THE HIGH TABLE
Established: 2023-11-17
Chat room: #BARBARUS
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A worldwide organization of men trained for violent, bloody, and even deadly combat. Their competence is indicated by their qualifications, from the lowest to the highest, reserved for an elite.
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19:35 Erynd: I write this to you, brother Roland. I write to set down what I believe takes place—though belief has grown untrustworthy. Let these words tether my mind to something that does not move.
19:35 Erynd: You, my countryman—who here in our servitude has become my brother. You are my still point. You have always given me strength.
19:37 Erynd: From that first day our masters chose to watch us contend, laughing that if the demons ever fused us, it might yet fashion a complete man.
19:38 Erynd: Yet my thoughts return to the ignominy—the night when my master wrestled you to the ground and then unmanned me with his scalpels before you, to the laughter of his brother generals.
19:38 Erynd: I remember the shame of my first night in his keeping.
19:38 Erynd: How he soothed me with his silver tongue, saying I had been purified.
19:38 Erynd: He knew my verses. He knew my songs. He bid me continue—to write for him.
19:38 Erynd: All the while I serve him in every possible way...
19:38 Erynd: ncluding contest.
19:39 Erynd: Though always he as victor punished without restraint.
19:38 Erynd: And I learned the shape of endurance.
19:38 Erynd: I wrote this for him:
Three times blessed be the counsel that comes to me.
My entrails burning...
Venom tears my limbs,
Deforms me, fells me—this hell,
Eternal punishment!
Mark how the fire returns.
And I duly burn.
You, here—Demon.
19:40 Erynd: And I find myself ever more lost in my own eyes, and in the eyes of all who wish to stare at me.
19:38 Erynd: His horrors.
19:40 Erynd: And I am made part of them.
19:41 Erynd: Reality loosens.
19:41 Erynd: The pain—
What did I drink while kneeling by that hearth,
Surrounded by new growth of hazel trees rising
In the mild green mist of afternoon?
19:41 Erynd: Then he brought me to the Black Chamber of His Dire Grace.
19:41 Erynd: Made me bear the hideous fruits of his labor.
19:38 Erynd: I became their plaything.
19:37 Erynd: And now when they set us against one another again in the sacred agon, the stakes have shifted.
19:37 Erynd: Not contest—but conversion. We become their tools.
19:37 Erynd: I dream of a tower. You offer me a cup. I drink, and the world falls away beneath me.
19:37 Erynd: his is his design. He would make me an arrow—to loose from their bow!
Published: 2026-01-12, viewed 63 times.
Freaker
2026-01-13 10:24This narrative exposes the fundamental brutality of cultural appropriation when wielded as a weapon of domination. Erynd’s master does not merely seek to conquer his body; he seeks to colonize his mind by weaponizing his very identity. By forcing a prince to write verses glorifying his own torture, the oppressor inverts the purpose of art—transforming it from an expression of truth into a mechanism of submission. It illustrates that true power lies not just in the capacity to inflict pain, but in the ability to dictate the narrative of that pain, forcing the victim to become the complicit poet of their own destruction. The "sacred agon" becomes a theater where the ruling class consolidates its authority by erasing the humanity of its subjects, proving that the most insidious chains are not made of iron, but of the words we are forced to recite. We are happy to share in THE HIGH TABLE such a contemporary and relevant story.
On behalf of the board members Max Freaker
Roland
2026-01-13 15:51(In reply to this)
Thank you, Max.
You read the agon not as spectacle, but as mechanism, and I appreciate that precision.
If the story unsettles, it is because it refuses the comfort of distance. Art does not merely reflect power; it can be requisitioned by it. Erynd’s verses exist in that narrow, dangerous space where expression and compliance become difficult to distinguish.
I am glad the High Table finds the work contemporary. Control societies rarely believe themselves historical until much later.
In alignment,
Roland