Four Gloamings: All Humans Are Ghouls
The shimmering colours hardened to the definitive as I instantiated. 'Wel' - the name of a planet peopled around 120,000 CE by STL torch. It had experienced a tumultuous, hardscrabble, and low-tech existence of remarkable duration. I knew barely more than that, going in. I sat and watched, and grew to comprehend the lecturing of the enthusiasts.
... The extant human population of Wel universally manifests hibernatory and physiological adaptations that increase fitness under the extreme difficulties presented by Wel's artificial light regime. These are not seasonal, but are induced by profound nutritional deficit - starvation - sustained cool temperatures, and darkness. This transformed state (in Modern Standard Thalassic called "Ghouldom": Individuals manifesting these changes are called "Ghouls") can, to a point, be consciously slowed or hastened if the contributing factors are present. Regular exposure to the broad-spectrum light of the artificial suns of the Procession suppresses the transformation, even if that means the starvation of the subject. Changes are thus
Zeroeth Phase: Baseline human behaviour, capabilities, and sentiment. Symptoms identical to baseline starvation, only internal changes. After a week1 without food, lengthened perhaps to two weeks with vigorous psychological resistance, the subject enters the first phase.
Ghouldom Phase One. Complete suppression of empathy and aversion to cannibalism, complete incapacity for thaumaturgic visualisation and consequently spell deployment, increase in coarse motor skills (running on all fours is viable, climbing is much enhanced), olfactory sense, and bursts of strength. If maintained in this stage, consuming about a ration a week, the fingernails will overtime become black claws, the canines elongated and jaw reshaped, and the body emaciated and gracile. Higher cognition - planning, coordinating, negotiating - remains possible for most, with acquiring food as the overriding drive.
Ghouldom Phase Two: Partially animalistic. Higher cognition impaired, unable to use weapons, but still cunning. Obligate four-limbed locomotion at speed, with a more efficient shambling gait for slower travel. Fast in short bursts, willing and able to hunt actively in the pursuit of prey or wait in ambush as circumstances dictate. The arms appreciably lengthen if this stage is maintained and the other, carnivorous adaptations of phase one are very appreciably accentuated.
Ghouldom Phase Three: Sluggish. Able to perform a single lunge from ambush, thereafter slow, sustained crawling towards targets as a persistence predator. Phase Threes have an instinct to mass with other Phase Three ghouls and overrun targets. Profoundly cadaverous appearance. The index finger elongates considerably, becoming a venomous claw. If nourished, improvement to Phase Two occurs in minutes. Behaviour is much simpler than earlier in earlier phases.
Ghouldom Phase Four: Sessile. When nearing this stage the ghoul will conceal itself by covering itself in debris, or burying itself in rubble, leaving the hands, and venomous claws, exposed. The P4 is mostly insensate except for vibrations in the earth suggestive of prey (hence the deliberately irregular gaits adopted by more skilled travellers through areas suspected of ghoul infestation). Ideally prey will brush against its claws and writhe: The ghoul will crawl very slowly out to feed. It may remain in Phase Four practically indefinitely, though over centuries the mind and memory will degrade to the eventual extent that full cognition and memory will not be fully recoverable, even with refeeding.
Ghouls will not feed on one another during any stage. Recoveed ghouls enjoy a grace period of a few days to a week during which their erstwhile fellows will not consume them and, indeed, during this period are well disposed towards their fellows and inured to the aversion psychologically normal humans feel. Post-ghouls will, all else being equal, seek to refeeed and recover ghouls.
Low-light vision is not significantly improved during any phase. Instead, ghouls use echolocation (typically involving the clicking of teeth) augmented in later phases by the sensing of vibrations in the ground. Spatial memory for pitch-black navigation of known spaces is well preserved.
Some suppose this adaptation stems from the STL colonisation of Wel: Not so. We now have definite knowledge that the vehicle which deposited the initial population did not carry any whole bodies, only base material and stored engrams: The starter population's bodies were constructed in-situ and some of mutations making up ghouldom were introduced into the germline at that point to facilitate decadal-duration inter-system travel as well as an interplanetary synchronised hibernatory civilisation2 , the Interlink. (excellently preserved due to the sudden departure of the interstellar vehicle which, I should mention, was named 'Manu'). You may well wonder at the presence of predatory features for passengers who are to travel, inert, aboard ship. These features were not actually original to the proto-ghouls designed by Manu, but were introduced for recreational purposes during the time of the High Interlink. These do have some practical applications, though, for mass revivification: Simply adding enough meat to a hibernaorium will see all passengers revived, without the need for food distribution machinery or nursing. In any case, during the Allit epoch, it is highly likely the state was never induced except deliberately in controlled hibernatoriums or hunting parks, and when induced in the former locales the mobile phase of transformation was suppressed pharmaceutically to skip to the sessile stage.
Anyway, the abrupt recovery and near c departure of most of Manu's engine modules - that had been serving as artificial suns - precipitated the terminal end of the interplanetary Interlink and, on Wel itself, the end of the Allit era and for some millennia technological civilisation. It was during the First Dark Era that Ghouldom shone. [Disparaging noises from the audience]. The agricultural and infrastructural collapse we are all familiar with. Obviously mass starvation led to mass ghouldom and, in many cases, the overrun and consumption of baselines' holdouts and their food stores. Accounts of river like 'flows' of mass ghouls, and 'siege ramps' composed of flesh, are not apocryphal: One such 'siege ramp' was actually uncovered at the landslide-buried ruins of Old Arot. What may be less expected was the appearance and persistence of 'Ghoul Empires' - really not 'empires' at all but highly regulated, non-state hierarchies of rationed starvation, allowing Phase One leaders to direct much greater 'armies' of Phase Twos and Threes, with sessile P4s kept in reserve. Very interesting systems of meditation were actually developed for the leading P1s to retain cognition farther along than otherwise possible. Whether these systems enabled ghouls to cast spells remains an open and hotly debated question, and though some of my colleagues here disagree I lean towards 'No' given the lack of reliable later attestations. Another feature of these polities: Notched bones - some simply tallies, some using 'gap-braille' writing. These were used for rationing and for written communication, and significance was encoded in the specific bone used. Tibiae and other common linear bones for mundane rationing, scapula for long passages, skulls for other communications and so on and so forth (this is not my specialty). The instinctual aversion of all but P1 ghouls to internecine conflict is what led to the distinct manner of champion conflict that had such resonance in later sagas. What I would also like to take the chance to underline is the sheer longevity of P4s and the spottiness of their recovered minds. There are recorded instances of millenia old ghouls recovered from buried cities, from which intact and verifiable memories could be recovered. This I think explains many of the highly detailed but infrequent and unattributed passages in certain histories.
And though if you are here, you clearly have made up your minds about the propriety of immortality, such concordance is not to be found upon Wel: I would say that the risk of Ghouldom and the longevity of Ghouls contributes much to this ambivalence within Thalsssic culture. The immortal gods are regarded as cursed and, in a very specific way, impious, and so too are ghouls. In all Thalassic cultures3 Ghouldom is highly stigmatised. Suicide to avoid the transformation is common and socially expected. Recovery from Ghouldom leaves clear signs on the body - claws, teeth, and callouses from crawling from the later stages, but striations on the skin and changes to gait and affect from even the earliest stage. Reactions to this in Thalassic cultures range (by location and by scenario) from execution to exile to sequestration, and always include ostracism. Sunlanders and members of the bright Oases who remain within their territory never are at risk of becoming ghouls due to their light regimes and so hold especial horror of it when travelling (we unfortunately don't have the time to discuss psychosomatic outbreaks). Cylic peoples are of course at constant risk of ghouldom due to their transient lifeways and parlous food supply, especially during the stages of their circuits where they are forced to occupy Long-Gloamings and, materially and socially, most resemble Nightlanders. 'Rehabilitation' (I mean politically and socially, not physically) of former Ghouls takes various forms: The Releshk separate them out into an untouchable caste that has been described as 'Suicide-Scouts' or 'Dare-To-Die Pioneers', living ever thereafter on the outskirts of camp and of society with no apparent path to recovery. The Shorvay impose a sort of spiritual fine, a debt that must be worked off with especial zeal and abnegation and advertised with unique dress. The Govakayl have a gender specifically for Once-Ghouls, and they are essential for certain rituals to the extent that, if none are available, ghouldom will be induced through days of sequestration in a darkened wagon-palanquin. On the whole though, it must be reiterated that the valence to ghouls is overwhelmingly negative and they occupy a degraded position in Thalassic cosmology as well as society.
This stands in marked contrast to the Nightlander cultures. Thought strictly speaking it is possible to remain in zeroth phase over Long Night, ecology does not make this practically possible. Nightlanders fall within two broad categories: Nomadic and Overwintering. Nomadic Nightlanders operate similarly to the Ghoul Empires of history albeit on vastly reduced scale, and have developed means of maintaining a reproductively viable, often rotating, human population amidst a surrounding 'cloud' of related ghouls in varying stages of (mobile) transformation. Contrasting the pathfinding and subsistence strategies of these groups to Cyclics would make a very interesting talk. The other approach is Overwintering: Come Long-Night, the people descend into hibernatoriums, go sessile, and are roused when the suns return in fifty years' time. The existence of guards - of a certain caste, rotating, professional, conscripted or otherwise selected - protects these hibernatoriums, as well as systems for mobilising defence or resource exploitation forces could well be expanded on but for now I will just mention them. Stop-Go groups - sometimes moving, sometimes hibernating - I won't consider another category: Nomads are pushed to this by inadequate food yields or competition and this is only in some cases a deliberate strategy.
For Nightlanders being a ghoul is part of life, often a rite of passage. The significant friction this inflicts on trade and cultural interchange with the Thalassics can well be guessed at. I consider it to be the factor that precipitated the divergence of Nightlander and Thalassic pantheons into parallel, competing cosmologies.
Now I see I am running low on time, so I will just say this: Obviously, ghoul physiology is not fully explainable with conventional metabolic processes even honed to incredible efficiency. It depends on the paraphysical influence of Deep Dreamer as harnessed and regulated by the ghoul's will to, in defiance of biology, live. This has implications for masses of ghoul's effect on spell deployment, as well as on the surrounding ecology more broadly. The evolution in Deep Dreamer's inputs and 'attitudes' likely explains the inconsistencies of their physiology and behaviour from what one might expect of a designed mutation. I see our next speaker is discussing Deep Dreamer and hope they can touch on this as I am out of time. Thank you.