WF7203: Backer answer to ‘What is it that the White intended?’

The answer to your question is: the elaboration of the Counsel of Peace. To be more specific: the Liberation of Night stained the Deep Wilderness long, long before it touched the Earth, and the White feared – reasonably that its metastasising rapture would darken the hearts of too many stars for it ever to be contained. [This is lore I’d have explored more in Sunless Sky/ies as it was originally conceived, but Failbetter have gone, I believe, in a completely different direction, and this is no longer continuity.] He resorted to the Neath, that notorious half-secret laboratory of stellar secrets. The Bazaar is developing its own Counsel to soothe and cheer the Sun; the White hoped to find or foment a final argument of despair which would quell the rebellious hearts of any Liberated star it touched. It would also quell the hearts of any loyalist Judgements, but the White would rather see an empty universe than a disordered one. Of course the White couldn’t know that the Counsel of Peace might threaten Histories beyond its own, but the White is the White, and it’s unlikely that this would have dissuaded it. [ ATTAIN / TEXTS ] See also: Endgame ◆ ◆