it's intelligent, and treat it as an enemy.

[[Robert Scarratt]] observes that comedy, not a massively important part of the Houses' culture, still was important to that of the humanic cultures, and so would pop up in briefings from time to time. He is ''definitely'' dead in [[27th century]] [[Vienna]] and ''definitely'' not now known as [[Little Brother]] [[Ratas de la Cicatriz]].

Scarratt states that as members of the Great Houses have always upheld themselves to be beyond the ravages of time, the type of encounter with the Enemy most disturbing to them is what humans term "body horror".  

Entarodora says that instead of looking at the differences in the briefings, you need to look for what the briefings are not saying, cannot say. If this is what can be expressed, what is the inexpressible actually like?

The poem ''[[La belle dame sans joie]]'' is quoted. Its title is a It was published in [[1820]] in ''[[The Indicator]]'' under the name [[Alain Chartier]], a poet who had died in [[1430]]; while the true author was "likely" ''The Indicator''{{'}}s editor [[Leigh Hunt]], rumours held that his life was extended by a [[time-active]] power as part of an obscure aesthetic gambit.

[[Xenaria|Xenaria Who Survived]], a War Hero whose psyche was lost in the [[Fifth Planet Gambit]], states that, since you can fight what you can understand but not what is ineffable, the House Military speaks of the enemy in metaphor out of fear that its reality might be incomprehensible.

[[Malachi Yarrow]] led the [[British Secret Service]]'s section for [[Mal'akh]]-related intelligence before retiring to [[Jersey]]. In ''The Missing Hour Occupancy – Hauntings of the Channel Islands'', he recounted that on Jersey is a [[Peacock House|villa with a sculpture of a peacock]]. A missing hour exists from the change in timezone as the island changed hands between the British and German, and the despairing spirit of [[Nazi]] soldiers waiting silently in the labyrinths below is still felt by the island to this day. In [[2017]], apparently in the throws of [[Alzheimer's disease|Alzheimer's]], he disappeared from his home; left behind were a white peacock statue and a large number of [[insect]]s.