Centipede Queen

A forest of Carboniferous renown, glown up to mythical proportions, a time of primordial chaos just touching the first blush of order, a city of curiosity long-lost to nightmare and imagination, and a people said to no longer walk among us long before we were us. All have in common an immeasurably damnable Queen, the Progenitor. The Centipede Queen Peiaros. Here we describe her, a summary of her terrible reign, and her blasphemous progeny.

She began as any orphan washed in the tides of war, parentage and blood ties unknown, horrid strife her first imprint of the world. A mélange of malady and social dystrophy brought her up instead of parent or guardian. The world at the time having not yet discovered humanity, as none who could be described as such yet came to be. In her strife she gained a self sense seen rarely among our kind, often viewed as extreme illness in our era, but she did not live in our era. She lived in a world that knew only of its self, and so its people were as such. Personified in her grave experiences, she ideated a sense rarely accrued in that time or place.

It came to pass that she amassed powers of the realm, and followers to lap at her wake in the process. Rising to heights akin to the tree tops of the time; those denderous monstrosities that could shame mountains; bringing all who challenged her low. In the beginning of her maximum, only rumors circulated of those who "ruled" and fixtured territories as demesnes or realms. She became famed for such. Her rule was long and vast, her tyranny spanning unnatural generations besides. Nevertheless, she was paid court as we would see it, and most handsomely. Her countenance is lost to us who look back, as vanity, surprisingly, was not in her nature. Description of her physical form seems cast primarily in the esoteric and symbolic. Deep divers insist that the visages of her worship, as she was, are not symbolic but her actual countenance, however this can be largely disregarded as illustrated reasoning will be plain in short order.

Her people carved a likeness of greatly oversized centipedes to represent her in their traditions. These likenesses bore a size abhorrent in grandiosity that could shame the largest specimens of paleontological fossil records and estimations. Statues in fine black marble, shot through with impurities of mercury and lead, fill her far cities. In those ruins said to have housed her in their remnants of tales, from whence most of this information comes, the centipede form is given the face or upper half of a woman, like a peculiar mermaid. What the centipede meant to them, we can only speculate, such as put forth to indicate the many legs to represent the peoples who carried her; for aside from her the myriad tribes had little else in common through the ages, hence our primary focus on Peiaros.

As mentioned, she had a multitude of children, not merely her subjects who seem foul enough by our standards, but actual accountings of birth. Granted, the accounts again exaggerate, calling them hatchings, referring to great obscene nests and nesting practices, horrific mating rituals, and more of the same. It is translated that her progeny in fact ruled many as she herself, hence the reference to swarms and multitudes, and likely clashed with each other as well as the Queen Mother herself. Below are some illustrative excerpts to be interpreted, but here lain plain as translated true.

1. The Tablet of Arthros
2. The Statues of Temple Ruins (various)
3. The Reckoning Accounts

The Tablet of Arthros, circa Carbon Era Two. Translated by Lady Deleweas.

"So she again slaughtered the meekest of supplicants in their abode. She supped upon their essences, wrought of their bones an effigy of [illegible, seems intentionally carved out much later]. Within the effigy, she lay the royal eggs. Within the homes and the animals, she lay the drones. Within the midden heaps the unfertilized slave eggs, 'the people reborn', she proclaims each time. I find her characteristic humor sounds unsettling every time. This accounting is of her third clutching, the brute she mated long consumed whole. Perhaps this time the spawn will leave more than one victorious princess, as the other two hatched bitter and cold, knowing none but Mother. The counting: 5 royal eggs, as many hundred drones, as many thousand slaves. It strikes me how accurate the comparison of those numbered consumed and those eggs lain equal each other. I tire of precise counts, but I do not exaggerate."

Notes: Arthros does go on. He confessed here that Peiaros is not possessed of literacy! Astounding, she held such esteem and power, that she is spoken of in terms of god-like numerical values, and yet she has no ability to count or read. Perhaps the scribes needed to remind themselves as much to keep a head while reading to her the ledgers. She must have had an absolutely ghastly laugh, mayhap manners were not a staple of her court either?

The Statues of Temple Ruins, Sir Dorphendell translation and study.

NOTES: Of the Cities and Temples therein, hundreds of years separate their dating, yet still Peiaros is worshiped, much like a savage goddess of the early times. Yet each statue claims to be a direct immediate daughter of the Centipede Queen, each princess marked by the same iconography, and incorporating the iconography of the departed father figure. The field of psychology would have an absolute hay-day with these people. I find them utterly vulgar, but remain firmly fascinated. A couple of early examples, the third of which tracks well with Lady Deleweas' tablet.

"DOMINA she of fewer legs and hungrier reach. Behold her glory and give of your [indecipherable] that she may bless you with her benevolent oversight. Know of her power through her steps and rejoice in her dance of flippant ties."

"MORICIA she of engorged mind fullness and peculiar fascinations. Mourn her loss to DOMINA, and rejoice in your liberation!" NOTE: the effigy is defaced, literally the face was removed with surgical precision and placed at her foremost tentacles. An unusual thing to do to a statue, and I do wonder what it meant for the live princess in her time.

"ORTICA and LOTHERA they were inseparable, though MORTICA tried whenever she captured them. DOMINA was no less merciful when the twins fell under her grasp. They were ambitious and challenging." NOTE: Conjoined twins! The statue is too ghoulish to describe in full, but they were attached by the nape of the neck.

It is known that thirty-seven additional princesses who survived the first three are newly discovered, and several more suspected locations are yet uncovered. More funding will be needed to delve into the temples of each. Contention concerning timelines persist, as surely a dynasty and empire of such a nature placed at the ancient claims their records make would have never been lost to time. Yet not one record of myth or legend, not one etymological tie of folk lore or story type, can be said to derive from these people. Perhaps they were as skilled at eradication as they claim, so that none who encountered them ever lived to tell the tale. Surely they cannot be as ancient as all seem to be. As it is, near the end, Queen Peiaros was said to have risen from a hibernation to battle and consume the last princesses standing. Grisly tellings in mural show the reckoning. I will attempt a brief synopsis of the study of the collected murals to far. Forgive any gaps, as we are still uncovering rooms.

"Peiaros, Centipede Queen, Gorgoned Chimera most exalted, born of war and blood awakened to the thrashings of her daughter swarms, enraged by their transgression upon her territory. She slew first their underlings like a tsunami washing the world clean, her wrath thunderous to ring the moon. From her came they whom she punished most torturously, to her in their end they returned."

"Her eldest was her greatest disappointment, as she fell in the middle, mediocre among her progeny. DOMINA was consumed of a vast lethargy, having consumed her own young and their swarms to bolster her own strength. Still it was not enough to energize the princess to the cosmic task of confronting Mother."

"Princess [the twenty-seventh] seemed as though she would rule victorious over her maker, instead learned, to the surprise of all, that Peiaros is possessed of secrets. Previously unknown was a greatening of the maw, which split the body twain, to swallow whole the largest spawn. Nearly spilling inside out in the process, no less frenzied was The Centipede Queen." NOTE: This one is truly graphic, and in excellent shape, sadly. I shall never remove the stain from my mind.

Research continues against all odds. Mayhap there will come a day when we uncover something useful, but for now the fanciful tellings of these long dead peoples will have to keep us afloat. For now, this concludes our overview of this current endeavoring.