The Tyrant Philosophers/Tesemer

The Tesemer, commonly known as the Louse Monks, are a militant monastic order of alien origin who serve as the royal guard and policing force of the Alkhand of Alkhalend. First catalogued among the many monastic orders of the city in a passing reference, they emerge in Days of Shattered Faith as a central instrument of the Alkhand's authority: foreign-born warriors owing allegiance to none but the throne, patrolling the streets at night, standing guard in the palace, and enforcing the crown's law through falx-armed patrols and the release of trained fighting beasts. Their five-century compact with the Mirror Throne makes them simultaneously indispensable and isolated-feared by the court, despised by factions who call them "Bug-eaters," and subordinate even to the Alborandi monks of the Grove.

The Tesemer's arc across the two books traces the dissolution of a colonial warrior-caste stripped of its purpose. Arriving in Usmai five centuries ago as would-be conquerors, they were defeated, subjugated, and repurposed as the Alkhand's bodyguard-"tamed beasts" who "hated it but grown used to the kennel." Their alien biology-segmented tongues, phantom-limb pain, a fading ancestral language they call the True Speech-marks them as irredeemably other, even after generations of settlement and mixed Usmiat conversion. When the Alkhand Oparan dies, their loyalty to the throne rather than the man unmoors them; they bend the knee to Gorbudan in exchange for a promise of bloodshed, and after his fall scatter into the north. By the end of Days of Shattered Faith, a Palleseen military operation reduces them to perhaps twenty survivors, and the Alkhand's throne room stands empty of any guard.

The Group

Composition

The Tesemer number two or three hundred at the height of their service in Alkhalend, comprising original alien stock and Usmiat converts - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 11. They are led by a Preceptor, a role held for decades by Lhisamena, who commands the order's deployment as guardians and police of the throne - ch 3. Beneath the Preceptor are named Louse Speakers, of whom Teerasla is one, responsible for the maintenance of the palace mews and the windsaw beasts kept there - ch 8. The order's alien members are identifiable by segmented tongue-things, phantom-limb sensitivity, and a fading ancestral language they call the True Speech - ch 8, ch 11. Recruits as young as seven have been counted among their ranks in the order's final battle, and of the approximately three hundred engaged at Tesemera, at most twenty survive - ch 33. The Tesemer are "divorced from factions and families," owing allegiance to none but the throne - ch 11. Their compound, two days' ride from Alkhalend, was formerly a temple of a disfavoured sect, seized "with blood and steel and the claws of their beasts" - ch 11.

Purpose & Method

The Tesemer exist as the Alkhand's royal guard and the policing force of the palace and city of Alkhalend - ch 2. They patrol the streets at night, stand guard in the throne room, and act as enforcers against illegal duels in the palace gardens - ch 2, ch 3. Their standard weapon is the falx, "a brutal hacking thing, save they danced with it," and their long swords are described as "the length of a spear, half of it the forwards-curving blade" that could cut a horse in half - ch 2, ch 3. They ride hooklopers, horse-sized six-legged carapaced creatures with mantis-like hooked forelimbs described as "land-shrimps" with great speed and stable gait - ch 11. Their trained fighting beasts, Windsaws, are launched from wrist-mounted holders "fast as baton-shot" to impale prey with killing arms - ch 8. Their sword rituals are among the few traditions in the palace that none might intrude on and live - ch 2. They are explicitly not trusted with prisoners; lesser officials hold detainees in private cellars pending a decision "from on high," while the seriously guilty go to the House of Hard Angles - ch 4.

Standing

The Tesemer answer to the Alkhand and the Mirror Throne alone, standing "above all the factional politics of the court" - ch 15. They are foreign-born and "not fond of the Palleseen" - ch 11. Despite their martial ferocity, they are "forever subordinate" to the Alborandi monks, who are the Grove itself; the Tesemer are "tamed" and permitted to call Usmai home - ch 13. Their loyalty is to the throne as an institution, not to the individual seated upon it; when Oparan dies, that loyalty is unmoored, and they reverse their semicircle to defend whoever the Preceptor proclaims - ch 15. After Gorbudan's fall, they scatter north and are "not welcome around here" - ch 27. A month into Dekamran's reign, the throne room stands empty of any Tesemer guard, and the Alkhand has no bodyguard - ch 28. The Palleseen Peost officers regard them with contempt, calling them "Bug-eaters" and dismissing five centuries of service with "you either wiped them out or you didn't" - ch 33. They cannot renew bonds of fealty without a Preceptor, cannot appoint one until the correct moon from their own world aligns, and will not kneel to a Kepishi proxy - ch 33.

Known members

• Lhisamena - preceptor
• Teerasla - louse speaker

History

Lives of Bitter Rain

In Lives of Bitter Rain, Tesemer appears only under the epithet "the Louse Monks," identified as one of many monastic orders in Alkhalend - ch 9. No further detail about the order's practices, membership, or role in the narrative is supplied in this book's text; the designation functions as a passing reference within the broader catalogue of Alkhalendi religious institutions.

Days of Shattered Faith

The Tesemer-commonly called the Louse Monks-are a militant monastic order of alien origin that serve as the Alkhand's royal guard and the policing force of the palace and city of Alkhalend. In the first chapter's aftermath of a duel in the palace gardens, three unnamed Louse Monks arrive alongside palace guards and functionaries; one of them contemplates killing Gil on the spot as "the simplest" solution to the complicated legal situation she has created by killing Tarcomir without the Alkhand's permission, but is overruled by a functionary, and armed guards take her into custody instead - ch 2. Their swords are described as "the length of a spear, half of it the forwards-curving blade" that "could cut a horse in half," and their sword rituals are the one tradition none might intrude on and live - ch 2. They patrol the palace gardens and are positioned as enforcers against illegal duels - ch 2.

The Preceptor of the Tesemer is Lhisamena, who stands guard in the throne room with her falx, a long-bladed, long-hafted two-handed weapon described as "a brutal hacking thing, save they danced with it" - ch 3. She is cold, foreign, and would cut down the heir himself if he crossed the pool - ch 3. The Tesemer are foreign-born, owing allegiance to none but the throne; they patrol the streets at night and stand guard in the palace - ch 3. A narrator remarks, "Let nobody tell you that monks - even the Louse Monks who served the throne as its guardians and police - didn't play politics" - ch 3. When Dekamran makes his way up-city through Alkhalend, he evades the night-patrolling Tesemer monks - ch 3.

The Tesemer patrol the Sand Lanes at night and watch Gil's escort to the House of Hard Angles from the shadows but do not intervene - ch 4. The city's two-tier prisoner system exists in part because the Tesemer "cannot be trusted with prisoners"; lesser officials hold detainees in private cellars pending a decision "from on high," while the seriously guilty go to the House of Hard Angles - ch 4.

A named Tesemer Louse Speaker, Teerasla, keeps the mews at the palace. She has lost one arm at the shoulder and feels phantom pain in it; she has a segmented tongue-thing and keeps Windsaws-Tesemer fighting beasts launched from her wrist "fast as baton-shot" that kill birds by impaling them with their killing arms - ch 8. When Kilbery delivers medicine and moves suddenly, her Windsaw attacks him, its killing arms spreading and eye-patterns flaring, until Teerasla's tongue-thing clicks and the beast subsides; she thanks him with the scrape of segmented legs behind human words - ch 8. A female palace guard with a broken leg had previously told Kilbery about fighting a Tesemer - ch 8.

The Tesemer compound, two days' ride from Alkhalend, is described as formerly a temple of a disfavoured sect, claimed by the Tesemer "with blood and steel and the claws of their beasts." Two or three hundred remain, gaunt and angular, a mix of original alien stock and Usmiat converts - ch 11. Their history is one of decline: from would-be conquerors to raiders to "tamed beasts" of the Alkhand, hating it but grown used to the kennel - ch 11. They swear fealty to the Alkhand and serve as his royal guard, "divorced from factions and families" - ch 11. They gave Gil "more than a few hard looks" and are "not fond of the Palleseen" - ch 11. The Alkhand watches Tesemer demonstrations of bladework, hookloper charges, and windsaw hunts - ch 11. Their mounts, hooklopers, are horse-sized, six-legged, flat-sided, carapaced creatures with mantis-like hooked forelimhs, described as "land-shrimps" with great speed and stable gait - ch 11. The Tesemer's own language, which they call the True Speech, is one they are losing; they "desperately lard" their fading memories of it with significance - ch 11. Gil recounts to Drathel the Tesemer's combat record against a rebel Emorandi clan four years ago, led by Gorbudan - ch 11.

At the Alborandi compound, the Tesemer escort performs a violent martial display on their hooklopers, which the Alborandi monks barely acknowledge. The Tesemer are fierce but "forever subordinate" to the Alborandi, who are the Grove itself; the Louse Monks are loyal to the Alkhand and the Mirror Throne, "tamed" and permitted to call Usmai home - ch 13.

When the Alkhand Oparan dies, the Tesemer stand amid the confusion without attacking or retreating; ogrodons grow agitated. Lhisamena speaks in the True Speech with her twisting tongue, and the Tesemer form a semicircle, blades ready. Gorbudan communicates by expression: "I will make you warriors again." He challenges her directly: "Will you bare your neck for the Palleseen blade now?" After a moment of apparent resistance, Lhisamena rides out on her hookloper and proclaims Gorbudan Alkhand. The Tesemer reverse their semicircle to defend Gorbudan, fight with falxes, and cut down surrendering courtiers; Lhisamena kills the Ibaleth mahout in the melee atop her mount. Their loyalty had been to the throne, not the man; with the Alkhand gone, that loyalty is unmoored - ch 15. An unnamed woman drawing a skia is beheaded by a Tesemer falx early in the melee, and an ogrodon is taken down by Tesemer falxes - ch 15.

Gorbudan commands the Tesemer as royal bodyguards, their steel shown to the Emorandi to assert legitimacy; Lhisamena commands them as Preceptor and sent the monk who attempted to kill the Palleseen Resident - ch 18. That monk, an unnamed warrior-priest, ambushes Gil on a forest road claiming to carry "a message from the Alkhand," then attacks her with a falx; Loret kills the monk in a berserk knife-attack - ch 16. Gil reflects on the asymmetry of their fighting styles: "Not back, because once they'd started throwing those things through their paces they could just keep pushing you. Forwards, because probably the Tesemer, in their arrogance, hadn't studied Pal duelling like Gil had studied their sword displays" - ch 16. Gorbudan consolidated power through court purges, exile of the Emorandi, Tesemer steel, and six days of blunt petition-hearing - ch 18. He returned to the city "backed by armed followers and the Tesemer" - ch 19.

The Tesemer betrayed Dekamran during the succession fight, choosing Gorbudan because "the Tesemer found me wasps. I didn't even ask them"-they supplied basilisk wasps for Sorthist's killing and chose the Alkhand who promised them bloodshed over the one who offered a bodyguard's duty - ch 20. Dekamran, imprisoned, expects the Tesemer as his eventual assassins - ch 20.

When Palleseen forces invade Alkhalend, Gorbudan sends riders to muster the Tesemer and Lhisamena to block the street with her order. Lhisamena watches Dekamran approach the Tesemer line; he tries to parley, quoting legalities. She attacks him with a falx; Angilly deflects the blow by an inch. The Tesemer engage, and Lhisamena is shot dead mid-charge, dying "the death of the Louse Monks" - ch 26. A hookloper rider breaks through toward Dekamran; Angilly shoots the mount, then a demon crashes into the beast and rips the monk from the saddle. The Tesemer line shatters under Palleseen volume of fire - ch 26. After the fall of Gorbudan, a tavernkeeper reports the Louse Monks are "out. Still causing trouble up north, but not welcome around here" - ch 27. Three weeks into Dekamran's reign, the Tesemer are gone from the throne room and he has no bodyguard - ch 28.

A month after his coronation, Dekamran cannot get the Tesemer to bend the knee; they have gathered at Tesemera and claim they have "no word for the throne" - ch 31. Five centuries of loyalty and compact bound them to the Mirror Throne, "whoever sat on it," but the Palleseen-assisted whipping of the city has poisoned that goodwill - ch 31. They had initially declared for Sorthist, the 'Serpent's Fang', helping him blind Oparan, then bent the knee to Oparan without shame - ch 31. A distant royal cousin, Jarushan, has reportedly joined the Tesemer and had his tongue cut out, suggesting they see an alternative - ch 31.

Fellow-Monitor 'Flint' Postry leads a troop contingent to Tesemera to demand Tesemer obeisance. His Peost subordinates call the monks "Bug-eaters," and Flint himself has no patience for them: "you either wiped them out or you didn't" - ch 33. A Louse Speaker emissary is brought before Flint; through a Peost translator, the monk explains the Tesemer cannot renew bonds of fealty without a Preceptor, cannot appoint one until the correct moon from their own world aligns, and will not kneel to a Kepishi proxy. Flint refuses the terms, threatens to impose a Preceptor himself, and demands the Tesemer stop sitting within a two-day strike of the capital. The Louse Speaker responds with a harsh dismissal and an insult about the Alkhand acting through "abominations," then kills the translator and is killed by Flint's gunfire; he has a living segmented creature in his mouth - ch 33. Hookloper cavalry emerges from the trees and routs the rear ranks; the Tesemer sally in force, mostly falx-armed, some with batons or bows. A windsaw gashes Flint's cheek. Massed Palleseen fire drives the hooklopers off and rakes the advancing monks. After the battle, Flint tallies twelve prisoners out of approximately three hundred engaged, of whom eight are very young recruits (one about seven years old); none have the bug-tongue. He estimates at most twenty Tesemer remain in this world - ch 33. Flint learns that five hundred years have passed since the first Louse Monk-ancestors came through the Grove; they fought the Usmiat and the remnants of the old dead Empire, tried to conquer Usmai, failed, and became the Alkhand's warrior-guard. Flint's derisive name for what the Tesemer would have made of Usmai had they succeeded is the "Louseocracy" - ch 33. Insects at the lamps are half-jokingly imagined as having been "sent by the Tesemer to complain to the Resident of their demise," and Drathel refers to them as "those bug-mouth gals" - ch 34. Loret later remembers stabbing the Louse Monk at the monastery village when Angilly was attacked - ch 36.

Relationships

• Lhisamena - Preceptor of the Tesemer for decades; she commands the order as the Alkhand's guard, commits them to Gorbudan by speaking in the True Speech at Oparan's death, and leads the final charge against Dekamran's forces before being shot dead mid-charge, dying the death of the Louse Monks - ch 3, ch 15, ch 26.
• Oparan - The Alkhand to whom the Tesemer swore fealty as an institution; their loyalty was to the throne, not the man, and his death leaves that loyalty unmoored - ch 13, ch 15.
• Gorbudan - The Emorandi leader who "made them warriors again" by offering bloodshed; the Tesemer bend the knee to him, serve as his royal bodyguards, and supply basilisk wasps for the killing of Sorthist, the 'Serpent's Fang' - ch 15, ch 18, ch 20.
• Dekamran - The Alkhand who was betrayed by the Tesemer during the succession fight; he later fails to compel their obeisance, has no bodyguard from their ranks, and sends a Peost contingent to Tesemera that routs them to fewer than twenty survivors - ch 20, ch 28, ch 31, ch 33.
• Gil - A Palleseen dignitary the Tesemer are not fond of; a Louse Monk considers killing her on the spot after she kills Tarcomir without the Alkhand's permission, and Lhisamena later sends a monk to ambush her on a forest road under a false pretext - ch 2, ch 16.
• Loret - Kills the Tesemer monk sent to assassinate Gil in a berserk knife-attack; the monk recognizes her storm-power as something beyond even the order's own mysteries - ch 16.
• Angilly - Deflects Lhisamena's falx blow by an inch during the final battle; the Tesemer's arrogance means they had not studied Pal duelling, a gap Gil herself exploits in her earlier encounter with a Louse Monk - ch 16, ch 26.
• Alborandi - The Grove monks to whom the Tesemer are "forever subordinate"; at the Alborandi compound, the Tesemer escort performs a violent martial display that the Alborandi monks barely acknowledge - ch 13.
• Teerasla - A named Louse Speaker who keeps the palace mews, has lost one arm at the shoulder, and commands windsaw beasts with a segmented tongue-thing - ch 8.
• Fellow-Monitor 'Flint' Postry - Leads the Peost contingent to Tesemera to demand obeisance; kills the Louse Speaker emissary, suffers a windsaw gash, and tallies the order's near-extinction - ch 33.
• Jarushan - A distant royal cousin who reportedly joined the Tesemer and had his tongue cut out, suggesting they see an alternative to the Kepishi throne - ch 31.

Notable Quotes

"the length of a spear, half of it the forwards-curving blade" that "could cut a horse in half" - description of Tesemer swords, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 2

"a brutal hacking thing, save they danced with it" - description of the falx, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 3

"Let nobody tell you that monks - even the Louse Monks who served the throne as its guardians and police - didn't play politics" - narrator, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 3

"hating it but grown used to the kennel" - on the Tesemer's history as subjugated warriors, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 11

"I will make you warriors again." - Gorbudan to the Tesemer, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 15

"Will you bare your neck for the Palleseen blade now?" - Gorbudan to Lhisamena, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 15

"the Tesemer found me wasps. I didn't even ask them" - Dekamran on the Tesemer's betrayal, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 20

"the death of the Louse Monks" - on Lhisamena's end, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 26

"no word for the throne" - the Tesemer's position toward Dekamran, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 31

"you either wiped them out or you didn't" - Fellow-Monitor 'Flint' Postry, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 33

Tags

1. monastic-order · #louse-monks · #warrior-monks · #tesemer