The Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon

## The Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon

*The Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon. I marveled at it, holding the strange mechanical object carefully, lest I break it. Wouldn't that be a nice thing, cracking the sacred scripture of my new companion and teacher. It was made up of a series of interlocking circles that folded out from one another; describing the complexity of the plates and the intricacy of their links is an impossible task, as they seem to be governed by the chaotic laws of a reality devised by a madman.*

**- The Nameless One**
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### The legacy of Zerthimon
The Unbroken Circle is the holy document of the Githzerai race, it functions as a meditative focus, holy document, statement of purpose, and history all in one. It usually takes the form of a stone circle, the face of which bears a seemingly nonsensical mechanical apparatus.

When properly manipulated, the lesson of a circle will be visible in the Gith language on the front, and the stone document will be unlocked, when opened it will reveal a lesson or history of that circle. In total there are 8 circles, a Githzerai is expected to unlock the first 7 within their first century of life through meditation on themselves, their purpose, their place, and their history. A githzerai is considered to *know* themselves when they unlock the 8th, at which point they have are considered a master of Zerthimon's teachings.

No one teaches a Gith how to unlock a circle, for no one can *know* that individual better than they can *know* themselves. They are instructed on the tennets of each circle, but the lessons are hidden, requiring the correct pattern of thoughts to reveal. It is considered taboo in githzerai culture to reveal the full text to anyone who has not unlocked the circle.

| Circle | Teaching |
|:---:|:-----------:|
|  1  | *Know* that we are the First People. |
|  2  | *Know* that flesh cannot mark steel.
| |*Know* that steel may mark flesh. |
|  3  | Endure. In enduring grow strong. |
|  4  | Victory was born from treachery. |
|  5  | There is great strength in numbers, but there is greater strength in one. |
|  6  | Balance in all things.
| | There cannot be two skies. |
|  7  | In time you will come to *know* the whole |
|  8  | *Know* that a mind divided divides a man. |

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### The First Circle of Zerthimon
##### *The Reign of Anger*

*Know* that we are the First People. Once all was chaos. The First People were thought drawn from chaos. When the First People came to *know* themselves, they were chaos no longer, and became flesh.

With their thoughts and *knowing* of matter, the People shaped the First World and dwelled there with their *knowing* to sustain them.

Yet the flesh was new to the People and with it, the People came not to *know* themselves. The flesh gave rise to new thoughts. Greed and hates, pains and joys, jealousies and doubts. All of these fed on each other and the minds of the People were divided. In their division, the People were punished.

The emotions of the flesh were strong. The greed and hates, the pains and joys, the jealousies and doubts, all of these served as a guiding stone to enemies. In becoming flesh, the First People became enslaved to those who *knew* flesh only as tools for their will. *Know* these beasts were the *illithids.*

The *illithids* were a race that had come not to *know* themselves. They had learned how to make other races not *know* themselves.

They were the tentacled ones. They lived in flesh and saw flesh as tools for their will. Their blood was as water and they shaped minds with their thoughts. When the *illithids* came upon the People, the People were a people no more. The People became slaves.

The *illithids* took the People from the First World and brought them to the False Worlds. As the People labored upon the False Worlds, the *illithids* taught them the Way of the Flesh. Through them, the People came to *know* loss. They came to *know* suffering. They came to *know* death, both of the body and mind. They came to *know* what it is to be the herd of another and have their flesh consumed. They came to *know* the horror of being made to feel joy in such things.

The Unbroken Circle is the *knowing* of how the People lost themselves. And how they came to *know* themselves again.

### The Second Circle of Zerthimon
##### *The Scripture of Steel*

*Know* that flesh cannot mark steel. *Know* that steel may mark flesh. In *knowing* this, Zerthimon became free.

*Know* that the tentacled ones were of flesh. They relied on the flesh and used it as tools for their will. One of the places where flesh served their will were the Fields of Husks on the False Worlds of the *illithids.*

The Fields were where the bodies of the People were cast after the *illithids* had consumed their brains. When the brain had been devoured, the husks came to be fertilizer to grow the poison-stemmed grasses of the *illithids.* Zerthimon worked the Fields with no *knowing* of himself or what he had become. He was a tool of flesh, and the flesh was content.

It was upon these fields that Zerthimon came to *know* the scripture of steel. During one of the turnings, as Zerthimon tilled the Fields with his hands, he came across a husk whose brain remained within it. It had not been used as food. Yet it was dead.

The thought that one of the husks had died a death without serving as food for the *illithids* was a thought Zerthimon had difficulty understanding. From that thought, came a desire to *know* what had happened to the husk.

Embedded in the skull of the husk was a steel blade. It had pierced the bone. Zerthimon realized that was what had killed the husk. The steel had marked the flesh, but the flesh had not marked the steel.

Zerthimon took the blade and studied its surface. In it, he saw his reflection. It was in the reflection of the steel that Zerthimon first *knew* himself. Its edge was sharp, its will the wearer's. It was the blade that would come to be raised against Gith when Zerthimon made the Pronouncement of Two Skies.

Zerthimon kept the blade for many turnings, and many were the thoughts he had about it. He used it in the fields to aid his work. In using it, he thought about how it was not used.

The *illithids* were powerful. Zerthimon had believed that there was nothing that they did not *know.* Yet the *illithids* never carried tools of steel. They only used flesh as tools. Everything was done through flesh, for the tentacled ones were made of flesh and they *knew* flesh. Yet steel was superior to flesh. When the blade had killed the husk, it was the flesh that had been weaker than the steel.

It was then that Zerthimon came to *know* that flesh yielded to steel. In *knowing* that, he came to *know* that steel was stronger than the *illithids.*

Steel became the scripture of the People. *Know* that steel is the scripture by which the People came to *know* freedom.

In the *knowing* of the Scripture of Steel, a member of the People may surpass flesh. When they strike, it will be with steel. Against this steel, all flesh may yield.

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### The Third Circle of Zerthimon
##### *Submerge the will*
Zerthimon labored many turnings for the *illithid* Arlathii Twice-Deceased and his partnership in the cavernous heavens of the False Worlds. His duties would have broken the backs of many others, but Zerthimon labored on, suffering torment and exhaustion.

It came to pass that the *illithid* Arlathii Twice-Deceased ordered Zerthimon before him in his many-veined galleria. He claimed that Zerthimon had committed slights of obstinance and cowardice against his partnership. The claim had no weight of truth, for Arlathii only wished to *know* if flames raged within Zerthimon's heart. He wished to *know* if Zerthimon's heart was one of a slave or of a rebel.

"Zerthimon surrendered to the *illithid* punishment rather than reveal his new-found strength. He *knew* that were he to show the hatred in his heart, it would serve nothing, and it would harm others that felt as he. He chose to endure the punishment and was placed within the Pillars of Silence so he might suffer for a turning."

Lashed upon the Pillars, Zerthimon moved his mind to a place where pain could not reach, leaving his body behind. He lasted a turning, and when he was brought before Arlathii Twice-Deceased, he gave gratitude for his punishment to the *illithid* as was custom. In so doing, he proved himself a slave in the *illithid* eyes while his heart remained free.

By enduring and quenching the fires of his hatred, he allowed Arlathii Twice-Deceased to think him weak. When the time of the Rising came, Arlathii was the first of the *illithid* to *know* death by Zerthimon's hand and die a third death.