"
Zaltec alternates his time between a realm in the Abyss called Teotli Itec (which encompasses nine layers of chaos, blood, ice, and fire) and a realm in Carceri called Zompantli, the Place of Skulls. Zompantli is in Cathrys, the second layer of Carceri, and the petitioners there take the form of disembodied, skinless heads.
"
https://godzilla.fandom.com/wiki/Iwi
https://www.tohokingdom.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27964
https://curseofthedeadgods.fandom.com/wiki/Blood_Priest
https://curseofthedeadgods.fandom.com/w ... uar_Temple
https://curseofthedeadgods.fandom.com/wiki/T%27amok%27
https://curseofthedeadgods.fandom.com/w ... the_Jaguar
https://thenav.ca/features/the-skull-fa ... and-ghost/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_of_Paris
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_priest
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2023 ... ered-head/
Zaltec
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kFoyauextlH
- Posts: 1429
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
Re: Zaltec
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_object
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carceri_d%27invenzione
"
The second edition takes a darker thematic, as well as visual, turn, with the new Plate II featuring a scene of torture near the bottom. In various plates new "penal apparatus in the form of chains, cables, gallows and sinsterly indistinct instruments of torture, many of them infused with a sense of decay through endless use."[14]
In the second edition, some of the illustrations appear to have been reworked to contain deliberate impossible geometries.[15] Wilton-Ely describes these as "visual ambivalences and contrived irrationality of space formulated in the early version and extended for new creative ends in the later one.[16]
The second edition in particular reflects Piranesi's idiosyncratic views on Italian history. In earlier works he had already deplored Greek influence on ancient Rome, and emphasized Rome's Etruscan heritage. The new Plates II and V, and the extensively reworked Plate XVI "reveal these new concerns in a more overt form", including inscriptions.[17] Plate II has names and busts of "victims punished unjustly by Nero" as recorded by Tacitus, which Piranesi saw as "emphasizing the decline of Roman law under a philhellene emperor".[18] The inscriptions in Plate XVI are quotations or paraphrases from Livy's history of the early Roman Republic, showing the justice of early Roman law. Plate V includes "a giant relief in a late Imperial style" of a prisoner in chains being "led to punishment".[19]
An in-depth analysis of Piranesi's Carceri was written by Marguerite Yourcenar in her Dark Brain of Piranesi: and Other Essays (1984). The twentieth-century forger Eric Hebborn claimed to have forged Piranesi sketches.[21]
Piranesi's dark and seemingly endless staircases and blocked passages prefigure M. C. Escher's images with endless stairs such as his 1960 lithograph "Ascending and Descending", and are said to have inspired Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Pit and the Pendulum".[22]
Piranesi's work inspired the Carceri d'invenzione series of chamber works by the English composer Brian Ferneyhough.
The 1998 film The Sound of the Carceri presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing works by Johann Sebastian Bach in a computer generated simulation of Piranesi's Carceri.[23] The film is part of the Inspired by Bach series.
Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi (2020) was inspired by Piranesi's Carceri etchings.[24]
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranesi_(novel)
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Plane#Carceri
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki ... _festivals
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mount_Othrys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Carceri
"
Realms
Cronus, cruel progenitor of the Olympian pantheon, was imprisoned at Mount Othrys together with Hyperion and their other fellow greater titans.[28]
Grolantor, god of the hill giants,[29] made his home among the peaks and chasms of Colothys[21] before moving to the World Tree cosmology plane of Jotunheim in a realm called The Steading.[30]
Karontor, god of fomorians and verbeeg, resided here[31] in his realm, the Rack of Injustice, on Minethys.[32]
Kiputytto, Goddess of Sickness and Mother of the Plague,[33] was a goddess of similar portfolio as Talona and was either an aspect of Talona[34] or was defeated by her in a battle over religious territory.[35]
Malar the Beastlord had a realm in Tarterus[36][37] before he moved to the World Tree cosmology plane of Fury's Heart called the Land of the Hunt.[38]
Null, draconic god of death, had a realm named the Mausoleum of Pain in his aspect of the Faluzure in Minethys, with some link to the Negative Energy plane, the Plane of Shadow and the Mausoleum of Chronepsis in the Outlands.[39]
Parrafaire's realm Trickster's Delight resided in Minethys.[40]
Talona, Lady of Poison and Mistress of Disease, resided on this plane[34][41] before moving to the World Tree cosmology plane of the Barrens of Doom and Despair in a realm called the Palace of Poison Tears.[42]
Vhaeraun's realm, Ellaniath was located in Colothys[43][44] before he moved to the Demonweb Pits.[45]
Zaltec's realm, Zompantli, the Place of Skulls, was is on Cathrys, the second layer of Carceri.[46]
"
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cronus
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Grolantor
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karontor
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Kiputytto
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Malar
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Null
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Parrafaire
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Talona
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Vhaeraun
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Zaltec
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Othrys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cathrys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Minethys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Colothys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Porphatys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Agathys
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carceri_d%27invenzione
"
The second edition takes a darker thematic, as well as visual, turn, with the new Plate II featuring a scene of torture near the bottom. In various plates new "penal apparatus in the form of chains, cables, gallows and sinsterly indistinct instruments of torture, many of them infused with a sense of decay through endless use."[14]
In the second edition, some of the illustrations appear to have been reworked to contain deliberate impossible geometries.[15] Wilton-Ely describes these as "visual ambivalences and contrived irrationality of space formulated in the early version and extended for new creative ends in the later one.[16]
The second edition in particular reflects Piranesi's idiosyncratic views on Italian history. In earlier works he had already deplored Greek influence on ancient Rome, and emphasized Rome's Etruscan heritage. The new Plates II and V, and the extensively reworked Plate XVI "reveal these new concerns in a more overt form", including inscriptions.[17] Plate II has names and busts of "victims punished unjustly by Nero" as recorded by Tacitus, which Piranesi saw as "emphasizing the decline of Roman law under a philhellene emperor".[18] The inscriptions in Plate XVI are quotations or paraphrases from Livy's history of the early Roman Republic, showing the justice of early Roman law. Plate V includes "a giant relief in a late Imperial style" of a prisoner in chains being "led to punishment".[19]
An in-depth analysis of Piranesi's Carceri was written by Marguerite Yourcenar in her Dark Brain of Piranesi: and Other Essays (1984). The twentieth-century forger Eric Hebborn claimed to have forged Piranesi sketches.[21]
Piranesi's dark and seemingly endless staircases and blocked passages prefigure M. C. Escher's images with endless stairs such as his 1960 lithograph "Ascending and Descending", and are said to have inspired Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Pit and the Pendulum".[22]
Piranesi's work inspired the Carceri d'invenzione series of chamber works by the English composer Brian Ferneyhough.
The 1998 film The Sound of the Carceri presents cellist Yo-Yo Ma performing works by Johann Sebastian Bach in a computer generated simulation of Piranesi's Carceri.[23] The film is part of the Inspired by Bach series.
Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi (2020) was inspired by Piranesi's Carceri etchings.[24]
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piranesi_(novel)
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Plane#Carceri
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki ... _festivals
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Mount_Othrys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Carceri
"
Realms
Cronus, cruel progenitor of the Olympian pantheon, was imprisoned at Mount Othrys together with Hyperion and their other fellow greater titans.[28]
Grolantor, god of the hill giants,[29] made his home among the peaks and chasms of Colothys[21] before moving to the World Tree cosmology plane of Jotunheim in a realm called The Steading.[30]
Karontor, god of fomorians and verbeeg, resided here[31] in his realm, the Rack of Injustice, on Minethys.[32]
Kiputytto, Goddess of Sickness and Mother of the Plague,[33] was a goddess of similar portfolio as Talona and was either an aspect of Talona[34] or was defeated by her in a battle over religious territory.[35]
Malar the Beastlord had a realm in Tarterus[36][37] before he moved to the World Tree cosmology plane of Fury's Heart called the Land of the Hunt.[38]
Null, draconic god of death, had a realm named the Mausoleum of Pain in his aspect of the Faluzure in Minethys, with some link to the Negative Energy plane, the Plane of Shadow and the Mausoleum of Chronepsis in the Outlands.[39]
Parrafaire's realm Trickster's Delight resided in Minethys.[40]
Talona, Lady of Poison and Mistress of Disease, resided on this plane[34][41] before moving to the World Tree cosmology plane of the Barrens of Doom and Despair in a realm called the Palace of Poison Tears.[42]
Vhaeraun's realm, Ellaniath was located in Colothys[43][44] before he moved to the Demonweb Pits.[45]
Zaltec's realm, Zompantli, the Place of Skulls, was is on Cathrys, the second layer of Carceri.[46]
"
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cronus
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Grolantor
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Karontor
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Kiputytto
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Malar
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Null
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Parrafaire
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Talona
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Vhaeraun
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Zaltec
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Othrys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Cathrys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Minethys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Colothys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Porphatys
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Agathys
-
kFoyauextlH
- Posts: 1429
- Joined: Sun Jun 15, 2025 3:53 pm
Re: Zaltec
https://www.academia.edu/50104548/Dante ... he_Inferno
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/site ... 0holes.pdf
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Commorragh
"
The scions of the Dark City would never admit that the unceasing hunger at their core is what drives them to such heights of cruelty. Instead they maintain that they act only upon their own desires. Some have even managed to convince themselves of this. In truth, unless our cousins in the Webway feed upon a constant diet of extreme emotion they will slowly wither away, leaving naught but a soulless husk. We of the Craftworlds deny all such urges, and in doing so become less than ourselves. Perhaps it is those that we left to perish who are the lucky ones.
"
"
Commorragh, also called the "Dark City," is the massive city-state within the Webway that is the primary home of the Dark Eldar, or Drukhari, kindred of the Aeldari species. It is said to be impossible for outsiders to find, and anarchy and terrorism are a well-established way of life for its debased inhabitants. It is widely believed to be hidden deep within the inter-dimensional labyrinth known as the Webway, described by the Craftworld Aeldari as a "dark stain" growing within their holy pathways.
Commorragh is no mere metropolis, for it is to the greatest cities of realspace as a soaring mountain is to a mound of termites. Its dimensions would be considered impossible if they could be read by conventional means, its population greater than that of whole star systems. If anything, Commorragh is more like a vast collection of satellite realms and cities linked by myriad portals and hidden pathways.
Viewed from one perspective, Commorragh is a loose collection of far-flung nodes spread throughout the arteries of the Webway like a malevolent virus. Its clustered concentrations are in reality scattered across the galaxy, thousands of light-years apart in places. Yet these locations are linked together by shimmering dimensional shortcuts. Within the Webway, the immense distances between each sub-realm can be crossed with a single step.
The Dark City is known to have "wandering shadows that tear apart the unwary" and is bathed in the crimson half-light of the Ilmaea, or "black suns," dying stars taken from realspace by the Aeldari at the height of their technological prowess and installed within their own sub-realms within the Webway to provide Commorragh with light and power.
"
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Haemonculi
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Webway
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante ... nferno-13/
"
Following violence against others in their persons and in their possessions, treated in canto 12, Inferno 13 treats violence against the self. Violence against the self can be manifested either in one’s person, through committing suicide, or in one’s possessions, through the squandering of personal goods.
[2] Many have noted that this last category, of squanderers, is only with difficulty distinguished from that of the prodigals of the fourth circle. This structural overlap suggests that Dante could have omitted the prodigals in circle 4, knowing that he would arrive at wastrels in circle 7; in this way he could have longer sustained the synchrony between the architecture of his Hell and the Christian scheme of the seven capital vices. The fact that, despite the prospect of the squanderers, Dante nonetheless ruptures the system of the seven capital vices in circle 4, can be construed as an indicator of his commitment to the Aristotelian concept — dramatized in circle 4 and Inferno 7 — of virtue as the mean.
[3] The travelers enter a murky wood (“bosco” in verse 2), a place that is characterized by negativity, by what it is not (note the repeated “non” at the beginning of each verse):
Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco;
non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti;
non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco.
Inf. 13.4-6)
No green leaves in that forest, only black;
no branches straight and smooth, but knotted, gnarled;
no fruits were there, but briers bearing poison.
[4] It turns out that the trees and bushes in this wood are the transformed souls of suicides. These souls have thus been transformed into something other than what they were — indeed, into what they were not:
They were humans; they are now plants;
They were forms of intellective life; now they are forms of vegetative life.
[5] But this transformation turns out not to be proof that the original unity of body and soul has been successfully violated. In fact, we will learn that the substance of these beings has never changed, despite all attempts to undo it. Ultimately, as we shall see, Dante’s point in Inferno 13 is as follows: the unity of body and soul is indestructible. Selfhood cannot be undone.
[6] The second ring of the seventh circle houses the souls of humans who are characterized by negative identity. A negative metamorphosis has transformed them from humans — beings in whose development the intellective faculty has superseded both the sensitive and the vegetative faculties, as described in Purgatorio 25.52-75 — into plants: vegetable life alone. However, they are plants that speak, in another monstrous hybrid that makes no sense, since speech and language are a property of the intellective faculty, as the same passage in Purgatorio 25 informs us.
[7] In sum: having willfully sundered the body-soul nexus, they are now what they should not be. In appearance they are now plants. But, as Dante will show us in dramatic fashion, in substance they are still human. For the reality, a terrible reality for these souls, is that selfhood cannot be undone.
***
[8] Mythological monster-birds, foul birds with the faces of women that torment Aeneas and his men in the Aeneid, the Harpies are a monstrous union of human and animal, like the Centaurs, whereas the suicide-trees combine human and vegetable. In Inferno 13, the Harpies feed on the leaves of the suicide-trees and thereby cause pain to the sinners. As Pier della Vigna will reveal later on: “l’Arpie, pascendo poi de le sue foglie, / fanno dolore, e al dolor fenestra” (then the Harpies, feeding on its leaves, / cause pain and for that pain provide a vent [Inf. 13.101-2]).
[9] What does it mean to say that the Harpies, by eating the leaves of these “trees”, can cause pain to the souls of the persons whose immaterial forms are now constituted by these vegetative forms? What is the nature of this causation?
[10] Dante here uses mythological or magical transubstantiation to try to get at the meaning of the body-soul nexus. This is a method that he will adopt on other occasions as well.
[11] For instance, in Purgatorio 25 the catalyst for the lengthy discussion of human embryology and embodiment is the mythological figure Meleager, destined to die when a particular piece of charred wood is thrown onto the flames and consumed (Purg. 25.22-23). Meleager’s mother, learning of her son’s destiny, carefully preserves the firebrand. Years later, when she is enraged at her son, she retrieves the piece of charred wood, throws it into the flames, and kills him. In Purgatorio 25 Dante is essentially posing the question: What is the connection between Meleager and the piece of wood that in some way “represents” him?
[12] The piece of wood that represents Meleager, like the trees that represent the suicides, are not really separate from the soul, as they seem to be: they are not mere representations.
[13] In these passages Dante is using classical mythology to make the key Christian point about the indivisibility of body and soul. It may seem that the body is a outward husk that can be discarded: a tree, a bush, a piece of wood. But in the same way that Meleager is the charred wood — in the same way that he dies when the charred wood is consumed in the flames — so his body is never really separate from his soul.
[14] Mealeager’s being — his essence, his selfhood — is composed of an indivisible unity of body and soul.
[15] In the encounter with Pier della Vigna Dante first raises the questions later posed by the story of Meleager. The link between Inferno 13 and Purgatorio 25 is signaled by the word “stizzo” (firebrand) which appears in the Commedia only in Inferno 13.40 and Purgatorio 25.23, only for these two instances of apparent vegetative life that is really human life.
[16] Telling us that the Harpies cause pain to the self that is embodied in the tree is Dante’s way of signifying that the unity of body and soul is indestructible. These souls thought to avoid pain in life by destroying their bodies, but their “bodies” still feel pain, even though they are no longer in human form.
[17] Over the previous canti Dante has given us information about the body-soul nexus, with respect to eternity, the resurrection of the flesh and the reunion of flesh with soul. We might distill the information thus:
In Inferno 6.106-11, Virgilio explains to Dante that souls will be more perfect after the Last Judgment, when they are reunited with their bodies. Although Virgilio only cites Aristotle (“perfezion” in Inf. 6.110), Dante-narrator here effectively introduces the thematic of the theology of the Resurrection. This passage provides Dante’s baseline belief, against the backdrop of which he depicts the following variant — perverse — configurations.
In Inferno 9, Virgilio’s story of the sorceress Erichtho, who previously compelled him to make the journey to lower Hell, includes two references to the body. According to Virgilio he was “congiurato da quella Eritón cruda / che richiamava l’ombre a’ corpi sui” (compelled by that savage Erichtho / who called the shades back to their bodes [Inf. 9.23-4]). Erichtho’s power, in Virgilio’s telling, is demiurgic: she can reconnect shades to their bodies, in a perverse resurrection that anticipates Dante’s invention of “zombies” in Inferno 33. Virgilio indicates that Erichtho summoned him soon after he died, when he had only recently been denuded of his flesh: “Di poco era di me la carne nuda” (My flesh had not been long stripped off from me [Inf. 9.25]). Here Virgilio uses the personal pronoun of identity (“me”) to refer to his self as a self even when denuded of his flesh, thus implying that self and identity can be present even when the fleshly body is absent: the wasted body in a tomb is still a self. We could take this remark as a further reminder that the self will eventually be fully reconstituted, not by sorcery, but by the divine power that at the Last Judgment reunites the soul with its fleshly body.
The Epicurean heresy, as synthesized by Dante in Inferno 10.15, “che l’anima col corpo morta fanno”, posits the opposite view: the belief that soul dies with body signifies that without the body there is no self. This view can be seen as a perverse non-dualism.
In Inferno 13, Dante will confirm the absolute indivisibility of body and soul, showing us that even when the body has been transformed into a tree-body it is still tied to its soul: the original body-soul nexus may have been altered in appearance, but the bond is not severed. The unity of body and soul cannot be severed, neither in malo nor in bono. An in malo reprise of this theme will recur in Inferno 25, where the souls are given the bodies of serpents, and yet remain themselves.
"
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/commento-baroliniano/
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Shator
"
huge bat-like wings
"
"
Shators were the self-appointed wardens of the Red Prison, and kept meticulous records of their subordinates and claimed prisoners.[1] They were fearsome entities with great intellects that projected an almost palpable air of self-confidence[6] and possessed shocking levels of cruelty. Like the farastu they were slow to react and secretly desired escape attempts by Carcerian petitioners, but they wanted potential escapees to succeed so that they could send bounty hunters to bring them back.[2]
"
"
Bizarrely, shators on other planes treated the three-headed chimerae like most humans would treat kittens, reserving their ordinary sadism and occasionally showing concern for them.[3]
"
https://www.greyhawkonline.com/greyhawk ... ew_desktop
"
In his true form, Apomps is said to resemble a grossly disfigured baernaloth, though he is said to be capable of manifesting in the form of either a farastu, kelubar, or shator demodand. He is the one who breathes life into the rotting corpses of Carceri, transforming them into farastu, and who transforms the farastu into more powerful demodands as they are needed. According to rumor, he presents each demodand with an obsidian triangle that acts as a personal link to him and possibly allows the demodands access to the memories of their entire race. Some believe that the triangles are the eyes and ears of Apomps, allowing him to see and hear wherever his creations go.
"
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baernaloth
https://5e.tools/bestiary/baernaloth-mpp.html
"
Baernaloths are tall, gaunt yugoloths who keep to the Gray Wastes of Hades. Their gray, desiccated skin stretches over their bones, and their heads resemble horned equine skulls with ember-like eyes. Sages endlessly debate the nature of baernaloths, and the Books of Keeping—ancient tomes detailing the true names of the first yugoloths—report no mention of baernaloths within. Some posit that these enigmatic yugoloths were created by a primal evil power before other yugoloths or that they come from an epoch before the current manifestation of the planes. Baernaloths refuse to say, but most obsess over secrets and obscene lore regarding the far-flung past and inscrutable future of the multiverse. Many of these rare scholars of the profane seek to manipulate reality on a grand scale, while others unleash horrific experiments on the planes. It's said the first demodands of Carceri were created by baernaloths.
Baernaloths spread discord and despair among any creatures they meet. They use their breath, thick with the gloom of Hades, to turn friends against each other and then savor the horror that rises when their victims realize how they've betrayed one another. Baernaloths use their wicked power to keep mortally wounded foes alive, sometimes indefinitely, to prolong their suffering. Even striking against a baernaloth brings misery—they can cause an attacker's old wounds to painfully reopen. All the while, baernaloths are disturbingly detached, observing their victims' agony without emotion.
Whether in the hopeless realms of Hades or on the rare occasion they lurk on some other plane, baernaloths lair in remote mountain crags and secluded caves. Their lairs have ample places to house and restrain "guests," particularly those the baernaloths keep hovering at death's door.
"
https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/yugobaer/
"
Long, gangly limbs covered by purulent gray flesh; an over-sized, horned head with an obscene mouth comprising nothing but teeth and tongue; distant, glazed yellow eyes dripping fluid far more vile than tears - all these things are a baernaloth, yet it is more. The essence of the creature is callous detatchment, never seeing the suffering and pain that it ceaselessly creates; an unending, unsatiable need for misery and affliction; a monster that mechanically, methodically hurts, harms, foils, impairs, and hinders all other creatures.
In many ways, the baernaloths are the outcasts among the ranks of the yugoloths. They rarely associate with other yugoloths, and are always found on the Gray Waste, never on Gehenna, where so many of the others have migrated. Some people wonder it perhaps the baernaloths are not true yugoloths at all, but rather some older, even more primal creatures. If this is true, baernaloth and yugoloth alike are propagating some sort of intentional deception (not that such a thing is at all inconceivable.
As “greater” yugoloths, baernaloths may be the weakest of their type when it comes to sheer might. Nevertheless, they are afforded a great deal of respect from their kind (when the rare occasion occurs and they actually come upon other yugoloths) - far more than their physical or magical power would warrant, for reasons unknown.
"
https://www.greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Nerull
"
The only god I worshipped was my excess."
"
Notice all the threes, even the three quotation marks above.
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante ... inferno-6/
https://www.resetdoc.org/ciacco-hollow- ... democracy/
"
In Canto VI of the Inferno, Dante introduces the figure of Ciacco, a character known mainly through the novella dedicated to him by Boccaccio (Decameron, IX, 8). There, he is portrayed as a courtly man, a frequenter of Florence’s aristocracy, inclined to the pleasures of the table but endowed with wit and rhetorical elegance. Dante places him among the gluttons, submerged in mud under a continuous, foul-smelling rain. This punishment does not merely condemn excess in eating, but points to a broader degradation: physical, anthropological, and political. The infernal rain does not nourish—it contaminates; it does not bring life—it corrodes. It symbolizes a desire that has lost all measure, a boundless consumption that empties the body and dissolves the civitas.
Beneath the surface of individual sin, Ciacco’s condition offers a collective diagnosis. His figure embodies the reduction of the political subject to a mere digestive apparatus, the transformation of logos into indistinct lament, of speech into undirected outburst. This is not merely a moral fault—it is a symptom of the breakdown of civic bonds: the loss of the individual’s deliberative dignity coincides with the disintegration of the city’s communal fabric.
Ciacco is not a major political actor or a recognized thinker. He is a marginal, liminal voice, yet he plays a critical and prophetic role. As in many Old Testament texts, the denunciation of corruption rises from below. His speech, fragmented yet clear, identifies the root of Florence’s decline not in external causes, but in the internal degeneration of its citizens. Florence decays because the collective soul that animates it has decayed.
This perspective points to a well-defined ethical-political vision: the order of the city depends on the ethics of the individual. Without dignitas—understood as inner balance and moral awareness—no public justice is possible. In this framework, Dante’s placement of Ciacco among the incontinent assumes a specific meaning: the individual’s inability to govern themselves leads to a society ruled by greed and violence.
Canto VI, therefore, does not merely condemn. It has a pedagogical and revelatory function: it shows what happens when measure is lost and speech no longer holds generative power. The figure of Ciacco becomes a mirror through which the reader may recognize their own condition and begin a path of regeneration—both personal and collective. Only by recovering logos can a new civilization begin.
On this basis, the present paper proposes a reinterpretation of Ciacco through the lens of Anton Jäger’s theory of hyperpolitics. According to Jäger, contemporary society is marked by increasing politicization without a corresponding rise in civic affiliation or social organization (Jäger 2024, 12). What we observe is a K-shaped recovery of politics: widespread but ineffective participation, emotional and intermittent, lacking duration and structure. Hyperpolitics manifests as a form of mobilization that is “low-cost, low-entry, low-duration, and all too often, low-value” (Jäger 2024, 13): instant protests, digital engagement, diffuse emotionality—but without transformative structures.
Ciacco embodies this paradigm. He is the hyper-politicized citizen without agency, stuck in a muddy present, unable to find direction or exert influence. His speech dissolves into noise: it does not propose, it does not build—it only laments. His is a voice of the belly, not of thought. It produces no deliberation, only spasms.
The paper is divided into three sections. The first analyzes Ciacco’s body as a metaphor for the emptied political subject, reduced to visceral desire. The second examines the logic of individualized, self-referential desire, which fuels fleeting and atomized forms of mobilization. The third addresses the crisis of political language and the dissolution of public deliberation in the democracy of desire, where political action becomes subjective narration.
Through these paths, Ciacco emerges as a paradigmatic figure of the disintegration of political agency in the age of the democracy of desire. For primary textual analysis, this paper refers to the Einaudi edition of the Commedia edited by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (Alighieri 2012), whose commentary serves as the main exegetical guide.
"
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Ciacco and the Emptied Body of Citizenship
In Canto VI of the Inferno, Dante places Ciacco among the gluttons, immersed in the mud under a constant rain. His degraded body becomes a symbol not only of physical decay but also of civic dissolution: the disorder of desire mirrors the breakdown of communal bonds. Ciacco is a fragment of a dismembered political body, reduced to matter without logos, surviving in a space where conflict does not generate politics, but only residual impulses.
In this light, Ciacco’s body anticipates what Jäger describes as “a politics with only weak policy influence or institutional ties” (Jäger 2024: 13). His voice—monological and powerless—reflects a form of hyperpolitics devoid of transformative outcomes, expressing an affective activation that does not lead to action. Just as in our contemporary world, mobilization is marked by “convulsive instances of agitation and controversy” (ibid.), Ciacco also merely complains, without proposing or building anything.
When Dante asks him about Florence’s future, Ciacco replies bitterly: the city is torn by “superbia, invidia e avarizia” (Inferno VI, 74-75), “pride, envy, and avarice”—sad passions that dissolve the community. These vices, also mentioned by Brunetto Latini and again in Paradiso (IX, 127-129), are not merely personal moral failures, but systemic dynamics of social disintegration. They are not a fire that purifies, but one that consumes and separates.
The reference to “la tua città” (Inferno VI, 49), “your city,” implies emotional and political involvement: Florence is a microcosm of human disorder, and Dante himself is part of it. In this framework, gluttony becomes a metaphor for a politics driven by unrestrained desire. The Eucharistic fractio panis turns into a fractio civitatis—the breaking of the civic bond.
Ciacco’s comment on those “ch’a ben far puoser li ’ngegni” (Inferno VI, 81) “who bent their minds to doing good” that they are “tra l’anime più nere” (Inferno VI, 85) “among the blackest souls” is emblematic. His laconic statement suggests that political action, without an ethical or spiritual foundation, becomes meaningless. Technical competence alone cannot save politics unless it is supported by an anthropology of dignitas.
This insight resonates with today’s democratic crisis. After the fall of ideological narratives and utopian projects, the central question becomes the human quality of politics itself. As T.S. Eliot said, the problem is not the politicians, but the society that produces them—because society defines the boundaries of what politicians can or cannot do (Eliot 1983, 36-37). Pope Francis echoed this idea: “Politics, so often denigrated, is a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, because it seeks the common good” (Pope Francis 2013, no. 205).
Dante reinforces this diagnosis by evoking factional struggles within the city. Ciacco prophesies the expulsion of the Guelfi Neri (Donati) by the Guelfi Bianchi (Cerchi): “la parte selvaggia / caccerà l’altra con molta offensione” (Inferno VI, 65-66)—“the savage party / will drive the other out with much offense.” The adjective “savage” alludes to the rural origins of the Cerchi family (Cardini 1970, 915), bearers of a mercantile ethos that challenged the traditional aristocracy. This marks a historical shift from nobility of spirit to financial ambition, causing a fracture in the civitas.
The mud in which Ciacco lies condenses the paradox of political participation reduced to pathology: a body and a voice exposed without any transformative capacity. As Jäger notes, “the solidarities of the online world remain an insufficient replacement for those of community and workplace” (Jäger 2024: 11). Ciacco is an exposed body without a project; a voice without logos—a fragment of the public sphere dominated by fleeting emotions and ephemeral visibility.
His condition represents the paradigm of an intestinal democracy, where the citizen, emptied of agency, becomes a passive receptor of stimuli and impulses. A society in which politics no longer nourishes but consumes; no longer builds but digests. As Jäger writes, “what Americans are left with is a grin without a cat: a politics with only weak policy influence or institutional ties” (Jäger 2024: 13).
Ciacco, immersed in mud, without shape or direction, embodies the crisis of citizenship: the replacement of civic culture with the affirmation of an atomized individual incapable of becoming a people. His story—both in medieval Florence and in today’s democracies—tells of the dissolution of a form of citizenship that has lost its sense of measure, memory, and future. In this condition, it is not politics that disappears, but the form of citizenship that crumbles: no longer understood as participation for the common good, but as an isolated and emotional fragment.
"
"
At the heart of Jäger’s diagnosis of contemporary democracy lies the crisis of logos, understood not only as a rhetorical tool but as the foundation of citizenship. Political speech, once tied to rational deliberation and the construction of a shared horizon, now gives way to affective expression. As Jäger explains, contemporary politicization unfolds in the absence of symbolic mediation and institutional processes (Jäger 2024, 13); politics has become more of an impulse than a structured discourse.
Read through this lens, Ciacco anticipates a subjectivity stripped of the generative power of language. His voice is sterile: it builds no alliances, preserves no memory, constructs no reality. He has not lost his ability to speak, but the capacity to be heard. He speaks—but his voice is swallowed by the mud, much like in today’s digital public sphere, where everything is exposed but nothing resonates.
Dante himself struggles to recognize him: “l’angoscia che tu hai / forse ti tira fuor de la mia mente” (Inferno VI, 44-45)—“the anguish you suffer / perhaps has pulled you out of my memory.”. The identity of the damned soul has been deformed to the point of being unrecognizable. It is the reflection of a vice that has become substance. In this mask lies Dante’s critique: behind the appearance of morality hides a disorder of desire that corrupts the city. “La tua città” (Inferno VI, 49) “Your city” is not just Florence—it is every community that has lost the ethical and political foundation of logos.
Jäger notes that in the new digital public sphere, language is instantly made visible but fails to generate any shared resonance; communication becomes loud and fragmented, with messages shouted rather than thoughtfully discussed (Jäger 2024, 14). Ciacco, too, names the evils of Florence—“ch’è piena / d’invidia sì che già trabocca il sacco” (Inferno VI, 49-50) “which is so full of envy that the sack already overflows”—but does so without a transformative language. His speech is an event, not a constitutive act. It does not find relationships or produce decisions. It is individual expression, not shared action.
This crisis of language is accompanied by the total personalization of political discourse. Words no longer create a we, but express a wounded I. Testimony replaces argument; trauma becomes the basis of legitimacy. Jäger describes a democracy shaped by desire, in which politics gives way to practices of emotional self-expression and mutual affective reflection (Jäger 2024, 15).
Ciacco embodies this victimized subjectivity: he speaks not to act, but to be recognized. He does not offer an ethical or civic analysis, but exposes his own failure. He is a witness, not a citizen. His voice is visceral, individualized, incompatible with any form of deliberation. He is emotionally involved, but not part of a collective.
As Jäger observes, in contemporary democracies, citizens are increasingly vocal, yet their speech does not lead to construction; they engage in protest, but without forming lasting organizations; they express themselves emotionally, but without developing forms of representation (Jäger 2024, 15). Logos gives way to symptom; language becomes a private sign, a solitary echo. Without a collective “we,” democracy fragments into isolated individuals. And Ciacco, immersed in mud, represents this outcome: a subject without a world, because he lacks political language.
And yet, Dante does not give in to nihilism. Dialogue with Ciacco is only made possible after Virgil—the figure of reason—puts Cerberus to sleep with a soporific cake. As in The Aeneid (VI, 420-423), knowledge can only arise once the beastly element is subdued. Salvation, Dante suggests, is born of proper measure, from the control of impulse. It is not technique that saves the civitas, but an inner transformation: the dignitas of the individual, which is the foundation of justice.
In this view, the true political actor is not the technician of consensus, but the ethical subject capable of self-government. Justice is the expression of inner order, not external imposition. Only those who have overcome their inner animality can generate law. Ciacco, lacking such measure, is the anti-statesman: a voice without logos, a body without form, an individual without a civitas.
In Canto VI, Dante foreshadows the breakdown of public speech: Ciacco is the first of many infernal voices that speak without effect. He is the first to speak, but his voice is already extinguished. As in Jäger’s hyperpolitics, meaning is no longer constructed through communication. It is the voice of the belly, not of reason; the democracy of desire, not of discourse. It is the end of politics as a form.
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forcing black into stereotypes by shunning other ways"
"
https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/p ... -americans
https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/links/essays/vcu.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styx
"
Styx, along with the underworld rivers Cocytus and Acheron, were associated with waterways in the upper world.[38] For example, according to Homer, the river Titaressus, a tributary of the river Peneius in Thessaly, was a branch of the Styx.[39] However Styx has been most commonly associated with an Arcadian stream and waterfall (the Mavronéri) that runs through a ravine on the North face of mount Chelmos and flows into the Krathis river.[40] The fifth-century BC historian Herodotus, locates this stream—calling it "the water of Styx"—as being near Nonacris a town (in what was then ancient Arcadia and now modern Achaea) not far from Pheneus, and says that the Spartan king Cleomenes, would make men take oaths swearing by its water. Herodotus describes it as "a stream of small appearance, dropping from a cliff into a pool; a wall of stones runs round the pool".[41] Pausanias reports visiting the "water of the Styx" near Nonacris (which at the time of his visit, in the second century AD, was already a partially-buried ruins), saying that:
Not far from the ruins is a high cliff; I know of none other that rises to so great a height. A water trickles down the cliff, called by the Greeks the water of the Styx.[42]
According to Aelian, Demeter caused the water of this Arcadian Styx "to well up in the neighbourhood of Pheneus".[43] An ancient legend apparently also connected Demeter with this Styx. According to Photius, a certain Ptolemy Hephaestion (probably referring to Ptolemy Chennus) knew of a story, "concerning the water of the Styx in Arcadia", which told how an angry Demeter had turned the Styx's water black.[44] According to James George Frazer, this "fable" provided an explanation for the fact that, from a distance, the waterfall appears black.[45]
Water from this Styx was said to be poisonous and able to dissolve most substances.[46] The first-century natural philosopher Pliny, wrote that drinking its water caused immediate death,[47] and that the hoof of a female mule was the only material not "rotted" by its water.[48] According to Plutarch the poisonous water could only be held by an ass's hoof, since all other vessels would "be eaten through by it, owing to its coldness and pungency."[49] While according to Pausanias, the only vessel that could hold the Styx's water (poisonous to both men and animals) was a horse's hoof.[50] There were ancient suspicions that Alexander the Great's death was caused by being poisoned with the water of this Styx.[51]
The Arcadian Styx may have been named so after its mythological counterpart, but it is also possible that this Arcadian stream was the model for the mythological Styx.[52] The latter seems to be the case, at least, for the Styx in Apuleius's Metamorphoses, which has Venus, addressing Psyche, give the following description:[53]
Do you see that steep mountain-peak standing above the towering cliff? Dark waves flow down from a black spring on that peak and are enclosed by the reservoir formed by the valley nearby, to water the swamps of Styx and feed the rasping currents of Cocytus.[54]
That Apuleius has his "black spring" being guarded by dragons, also suggests a connection between his Styx and two modern local names for the waterfall: the Black Water (Mavro Nero) and the Dragon Water (Drako Nero).[55]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavroneri
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Mavronéri (Greek: “Black Water”) is a river identified with the River Styx of Greek mythology according to Hesiod’s description in Theogony. It is located near Nonakris in the Aroania Mountains of Achaia on the Peloponnesian peninsula. Its waters contain a significant amount of Calicheamicin, a dangerous compound produced by bacteria. Stanford University scientists Antoinette Hayes and Adrienne Mayor speculate that the waters of the Mavronéri were used to poison Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.[1]
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https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/site ... 0holes.pdf
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Commorragh
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The scions of the Dark City would never admit that the unceasing hunger at their core is what drives them to such heights of cruelty. Instead they maintain that they act only upon their own desires. Some have even managed to convince themselves of this. In truth, unless our cousins in the Webway feed upon a constant diet of extreme emotion they will slowly wither away, leaving naught but a soulless husk. We of the Craftworlds deny all such urges, and in doing so become less than ourselves. Perhaps it is those that we left to perish who are the lucky ones.
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Commorragh, also called the "Dark City," is the massive city-state within the Webway that is the primary home of the Dark Eldar, or Drukhari, kindred of the Aeldari species. It is said to be impossible for outsiders to find, and anarchy and terrorism are a well-established way of life for its debased inhabitants. It is widely believed to be hidden deep within the inter-dimensional labyrinth known as the Webway, described by the Craftworld Aeldari as a "dark stain" growing within their holy pathways.
Commorragh is no mere metropolis, for it is to the greatest cities of realspace as a soaring mountain is to a mound of termites. Its dimensions would be considered impossible if they could be read by conventional means, its population greater than that of whole star systems. If anything, Commorragh is more like a vast collection of satellite realms and cities linked by myriad portals and hidden pathways.
Viewed from one perspective, Commorragh is a loose collection of far-flung nodes spread throughout the arteries of the Webway like a malevolent virus. Its clustered concentrations are in reality scattered across the galaxy, thousands of light-years apart in places. Yet these locations are linked together by shimmering dimensional shortcuts. Within the Webway, the immense distances between each sub-realm can be crossed with a single step.
The Dark City is known to have "wandering shadows that tear apart the unwary" and is bathed in the crimson half-light of the Ilmaea, or "black suns," dying stars taken from realspace by the Aeldari at the height of their technological prowess and installed within their own sub-realms within the Webway to provide Commorragh with light and power.
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https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Haemonculi
https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Webway
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante ... nferno-13/
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Following violence against others in their persons and in their possessions, treated in canto 12, Inferno 13 treats violence against the self. Violence against the self can be manifested either in one’s person, through committing suicide, or in one’s possessions, through the squandering of personal goods.
[2] Many have noted that this last category, of squanderers, is only with difficulty distinguished from that of the prodigals of the fourth circle. This structural overlap suggests that Dante could have omitted the prodigals in circle 4, knowing that he would arrive at wastrels in circle 7; in this way he could have longer sustained the synchrony between the architecture of his Hell and the Christian scheme of the seven capital vices. The fact that, despite the prospect of the squanderers, Dante nonetheless ruptures the system of the seven capital vices in circle 4, can be construed as an indicator of his commitment to the Aristotelian concept — dramatized in circle 4 and Inferno 7 — of virtue as the mean.
[3] The travelers enter a murky wood (“bosco” in verse 2), a place that is characterized by negativity, by what it is not (note the repeated “non” at the beginning of each verse):
Non fronda verde, ma di color fosco;
non rami schietti, ma nodosi e ’nvolti;
non pomi v’eran, ma stecchi con tòsco.
Inf. 13.4-6)
No green leaves in that forest, only black;
no branches straight and smooth, but knotted, gnarled;
no fruits were there, but briers bearing poison.
[4] It turns out that the trees and bushes in this wood are the transformed souls of suicides. These souls have thus been transformed into something other than what they were — indeed, into what they were not:
They were humans; they are now plants;
They were forms of intellective life; now they are forms of vegetative life.
[5] But this transformation turns out not to be proof that the original unity of body and soul has been successfully violated. In fact, we will learn that the substance of these beings has never changed, despite all attempts to undo it. Ultimately, as we shall see, Dante’s point in Inferno 13 is as follows: the unity of body and soul is indestructible. Selfhood cannot be undone.
[6] The second ring of the seventh circle houses the souls of humans who are characterized by negative identity. A negative metamorphosis has transformed them from humans — beings in whose development the intellective faculty has superseded both the sensitive and the vegetative faculties, as described in Purgatorio 25.52-75 — into plants: vegetable life alone. However, they are plants that speak, in another monstrous hybrid that makes no sense, since speech and language are a property of the intellective faculty, as the same passage in Purgatorio 25 informs us.
[7] In sum: having willfully sundered the body-soul nexus, they are now what they should not be. In appearance they are now plants. But, as Dante will show us in dramatic fashion, in substance they are still human. For the reality, a terrible reality for these souls, is that selfhood cannot be undone.
***
[8] Mythological monster-birds, foul birds with the faces of women that torment Aeneas and his men in the Aeneid, the Harpies are a monstrous union of human and animal, like the Centaurs, whereas the suicide-trees combine human and vegetable. In Inferno 13, the Harpies feed on the leaves of the suicide-trees and thereby cause pain to the sinners. As Pier della Vigna will reveal later on: “l’Arpie, pascendo poi de le sue foglie, / fanno dolore, e al dolor fenestra” (then the Harpies, feeding on its leaves, / cause pain and for that pain provide a vent [Inf. 13.101-2]).
[9] What does it mean to say that the Harpies, by eating the leaves of these “trees”, can cause pain to the souls of the persons whose immaterial forms are now constituted by these vegetative forms? What is the nature of this causation?
[10] Dante here uses mythological or magical transubstantiation to try to get at the meaning of the body-soul nexus. This is a method that he will adopt on other occasions as well.
[11] For instance, in Purgatorio 25 the catalyst for the lengthy discussion of human embryology and embodiment is the mythological figure Meleager, destined to die when a particular piece of charred wood is thrown onto the flames and consumed (Purg. 25.22-23). Meleager’s mother, learning of her son’s destiny, carefully preserves the firebrand. Years later, when she is enraged at her son, she retrieves the piece of charred wood, throws it into the flames, and kills him. In Purgatorio 25 Dante is essentially posing the question: What is the connection between Meleager and the piece of wood that in some way “represents” him?
[12] The piece of wood that represents Meleager, like the trees that represent the suicides, are not really separate from the soul, as they seem to be: they are not mere representations.
[13] In these passages Dante is using classical mythology to make the key Christian point about the indivisibility of body and soul. It may seem that the body is a outward husk that can be discarded: a tree, a bush, a piece of wood. But in the same way that Meleager is the charred wood — in the same way that he dies when the charred wood is consumed in the flames — so his body is never really separate from his soul.
[14] Mealeager’s being — his essence, his selfhood — is composed of an indivisible unity of body and soul.
[15] In the encounter with Pier della Vigna Dante first raises the questions later posed by the story of Meleager. The link between Inferno 13 and Purgatorio 25 is signaled by the word “stizzo” (firebrand) which appears in the Commedia only in Inferno 13.40 and Purgatorio 25.23, only for these two instances of apparent vegetative life that is really human life.
[16] Telling us that the Harpies cause pain to the self that is embodied in the tree is Dante’s way of signifying that the unity of body and soul is indestructible. These souls thought to avoid pain in life by destroying their bodies, but their “bodies” still feel pain, even though they are no longer in human form.
[17] Over the previous canti Dante has given us information about the body-soul nexus, with respect to eternity, the resurrection of the flesh and the reunion of flesh with soul. We might distill the information thus:
In Inferno 6.106-11, Virgilio explains to Dante that souls will be more perfect after the Last Judgment, when they are reunited with their bodies. Although Virgilio only cites Aristotle (“perfezion” in Inf. 6.110), Dante-narrator here effectively introduces the thematic of the theology of the Resurrection. This passage provides Dante’s baseline belief, against the backdrop of which he depicts the following variant — perverse — configurations.
In Inferno 9, Virgilio’s story of the sorceress Erichtho, who previously compelled him to make the journey to lower Hell, includes two references to the body. According to Virgilio he was “congiurato da quella Eritón cruda / che richiamava l’ombre a’ corpi sui” (compelled by that savage Erichtho / who called the shades back to their bodes [Inf. 9.23-4]). Erichtho’s power, in Virgilio’s telling, is demiurgic: she can reconnect shades to their bodies, in a perverse resurrection that anticipates Dante’s invention of “zombies” in Inferno 33. Virgilio indicates that Erichtho summoned him soon after he died, when he had only recently been denuded of his flesh: “Di poco era di me la carne nuda” (My flesh had not been long stripped off from me [Inf. 9.25]). Here Virgilio uses the personal pronoun of identity (“me”) to refer to his self as a self even when denuded of his flesh, thus implying that self and identity can be present even when the fleshly body is absent: the wasted body in a tomb is still a self. We could take this remark as a further reminder that the self will eventually be fully reconstituted, not by sorcery, but by the divine power that at the Last Judgment reunites the soul with its fleshly body.
The Epicurean heresy, as synthesized by Dante in Inferno 10.15, “che l’anima col corpo morta fanno”, posits the opposite view: the belief that soul dies with body signifies that without the body there is no self. This view can be seen as a perverse non-dualism.
In Inferno 13, Dante will confirm the absolute indivisibility of body and soul, showing us that even when the body has been transformed into a tree-body it is still tied to its soul: the original body-soul nexus may have been altered in appearance, but the bond is not severed. The unity of body and soul cannot be severed, neither in malo nor in bono. An in malo reprise of this theme will recur in Inferno 25, where the souls are given the bodies of serpents, and yet remain themselves.
"
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/commento-baroliniano/
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Shator
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huge bat-like wings
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"
Shators were the self-appointed wardens of the Red Prison, and kept meticulous records of their subordinates and claimed prisoners.[1] They were fearsome entities with great intellects that projected an almost palpable air of self-confidence[6] and possessed shocking levels of cruelty. Like the farastu they were slow to react and secretly desired escape attempts by Carcerian petitioners, but they wanted potential escapees to succeed so that they could send bounty hunters to bring them back.[2]
"
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Bizarrely, shators on other planes treated the three-headed chimerae like most humans would treat kittens, reserving their ordinary sadism and occasionally showing concern for them.[3]
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https://www.greyhawkonline.com/greyhawk ... ew_desktop
"
In his true form, Apomps is said to resemble a grossly disfigured baernaloth, though he is said to be capable of manifesting in the form of either a farastu, kelubar, or shator demodand. He is the one who breathes life into the rotting corpses of Carceri, transforming them into farastu, and who transforms the farastu into more powerful demodands as they are needed. According to rumor, he presents each demodand with an obsidian triangle that acts as a personal link to him and possibly allows the demodands access to the memories of their entire race. Some believe that the triangles are the eyes and ears of Apomps, allowing him to see and hear wherever his creations go.
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https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Baernaloth
https://5e.tools/bestiary/baernaloth-mpp.html
"
Baernaloths are tall, gaunt yugoloths who keep to the Gray Wastes of Hades. Their gray, desiccated skin stretches over their bones, and their heads resemble horned equine skulls with ember-like eyes. Sages endlessly debate the nature of baernaloths, and the Books of Keeping—ancient tomes detailing the true names of the first yugoloths—report no mention of baernaloths within. Some posit that these enigmatic yugoloths were created by a primal evil power before other yugoloths or that they come from an epoch before the current manifestation of the planes. Baernaloths refuse to say, but most obsess over secrets and obscene lore regarding the far-flung past and inscrutable future of the multiverse. Many of these rare scholars of the profane seek to manipulate reality on a grand scale, while others unleash horrific experiments on the planes. It's said the first demodands of Carceri were created by baernaloths.
Baernaloths spread discord and despair among any creatures they meet. They use their breath, thick with the gloom of Hades, to turn friends against each other and then savor the horror that rises when their victims realize how they've betrayed one another. Baernaloths use their wicked power to keep mortally wounded foes alive, sometimes indefinitely, to prolong their suffering. Even striking against a baernaloth brings misery—they can cause an attacker's old wounds to painfully reopen. All the while, baernaloths are disturbingly detached, observing their victims' agony without emotion.
Whether in the hopeless realms of Hades or on the rare occasion they lurk on some other plane, baernaloths lair in remote mountain crags and secluded caves. Their lairs have ample places to house and restrain "guests," particularly those the baernaloths keep hovering at death's door.
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https://www.completecompendium.com/appendix/yugobaer/
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Long, gangly limbs covered by purulent gray flesh; an over-sized, horned head with an obscene mouth comprising nothing but teeth and tongue; distant, glazed yellow eyes dripping fluid far more vile than tears - all these things are a baernaloth, yet it is more. The essence of the creature is callous detatchment, never seeing the suffering and pain that it ceaselessly creates; an unending, unsatiable need for misery and affliction; a monster that mechanically, methodically hurts, harms, foils, impairs, and hinders all other creatures.
In many ways, the baernaloths are the outcasts among the ranks of the yugoloths. They rarely associate with other yugoloths, and are always found on the Gray Waste, never on Gehenna, where so many of the others have migrated. Some people wonder it perhaps the baernaloths are not true yugoloths at all, but rather some older, even more primal creatures. If this is true, baernaloth and yugoloth alike are propagating some sort of intentional deception (not that such a thing is at all inconceivable.
As “greater” yugoloths, baernaloths may be the weakest of their type when it comes to sheer might. Nevertheless, they are afforded a great deal of respect from their kind (when the rare occasion occurs and they actually come upon other yugoloths) - far more than their physical or magical power would warrant, for reasons unknown.
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https://www.greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Nerull
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The only god I worshipped was my excess."
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Notice all the threes, even the three quotation marks above.
https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/dante ... inferno-6/
https://www.resetdoc.org/ciacco-hollow- ... democracy/
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In Canto VI of the Inferno, Dante introduces the figure of Ciacco, a character known mainly through the novella dedicated to him by Boccaccio (Decameron, IX, 8). There, he is portrayed as a courtly man, a frequenter of Florence’s aristocracy, inclined to the pleasures of the table but endowed with wit and rhetorical elegance. Dante places him among the gluttons, submerged in mud under a continuous, foul-smelling rain. This punishment does not merely condemn excess in eating, but points to a broader degradation: physical, anthropological, and political. The infernal rain does not nourish—it contaminates; it does not bring life—it corrodes. It symbolizes a desire that has lost all measure, a boundless consumption that empties the body and dissolves the civitas.
Beneath the surface of individual sin, Ciacco’s condition offers a collective diagnosis. His figure embodies the reduction of the political subject to a mere digestive apparatus, the transformation of logos into indistinct lament, of speech into undirected outburst. This is not merely a moral fault—it is a symptom of the breakdown of civic bonds: the loss of the individual’s deliberative dignity coincides with the disintegration of the city’s communal fabric.
Ciacco is not a major political actor or a recognized thinker. He is a marginal, liminal voice, yet he plays a critical and prophetic role. As in many Old Testament texts, the denunciation of corruption rises from below. His speech, fragmented yet clear, identifies the root of Florence’s decline not in external causes, but in the internal degeneration of its citizens. Florence decays because the collective soul that animates it has decayed.
This perspective points to a well-defined ethical-political vision: the order of the city depends on the ethics of the individual. Without dignitas—understood as inner balance and moral awareness—no public justice is possible. In this framework, Dante’s placement of Ciacco among the incontinent assumes a specific meaning: the individual’s inability to govern themselves leads to a society ruled by greed and violence.
Canto VI, therefore, does not merely condemn. It has a pedagogical and revelatory function: it shows what happens when measure is lost and speech no longer holds generative power. The figure of Ciacco becomes a mirror through which the reader may recognize their own condition and begin a path of regeneration—both personal and collective. Only by recovering logos can a new civilization begin.
On this basis, the present paper proposes a reinterpretation of Ciacco through the lens of Anton Jäger’s theory of hyperpolitics. According to Jäger, contemporary society is marked by increasing politicization without a corresponding rise in civic affiliation or social organization (Jäger 2024, 12). What we observe is a K-shaped recovery of politics: widespread but ineffective participation, emotional and intermittent, lacking duration and structure. Hyperpolitics manifests as a form of mobilization that is “low-cost, low-entry, low-duration, and all too often, low-value” (Jäger 2024, 13): instant protests, digital engagement, diffuse emotionality—but without transformative structures.
Ciacco embodies this paradigm. He is the hyper-politicized citizen without agency, stuck in a muddy present, unable to find direction or exert influence. His speech dissolves into noise: it does not propose, it does not build—it only laments. His is a voice of the belly, not of thought. It produces no deliberation, only spasms.
The paper is divided into three sections. The first analyzes Ciacco’s body as a metaphor for the emptied political subject, reduced to visceral desire. The second examines the logic of individualized, self-referential desire, which fuels fleeting and atomized forms of mobilization. The third addresses the crisis of political language and the dissolution of public deliberation in the democracy of desire, where political action becomes subjective narration.
Through these paths, Ciacco emerges as a paradigmatic figure of the disintegration of political agency in the age of the democracy of desire. For primary textual analysis, this paper refers to the Einaudi edition of the Commedia edited by Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi (Alighieri 2012), whose commentary serves as the main exegetical guide.
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Ciacco and the Emptied Body of Citizenship
In Canto VI of the Inferno, Dante places Ciacco among the gluttons, immersed in the mud under a constant rain. His degraded body becomes a symbol not only of physical decay but also of civic dissolution: the disorder of desire mirrors the breakdown of communal bonds. Ciacco is a fragment of a dismembered political body, reduced to matter without logos, surviving in a space where conflict does not generate politics, but only residual impulses.
In this light, Ciacco’s body anticipates what Jäger describes as “a politics with only weak policy influence or institutional ties” (Jäger 2024: 13). His voice—monological and powerless—reflects a form of hyperpolitics devoid of transformative outcomes, expressing an affective activation that does not lead to action. Just as in our contemporary world, mobilization is marked by “convulsive instances of agitation and controversy” (ibid.), Ciacco also merely complains, without proposing or building anything.
When Dante asks him about Florence’s future, Ciacco replies bitterly: the city is torn by “superbia, invidia e avarizia” (Inferno VI, 74-75), “pride, envy, and avarice”—sad passions that dissolve the community. These vices, also mentioned by Brunetto Latini and again in Paradiso (IX, 127-129), are not merely personal moral failures, but systemic dynamics of social disintegration. They are not a fire that purifies, but one that consumes and separates.
The reference to “la tua città” (Inferno VI, 49), “your city,” implies emotional and political involvement: Florence is a microcosm of human disorder, and Dante himself is part of it. In this framework, gluttony becomes a metaphor for a politics driven by unrestrained desire. The Eucharistic fractio panis turns into a fractio civitatis—the breaking of the civic bond.
Ciacco’s comment on those “ch’a ben far puoser li ’ngegni” (Inferno VI, 81) “who bent their minds to doing good” that they are “tra l’anime più nere” (Inferno VI, 85) “among the blackest souls” is emblematic. His laconic statement suggests that political action, without an ethical or spiritual foundation, becomes meaningless. Technical competence alone cannot save politics unless it is supported by an anthropology of dignitas.
This insight resonates with today’s democratic crisis. After the fall of ideological narratives and utopian projects, the central question becomes the human quality of politics itself. As T.S. Eliot said, the problem is not the politicians, but the society that produces them—because society defines the boundaries of what politicians can or cannot do (Eliot 1983, 36-37). Pope Francis echoed this idea: “Politics, so often denigrated, is a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, because it seeks the common good” (Pope Francis 2013, no. 205).
Dante reinforces this diagnosis by evoking factional struggles within the city. Ciacco prophesies the expulsion of the Guelfi Neri (Donati) by the Guelfi Bianchi (Cerchi): “la parte selvaggia / caccerà l’altra con molta offensione” (Inferno VI, 65-66)—“the savage party / will drive the other out with much offense.” The adjective “savage” alludes to the rural origins of the Cerchi family (Cardini 1970, 915), bearers of a mercantile ethos that challenged the traditional aristocracy. This marks a historical shift from nobility of spirit to financial ambition, causing a fracture in the civitas.
The mud in which Ciacco lies condenses the paradox of political participation reduced to pathology: a body and a voice exposed without any transformative capacity. As Jäger notes, “the solidarities of the online world remain an insufficient replacement for those of community and workplace” (Jäger 2024: 11). Ciacco is an exposed body without a project; a voice without logos—a fragment of the public sphere dominated by fleeting emotions and ephemeral visibility.
His condition represents the paradigm of an intestinal democracy, where the citizen, emptied of agency, becomes a passive receptor of stimuli and impulses. A society in which politics no longer nourishes but consumes; no longer builds but digests. As Jäger writes, “what Americans are left with is a grin without a cat: a politics with only weak policy influence or institutional ties” (Jäger 2024: 13).
Ciacco, immersed in mud, without shape or direction, embodies the crisis of citizenship: the replacement of civic culture with the affirmation of an atomized individual incapable of becoming a people. His story—both in medieval Florence and in today’s democracies—tells of the dissolution of a form of citizenship that has lost its sense of measure, memory, and future. In this condition, it is not politics that disappears, but the form of citizenship that crumbles: no longer understood as participation for the common good, but as an isolated and emotional fragment.
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At the heart of Jäger’s diagnosis of contemporary democracy lies the crisis of logos, understood not only as a rhetorical tool but as the foundation of citizenship. Political speech, once tied to rational deliberation and the construction of a shared horizon, now gives way to affective expression. As Jäger explains, contemporary politicization unfolds in the absence of symbolic mediation and institutional processes (Jäger 2024, 13); politics has become more of an impulse than a structured discourse.
Read through this lens, Ciacco anticipates a subjectivity stripped of the generative power of language. His voice is sterile: it builds no alliances, preserves no memory, constructs no reality. He has not lost his ability to speak, but the capacity to be heard. He speaks—but his voice is swallowed by the mud, much like in today’s digital public sphere, where everything is exposed but nothing resonates.
Dante himself struggles to recognize him: “l’angoscia che tu hai / forse ti tira fuor de la mia mente” (Inferno VI, 44-45)—“the anguish you suffer / perhaps has pulled you out of my memory.”. The identity of the damned soul has been deformed to the point of being unrecognizable. It is the reflection of a vice that has become substance. In this mask lies Dante’s critique: behind the appearance of morality hides a disorder of desire that corrupts the city. “La tua città” (Inferno VI, 49) “Your city” is not just Florence—it is every community that has lost the ethical and political foundation of logos.
Jäger notes that in the new digital public sphere, language is instantly made visible but fails to generate any shared resonance; communication becomes loud and fragmented, with messages shouted rather than thoughtfully discussed (Jäger 2024, 14). Ciacco, too, names the evils of Florence—“ch’è piena / d’invidia sì che già trabocca il sacco” (Inferno VI, 49-50) “which is so full of envy that the sack already overflows”—but does so without a transformative language. His speech is an event, not a constitutive act. It does not find relationships or produce decisions. It is individual expression, not shared action.
This crisis of language is accompanied by the total personalization of political discourse. Words no longer create a we, but express a wounded I. Testimony replaces argument; trauma becomes the basis of legitimacy. Jäger describes a democracy shaped by desire, in which politics gives way to practices of emotional self-expression and mutual affective reflection (Jäger 2024, 15).
Ciacco embodies this victimized subjectivity: he speaks not to act, but to be recognized. He does not offer an ethical or civic analysis, but exposes his own failure. He is a witness, not a citizen. His voice is visceral, individualized, incompatible with any form of deliberation. He is emotionally involved, but not part of a collective.
As Jäger observes, in contemporary democracies, citizens are increasingly vocal, yet their speech does not lead to construction; they engage in protest, but without forming lasting organizations; they express themselves emotionally, but without developing forms of representation (Jäger 2024, 15). Logos gives way to symptom; language becomes a private sign, a solitary echo. Without a collective “we,” democracy fragments into isolated individuals. And Ciacco, immersed in mud, represents this outcome: a subject without a world, because he lacks political language.
And yet, Dante does not give in to nihilism. Dialogue with Ciacco is only made possible after Virgil—the figure of reason—puts Cerberus to sleep with a soporific cake. As in The Aeneid (VI, 420-423), knowledge can only arise once the beastly element is subdued. Salvation, Dante suggests, is born of proper measure, from the control of impulse. It is not technique that saves the civitas, but an inner transformation: the dignitas of the individual, which is the foundation of justice.
In this view, the true political actor is not the technician of consensus, but the ethical subject capable of self-government. Justice is the expression of inner order, not external imposition. Only those who have overcome their inner animality can generate law. Ciacco, lacking such measure, is the anti-statesman: a voice without logos, a body without form, an individual without a civitas.
In Canto VI, Dante foreshadows the breakdown of public speech: Ciacco is the first of many infernal voices that speak without effect. He is the first to speak, but his voice is already extinguished. As in Jäger’s hyperpolitics, meaning is no longer constructed through communication. It is the voice of the belly, not of reason; the democracy of desire, not of discourse. It is the end of politics as a form.
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forcing black into stereotypes by shunning other ways"
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https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/p ... -americans
https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/links/essays/vcu.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokenism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styx
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Styx, along with the underworld rivers Cocytus and Acheron, were associated with waterways in the upper world.[38] For example, according to Homer, the river Titaressus, a tributary of the river Peneius in Thessaly, was a branch of the Styx.[39] However Styx has been most commonly associated with an Arcadian stream and waterfall (the Mavronéri) that runs through a ravine on the North face of mount Chelmos and flows into the Krathis river.[40] The fifth-century BC historian Herodotus, locates this stream—calling it "the water of Styx"—as being near Nonacris a town (in what was then ancient Arcadia and now modern Achaea) not far from Pheneus, and says that the Spartan king Cleomenes, would make men take oaths swearing by its water. Herodotus describes it as "a stream of small appearance, dropping from a cliff into a pool; a wall of stones runs round the pool".[41] Pausanias reports visiting the "water of the Styx" near Nonacris (which at the time of his visit, in the second century AD, was already a partially-buried ruins), saying that:
Not far from the ruins is a high cliff; I know of none other that rises to so great a height. A water trickles down the cliff, called by the Greeks the water of the Styx.[42]
According to Aelian, Demeter caused the water of this Arcadian Styx "to well up in the neighbourhood of Pheneus".[43] An ancient legend apparently also connected Demeter with this Styx. According to Photius, a certain Ptolemy Hephaestion (probably referring to Ptolemy Chennus) knew of a story, "concerning the water of the Styx in Arcadia", which told how an angry Demeter had turned the Styx's water black.[44] According to James George Frazer, this "fable" provided an explanation for the fact that, from a distance, the waterfall appears black.[45]
Water from this Styx was said to be poisonous and able to dissolve most substances.[46] The first-century natural philosopher Pliny, wrote that drinking its water caused immediate death,[47] and that the hoof of a female mule was the only material not "rotted" by its water.[48] According to Plutarch the poisonous water could only be held by an ass's hoof, since all other vessels would "be eaten through by it, owing to its coldness and pungency."[49] While according to Pausanias, the only vessel that could hold the Styx's water (poisonous to both men and animals) was a horse's hoof.[50] There were ancient suspicions that Alexander the Great's death was caused by being poisoned with the water of this Styx.[51]
The Arcadian Styx may have been named so after its mythological counterpart, but it is also possible that this Arcadian stream was the model for the mythological Styx.[52] The latter seems to be the case, at least, for the Styx in Apuleius's Metamorphoses, which has Venus, addressing Psyche, give the following description:[53]
Do you see that steep mountain-peak standing above the towering cliff? Dark waves flow down from a black spring on that peak and are enclosed by the reservoir formed by the valley nearby, to water the swamps of Styx and feed the rasping currents of Cocytus.[54]
That Apuleius has his "black spring" being guarded by dragons, also suggests a connection between his Styx and two modern local names for the waterfall: the Black Water (Mavro Nero) and the Dragon Water (Drako Nero).[55]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavroneri
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Mavronéri (Greek: “Black Water”) is a river identified with the River Styx of Greek mythology according to Hesiod’s description in Theogony. It is located near Nonakris in the Aroania Mountains of Achaia on the Peloponnesian peninsula. Its waters contain a significant amount of Calicheamicin, a dangerous compound produced by bacteria. Stanford University scientists Antoinette Hayes and Adrienne Mayor speculate that the waters of the Mavronéri were used to poison Alexander the Great in 323 BCE.[1]
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