Five Afflictions

Spoiler warning! This article contains major spoilers for PALISADE 13: Worth the Trouble Pt. 2. Tread carefully!

Five Afflictions
Members	Dust Refrain Ravel Cleave Oversight
Area of Operation	Palisade
Affiliations	Divine Fleet (formerly) Palisade
Meta
Season	PALISADE

The Five Afflictions are strange, amoral beings that cause destruction on Palisade. Each has pawns (minions) of its own, and generates a unique negative effect.

Their current auto-antonym names appear to come from the Afflictions themselves. Cleave, for example, "has called itself, or people have dreamt the name" Cleave.

History

The Afflictions are known to have resided on the planet for thousands of years, long enough to have interacted with the New Earth Hegemony, and later the Divine Free States and Principality of Kesh.

The Afflictions were once the Divine Palisade's "greatest collaborators", who left the Fleet alongside him with their Excerpts: the Divines Reflection, Antiquity, Logic, Decisiveness, and Affection. They are no longer in the social category of Divine, but how they came to be considered Afflictions by themselves and the other residents of Palisade is still unknown.

Afflictions

Dust

Also known as Pride's Mirror (by the NEH) or the Looking Glass (by the ancestors of the Divine Principality). Dust was once the Divine Reflection.

Dust is larger than a skyscraper and looks like "if a mummy could be a mech, shawled and wrapped and deteroriating." Its pawns are "beings made of compacted dust that ruins electronics and suffocates people if they touch them." This dust, which also muffles sound (save for the stomping, roaring or distant rustling of the Affliction itself) and limits sight when it settles over a region, can only be escaped by confronting oneself in the form of one's pawn doppelganger.

The followers of Reflection who came to the system with their Divine originally used their dust doppelgangers to talk through their own feelings, sort of like therapy. Over the five thousand years between its departure from the Divine Fleet and its appearance in PALISADE as an Affliction, Dust's purpose has turned, cynically, inwards. It is now building an endless catacomb and forcing everyone touched by its dust to enter a vision of another self and "fence-sit" interminably. These visions of possible futures do not include the active presence of Dust, as "it can't imagine a good version of itself anymore."

Dust has a smaller form, but it is unable to leave the Diadem except by taking its "big mode" to fuck stuff up. This has left it unaware of what is going on outside.

There exist Delegates of Reflection; it is currently unknown whether this has anything to do with its formation as an Affliction.

Refrain

Also known as Yesterday's Reprise (by the NEH) or the Ghastly Chorus (by the ancestors of the Divine Principality). Refrain was once the Divine Antiquity, who allowed people to leave parts of themselves, or their memory, with it.

Refrain is an undead archive of snapshots of the consciousnesses of members of the Divine Fleet from thousands of years ago, prior to the Fleet's collapse. It takes the form of "an abandoned theater which appears as if from nowhere. Upon the stage, a spectral projection of a person that no one knows." Inside the theater, electronic ghosts wearing garments from the Divine Fleet mill about. Its effect causes electronics to break and rust over, although Refrain seems to have some control over whether this happens. The spokesperson changes each time, but is never someone that the viewer could have known. In "The Canvas of Dreams Pt. 2", the speaker was Lattice.

Refrain opposes the Principality and the other forces that have tried to conquer Palisade over the millennia, but has not been convinced to support the Cause, because they don't think it will succeed.

Ravel

Also known as Labyrinth's Thread (by the NEH) or the Hedge Maze (by the ancestors of the Divine Principality). Ravel was once the Divine Logic, who embodied a logic that was many-valued, not based on a true/false binary. The non-binary nature of this logic is reflected in the three horns of Ravel's pawns, which are 12-foot-tall but invisible minotaur-like beings, or 'tricerataurs'.

Ravel "looks like a massive, loose brain neuron prowling the hills and valleys". It can reroute roads and pathways or build walls to disorient and defamiliarize.

Cleave

Also known as Whetstone's Opposite (by the NEH) or the Sanguine Hatchet (by the ancestors of the Divine Principality). Cleave was once the Divine Decisiveness.

Cleave will strike at anyone, regardless of their factional allegiance, and doesn't care much about collateral damage. It is a kaiju, not a savior or heroic figure, though it sometimes interferes with the Principality's aims. Its pawns look like "if a dragon was made of knives", and they share Cleave's power to impede communication using voiced, signed or written language.

Oversight

Also known as Hell's Facade (by the NEH) or the Empty Garden (by the ancestors of the Divine Principality). Oversight was once the Divine Affection. It looks like "a slowly moving statue whose features are always fluctuating under a stone shroud."