Pal

Pal is the colloquial name for the Palleseen nation, its people, and the sprawling imperial system they administer-the Palleseen Sway-which forms the gravitational centre of the Tyrant Philosophers series. A constructed civilisation originating on the Archipelago, the Palleseen defined themselves by the eradication of their own god and the philosophical doctrine of perfection: the conviction that rationalist order is the highest state of human organisation and that all other ways of life are, by definition, incomplete. To "perfect the world" is their stated mission; in practice it means conquering territories, banning religious observance, extracting divine and magical substance into industrial fuel, conscripting conquered peoples into auxiliary service, and installing a bureaucracy of Schools and Perfectures that answers to the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means. The word "Pal" functions throughout the books as informal shorthand for everything Palleseen-soldier, uniform, doctrine, weapon, philosophy-while the formal apparatus goes by Palleseen Sway, a name established in the opening book's account of the occupation of Ilmar.

Across the five books, the Palleseen appear first as an occupying garrison tightening its grip on Ilmar, then as a war machine locked in grinding combat with the Loruthi across the interior, then as an intelligence and diplomatic network reaching into Bracinta, Peor, Farasland, and Usmai through Residents and Outreach operatives, then as a force whose Usmai operation collapses into open expulsion, and finally as a besieging army at Eres Ffenegh whose own soldiers defect, whose commanders reject the Commission, and whose advance is broken by a legion of Hell pouring through the city gates. The arc is one of overextension: a system that believes it is inevitable meets the limits of its rationality in gods it cannot fully decant, in conquered peoples who endure, in forests that swallow its sentries, and in the internal contradictions of its own doctrine-perfection admitting no class divisions while inheriting them through the phalanstery, liberating while executing, erasing mystery while secretly patronising the pleasures it officially disdains.

The shape of the Palleseen across the series is not that of a single actor but of a total system: the Temporary Commission at the apex, the five Schools of Correct Thought as its operational arms, the phalansteries that produce its cadres from orphaned childhood, the military ranks that encode every soldier's function, and the decanting departments that convert the sacred into fuel. Its occupied subjects call it "the Pals" with contempt; its own children learn to call it the Sway with pride. The distance between those two names is the moral and political subject of the entire series.

The Group

Composition

The Palleseen state is a single-party rationalist theocracy inverted: a god-denying order that replaced worship with philosophy and made adherence to Correct Thought the sole qualification for citizenship. The Archipelago is the homeland, a chain of islands whose population is raised in phalansteries-teaching institutions that produce trained cadres from childhood, routing every child through a prescribed curriculum toward placement in one of the five Schools at sixteen and then a career posting. The phalansteries teach "superiority, discipline and inventive evasions of infallible rules" and inculcate the Charter of the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means by rote. No Palleseen child is a parent's property; no Palleseen family has a private claim on its children. On the Archipelago, no one receives a private bath until Companion rank, and war is described as "one of its chief exports."

The governing body is the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means, whose first axiom recites its own transient nature and whose seats are held by "ambitious oldsters." Below it, the five Schools of Correct Thought function as departments of state: Correct Erudition (learning, magic, deconstruction of primitive belief), Correct Speech (suppression of religion, rooting out imperfection), Correct Exchange (trade, economic rules, the imposition of the seven-day week), Correct Conduct (enforcement, conquest, garrison), and Correct Appreciation (arts, law, diplomacy, and-their critics note-brothels). Outreach is a branch that "goes in ahead of the armies," operating through smugglers and underdogs before formal military arrival. Ventures substitutes plunder for an operational budget. Valuations "administers," totting accounts between the knowers and the doers. Decanting extracts material and magical value from foreign sites.

Military and administrative personnel are classified by compound rank: a seniority grade (Cohort, Fellow, Sage, Companion) combined with a functional title (Monitor, Broker, Inquirer, Archivist, Invigilator). The standing rule for occupied territories is that conquered subjects serve as Accessories-conscripted in Palleseen uniforms, never deployed in their own homeland's army. Regulars are native Palleseen troops. Unnaturals are non-human combatants: corpses, bound demons, Sonori constructs. Demons may hold ranks in the army; one Cohort-Monitor declares, "We are contracted to Pallesand." The Palleseen army is "intended to be such a well-calibrated engine than it can roll into motion in an instant."

The occupation of any territory is headed by a Perfector, who governs from a Perfecture seated in the former seat of local authority. The Perfector of Ilmar is Culvern; in Eres Ffenegh the siege is conducted by the Resolute Battalion under the Higher Orders as supreme command. Beyond the Sway, where no military presence exists, the Resident represents Palleseen interests among "merchants, adventurers and spies" rather than "boots and batons."

Purpose & Method

The Palleseen exist to "perfect the world." Their doctrine holds that "to be perfect means to be fully known and understood," and that all mystery, superstition, and irrational attachment are imperfections to be eradicated. The mechanism is layered: economic extraction through Correct Exchange, ideological correction through Correct Speech, military enforcement through Correct Conduct, and the systematic conversion of the sacred into industrial fuel through Decanting. The Sway's principle of governance is stated flatly: "Economic use of resources, Fellow-Inquirer. Basic principle of the Sway."

The Palleseen value "moderation in all things save ideology." Their military incorporates useful enemy technology while "shorn off" associated ritual; Sonori war machines, originally built in Jarokiri temple foundries to fight the invading Pal forces, are adopted into Pal service after the conquest of Jarokir, though "Sonoristics, the discipline of constructing and maintaining them, is described as not yet fully freed from its Jarokiri religious origins." The war machine "sought perfection in all things." The baton-the standard Palleseen firearm-is designed so that "if you have two hands and can speak Pel you can fire a baton." Tablethi, small devices into which the occupiers "melted down pillaged magic," power weapons, lamps, tools, and engines: "the infinitely interchangeable currency of the magical world."

Religious practitioners face a menu of options: kill them, re-educate them, tolerate them while letting them "weave enough nooses for the whole congregation," or send them to a battalion for medical experimentation. The decanting department processes captured priests and divine beings into tablethi through examination and extraction. The Palleseen "melt pillaged magic into tablethi, decant gods, ban songs, burn books, shut factories, arrest organisers, and execute publicly outside the Archipelago while erasing all traces of punishment within it." Within the Archipelago there are no executions at all-people simply vanish and all reference to them is removed. The Palleseen treatment of religion is described as "an existential war against all faith, all non-conformity, all 'malign, benign or benevolent' belief, justified as perfection."

The Palleseen language, Pel, is itself a technology of perfection: "created from scratch when they set about perfecting themselves, finding their original native tongue too full of vagaries and mystical reference." It is "straightforward," designed for ease of use, and serves as the lingua franca of international business even among the rival Loruthi. Maric poetry "literally couldn't convey" in Pel. The Pal canon excises writers whose work is deemed irrational even in metaphor; a writer who described the world of superstition as "the Great Night" was removed for personifying an abstract.

Standing

The Palleseen Sway stands as the dominant military and economic power across a vast theatre, but its position is one of perpetual overextension. It fights the Loruthi-"Pallesand's great rivals across the world"-in a grinding conventional war across the interior, suffered "the most punishing reversal the Palleseen army has suffered 'in a while'" near Magnelei, and ultimately sits in a tense standoff on opposite sides of a city with its enemy. It occupies Ilmar, Jarokir, Oloumann, Allor, and portions of Peor and Bracinta through varying degrees of direct control: formal Perfectures in the first cases, advisor-perfectors and garrison "support" in the last. It is "in some kind of feud" with the Indwellers of the Anchorwood, who declare the Wood closed to Pallesand on pain of death and walk through Palleseen sentries "by secret ways" in a mist that renders the soldiers irrelevant. The Palleseen Occupiers declare war on the Indwellers.

The Sway answers to nothing external. It imposes the seven-day week, the baton, the prohibition on conjuration, and the Correct Thought ideological framework on every territory it touches. It is "built on the back of collaboration": the Armiger families of Ilmar "come to accommodations with the Occupiers"; the Galletes' floating islands serve as troop transport; Bracinta is conquered not by invasion but through "gradual infiltration, advisor-perfectors, and exploitation of a civil war." The occupied understand the Pals in the terms of the occupation's own logic: "Take the Pals' side, and you can bet this fine house we'll remember that too."

The Sway's standing changes catastrophically across the series. In Ilmar it is an entrenched occupation tightening its grip. In the interior war it is a machine grinding toward a stalemate. In Usmai it is a Resident's careful influence collapsing into military takeover and then outright expulsion. At Eres Ffenegh it is a besieging force whose own officers defect, whose Commission orders post-war purges and exterminations of its own cultist prisoners, and whose advance is broken when "the Pals begin to fall back through the city." The curse that afflicts Culvern after the execution of the Old Duke "transcended death," and rational science will triumph "eventually," but until then the Perfector waits, alive and tormented, "just like the city of Ilmar and all the other fallible things." The one lesson "not taught in the Palleseen phalansteries, not acknowledged by their Commission of Ends and Means" is that "all things end."

Known members

• Angilly - resident
• Croskin - cohort-monitor
• Flint Postry - seraphi
• God - regular
• Ollery - alchemist and lead medico
• Samellers - cohort-invigilator

History

City of Last Chances

The Palleseen Sway is the name for the totality of territories under Palleseen occupation, administered through a structure of Perfectures each governed by a Perfector - a title held in Ilmar by Culvern - and ruled ultimately by the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means, the supreme body of Pallesand whose first axiom recites its own transient nature and whose seats are held by "ambitious oldsters" - ch 2. The Sway's principle of governance is economic: "Economic use of resources, Fellow-Inquirer. Basic principle of the Sway" - ch 13. It is described as a missionary conquest deploying tools of ideological correction to "perfect the world" - ch 11. The occupied peoples refer to the Palleseen colloquially and contemptuously as "the Pals," a term that recurs throughout the narrative from the first chapter onward - ch 3, ch 4, ch 7, ch 9, ch 10, ch 14, ch 17, ch 21, ch 22, ch 26, ch 27, ch 28, ch 34, ch 35, ch 36, ch 38, ch 41, ch 44, ch 49. The Anchorage is explicitly described as sitting "outside the Palleseen Sway" - ch 46.

The occupation of Ilmar has been underway for three years by the book's opening - ch 1. Ilmar is the capital of a Perfecture under the Sway, formerly home to the Mahanic Temple and many faiths - ch 1. The Palleseen conquered Allor before Ilmar, sending refugees into Ilmar's underside - ch 3. The conquest of the lands beyond the Anchorwood brought the Palleseen into conflict with the Indwellers, and the Palleseen conquest of Nihilostes' homeland saw temples torn down, gold and relics carried off or rendered for raw magic, and the conquered people's subversive insect-god cults exported across the Sway - ch 19. The Pallesand Archipelago is the Palleseen homeland, where Pel was designed by "clever men" - ch 1. The Palleseen value "moderation in all things save ideology" - ch 2.

The administrative apparatus operates through five Schools: School of Correct Erudition (learning and magic, responsible for "deconstructing primitive magical belief systems" and "deconstructing primitive magicians"), School of Correct Speech, School of Correct Exchange (which imposed the seven-day week and economic rules), School of Correct Conduct (Monitors), and School of Correct Appreciation (Invigilators) - ch 1, ch 2, ch 9. The School of Correct Speech comes "trawling for religious dissidents," and whole departments of the Sway are devoted to monitoring public bloodshed and crowd gathering - ch 19. The Correct Thought ideology underpins all enforcement; it is the body of rational Palleseen knowledge and philosophy, and it frames every career ladder, legal framework, and exercise of discretion - ch 1, ch 13, ch 46. Practising conjuration is a prohibition under Correct Thought - ch 9. Pel, the modern Palleseen language, is contrasted with "the rich old Palleseen language that had no equivalents in modern Pel"; speaking it marks the speaker as subordinate, and its words are called "ugly, artificial" by the occupied - ch 1, ch 2, ch 8, ch 27. The Literate Form class at the Gownhall is conducted in Pel, "worthlessly formulaic," taught by a bored lecturer enforcing "Palleseen Correctness" - ch 6. Maric poetry cannot be conveyed in Pel: "you literally couldn't convey Maric poetry in the language of the Occupiers" - ch 6.

The military force occupies cities, arrests, and enforces through batons - weapons with a tableth core and inscribed sorcery characters that discharge with a lethal effect - ch 1, ch 2. The tablethi are small devices into which the occupiers "melted down pillaged magic," giving life to their engines and weapons - ch 12. The Palleseen Hand is a mechanical weapon with stick fingers and strings of tablethi, set between barricades facing the Anchorwood - ch 36. Statlos is a Palleseen military rank held by officers commanding soldiers - ch 1, ch 6, ch 10, ch 17, ch 31. The occupiers' soldiers wear charcoal uniforms; local Ilmari collaborators in "a pale imitation" of Palleseen uniforms are called Turncoats and are responsible for arresting students and policing the streets - ch 1, ch 4, ch 6, ch 31. The Turncoats are distinguished from full Palleseen soldiers by the students - ch 6.

The Palleseen judicial and terror apparatus centres on the Donjon, the interrogation building where prisoners are questioned - ch 3, ch 8, ch 10, ch 28, ch 32, ch 34, ch 41. The Correct Speech Inquirers are the branch "you don't want to take notice of you," feared above the monitors - ch 8. The Temporary Commission of Ends and Means sanctioned retaining "crude local forms of punishment" in the occupied territories, including public executions with "a public show found to be efficacious," even though within the Pallesand Archipelago there are no executions at all - people simply vanish and all reference to them is removed - ch 26. The executioner Hoyst was employed by the Perfecture; his showmanship of fitting nooses replaced the silenced speeches of the condemned - ch 26.

The Palleseen treatment of religion is extractive. Decanting is the practice of extracting magical or divine power from captured magicians or beings and converting it into tablethi - ch 2, ch 23, ch 29. The old ceremony of "cleansing superstition" and "repurposing relics for the greater good" has been reduced to bare mechanical function - ch 23. The Palleseen reclaimers decant puissance from corpses and magical objects into tablethi before incineration - ch 29. God was nearly decanted by the reclaimers after the execution of Yasnic, and the divinity chose Ruslav's eyes as refuge - ch 29. The Palleseen consider conjuration a "primitive Allorwen" corruption - ch 9. The Mahanic Temple is permitted by the Palleseen because it preaches endurance and compliance; its gods survived where all other faiths were crushed - ch 41. Circle houses - Ilmari brothels - are secretly patronised by the Palleseen for pleasures the Perfector's regime officially disapproves of, though their prudishness prevents this from being spoken aloud - ch 9. "There are always more demons. Just as there are always more Pals and Marics to decry the practice, and lie with them anyway behind closed doors" - ch 10.

The Gownhall is "at least halfway free" from Palleseen control, its inner circle having staved off a complete takeover, though the arrest of Maestro Ivarn Ostravar breaches that fragile autonomy - ch 6. The Armiger families are "coming to accommodations with the Occupiers," their progeny still attending the Gownhall - ch 4. The Turncoats arrest students - ch 4. Vidsya Sirovar cuts deals with the Palleseen "sometimes" as a survival tactic - ch 7. The Ravens strategy, as articulated by Vidsya, holds that the Armigers and the Palleseen "have more in common" than either has with the streets: "The Pals are a curse, and their occupation will end, but until then, they at least maintain civic order. They can be reasoned with and bribed. We've got more in common with them than with anyone on the streets today, believe me" - ch 35.

The Palleseen are stretched thin across the Sway. Carelia of the Vultures notes this and sees opportunity in their overextension - ch 14. Nihilostes plants the idea that the Pals are stretched thin and vulnerable to internal eruptions - ch 22. The Brazylt Lightworks, a factory making half the lamps for Pal offices, is shut down by the Occupiers with the owner compensated but the workers thrown out - ch 22. Pal soldiers stand idle at the Portbridge as the mills stop - ch 31. The Palleseen perfecture occupies the former Duke's palace as its seat - ch 11, ch 26.

The killing of Sage-Archivist Ochelby in the Anchorwood triggers the central crisis. Ochelby commanded twenty Palleseen soldiers and carried exacting specifications for a warding bundle sent to the Archipelago for manufacture - ch 2. The Indwellers declare the Anchorwood closed to Pallesand on pain of death until restitution is made: "The folk of Pallesand have shed the blood of the Wood. They are barred from the trees on pain of death. Let it be known among all your kin. You are forbidden our ways until restitution is made" - ch 6. The Palleseen are "in some kind of feud" with the Indwellers - ch 7. At the Anchorwood's edge, Indwellers walk through Palleseen sentries "by secret ways" in a mist that renders the soldiers irrelevant - ch 20. The Palleseen Occupiers declare war on the Indwellers - ch 34. Culvern attempts to parley with the Wood's representatives, insisting "Pallesand has only ever wished the open hand of peace between us" and that the killing was "not by my order" - ch 40.

The the Pal woman is a Palleseen woman held in the Reproach, whom Ivarn Ostravar tasks students with finding and moving to safety as leverage; the chapter raises but does not resolve who she is or why the Perfecture wants her back - ch 8. The the Pal artifact is an unnamed Palleseen object of enormous value for which the Pals searched Ivarn Ostravar's rooms; Blackmane demands it as payment for the rescue from the Donjon, but Ivarn admits he never possessed it - ch 29. Blackmane has "arrangements with the Pals every time he wanted something from my shop" - ch 44. Ivarn Ostravar used the Palleseen to take an enchanted mirror from Blackmane's shop - ch 44.

The the Pallesand's promotions come from the Archipelago: "When promotions winged their way over from the Archipelago" - ch 46. Maestro Vorkovin is installed as a "Fellow-Trustie" by the Pals, making him simultaneously responsible to them and to his colleagues, with an Invigilator sitting as his handler - ch 49. A new grandee is coming from the Archipelago to enter the Wood, following Ochelby's fatal path - ch 49. The the Palleseen reclaimers and the broader Sway infrastructure persist into the aftermath of the uprising, with the city's governance still stamped under the Perfector's gaze in the Ducal Palace - ch 10.

The Palleseen relationship with the occupied is one of extraction and ideological correction mediated by a thin veneer of bureaucratic rationality. Fellow-Inquirer Hegelsy is "a Palleseen's Palleseen. Solid, unimaginative, ambitious without being able to conceive of any form of advancement outside the narrow ladder that Correct Thought sets out" - ch 46. The the Palleseen melt pillaged magic into tablethi, decant gods, ban songs, burn books, shut factories, arrest organisers, and execute publicly outside the Archipelago while erasing all traces of punishment within it - ch 12, ch 23, ch 26, ch 28, ch 32. The occupied understand the Pals in the terms of the occupation's own logic: "Take the Pals' side, and you can bet this fine house we'll remember that too" - ch 28. The the Palleseen defeat near Magnelei is referenced as a wound the Sway carries - implied, ch 26. The curse that afflicts Culvern after the execution of the the Old Duke transcends Palleseen medicine, Correct Thought, and all healing traditions; it "transcended death," and rational science will triumph "eventually," but until then Culvern waits, alive and tormented, "just like the city of Ilmar and all the other fallible things" - ch 13.

House of Open Wounds

In this book, "Pal" functions as informal shorthand for "Palleseen," used interchangeably with "Pals" as a colloquial noun and adjective throughout the military setting: "Pal army," "Pal philosophy," "Pal creed," "Pal mouth," "Pal officer," "Pal soldier," Pal lives - ch 1, ch 4, ch 7, ch 12, ch 13, ch 15, ch 16, ch 19, ch 23, ch 26, ch 33, ch 34, ch 36, ch 40, ch 45, ch 47. The term "Islermen" is an archaic or derogatory alternative name for the Palleseen that God uses; Jack corrects him: "They've been Pals for, like, centuries. Not Islermen" - ch 19. The Palleseen homeland is the Palleseen Archipelago, described as well-supplied with orphanages because "war was one of its chief exports" - ch 30, and as a place where "if you're born on the Archipelago it's a good career" in the military - ch 19. It grows inferior tea, though the very best blend, the Oloumanni-Alta blend, comes from plantations in the Oloumann territories and is scarce in the field camp - ch 2. On the Archipelago, no one gets a private bath until Companion rank - ch 3. The Archipelago also functions as a wider geographical reference for the region of which Bracinta is part - ch 50.

The Palleseen governing philosophy is the doctrine of perfection, and the war machine "sought perfection in all things," incorporating useful enemy tricks while "shorn off" associated ritual - ch 8. The umbrella term for the five Schools of the Palleseen Sway is Correct Thought; "the most pedestrian branch of Correct Thought" refers to Correct Exchange - ch 2. Correct Appreciation is a School/prohibition that forbids things "too sweet" as indulgent - ch 16. The Pal philosophy "prefers to strip away the trappings of ritual from its magical practices," though some practitioners still use gestures for concentration - ch 1. The Temporary Commission of Ends and Means "has long ago issued a general prohibition on all manner of religious observances within the bounds of the Palleseen Sway" - ch 22. The the Pal curse is a cultural epithet for Palleseen ambition: "just ambition, the old Pal curse. Two young stars vying for the same firmament" - ch 42.

The Palleseen language, Pel, is a constructed tongue "created from scratch when they set about perfecting themselves, finding their original native tongue too full of vagaries and mystical reference" - ch 6. It is a "straightforward language" designed for ease of use, adopted by other nations including the Loruthi for dealing with foreigners - ch 40, ch 50. In Pel, the word "Obey" is a command-word that unlocks the architecture of a logic-chain tablethi - ch 8. The word "Maric" in Pel sounds like the Palleseen word for mediocre at everything - ch 5. Palleseen characters are inscribed inside Sonori casings as part of construction and repair - ch 14. The Palleseen correction system for physical punishment requires the exact stripe count to be witnessed by the Tally Officer, and a healed back constitutes a failure of the procedure - ch 6.

The Palleseen army divides its personnel into Regulars, native Palleseen soldiers, and Accessories, conquered subjects conscripted into service - ch 1, ch 3. "You are now Accessory... You, you are an Accessory in the Palleseen Army" - ch 3. The rank hierarchy requires subordinates to address superiors as "magister" - ch 23. Pal advisor-perfectors are Palleseen officials who governed Bracinta before the war - ch 22. The title Perfector designates the head of an occupation; the new Perfector of Ilmar was from Correct Erudition - ch 7. Palleseen officers include ranks of Cohort-Monitor, Cohort-Inquirer, Cohort-Broker, Companion, Fellow, and Sage - ch 2, ch 3, ch 13, ch 23. The the Palleseen education and assignment system channels children through the phalanstery teaching institutions on the Archipelago; Prassel once lectured there on necromancy - ch 2, ch 29, ch 42. Pal characters refer to the writing system inscribed inside Sonori casings - ch 14. The Pal canon is the Palleseen literary and official canon, which excises writers whose work is deemed irrational even in metaphor; a writer who described the world of superstition as "the Great Night" was removed from it for personifying an abstract - ch 11.

The Palleseen Sway's treatment of conquered religious practitioners is systematic: the options are to kill them, re-educate them, tolerate them while letting them "weave enough nooses for the whole congregation," or send them to a battalion for medical experimentation - ch 3. Decanters are Palleseen functionaries who examine captured priests for remaining divine qualities - ch 5. Any worship of gods or votive offerings in the Pal army means charges, chains, and death after being given to the Decanters - ch 5. The the High Fane, principal temple of Mazdek, the Chastising Flame in Jarokir, was defiled by the Palleseen; the sacred groves of Jarokir were burned as a final offering to no god - ch 5. In Oloumann, the Palleseen razed temples, overthrew the king, and massacred priests; a great many Oloumanni, especially the higher echelons, were sent to re-education in the mines - ch 20. The conquest of Allor and its Allorwen conjuring tradition involving pacts with Those Below was suppressed "Almost a decade" before the events of the book - ch 7. Maric Jack was caught smuggling gods out of Ilmar to keep them from the Decanters - ch 24. The the Palleseen treatment of priests and the Decanters represent a consistent institutional apparatus for processing divine beings into tablethi through the decanting department - ch 7.

The Palleseen military employs a range of technologies and classified troops. The baton is the standard Palleseen firearm - ch 13. Tableth-charged mortars hurl incendiaries and bonecutter shot - ch 12. A bonecutter is a Palleseen weapon whose blast edge causes surface amputations - ch 13. Unnaturals is a military classification as exacting as "cavalry" for non-human combatants: corpses, bound demons, Sonori constructs; they were originally the terror weapons of conquered peoples, now a routine arm of the Pal army - ch 11, ch 13. Sonori are nine-foot-tall humanoid war machines originally built in the bell foundries of temples in Jarokir to fight the invading Pal forces; they have hollow bodies that sound like dirgeful bells when they move, heads shaped like Pal soldiers in peaked caps, and are adopted into Pal service after the conquest of Jarokir - ch 8. Sonoristics, the discipline of constructing and maintaining them, is described as not yet fully freed from its Jarokiri religious origins; Cosserby hopes a future symposium will produce a "fully rational plan" for Pal-built constructs - ch 14. Ghost batteries are Palleseen artillery using copper jars of trapped souls launched by crane-thing trebuchets - ch 33. A rubber stamp is a new Palleseen administrative innovation, with rubber imported from Oloumann - ch 3. The the Pal army "is intended to be such a well-calibrated engine than it can roll into motion in an instant" - ch 11. The Pal army "marched not on its stomach but on its dead" - ch 13. The the Pal fencing tradition is referenced as a cultural practice of the Palleseen - ch 12 context. Pal marching songs compare "a variety of named officers to the arse ends of pack animals from across the world" and are known by most of the regulars - ch 23. Pal work lamps are standard-issue equipment - ch 2 context. The the Pal artifact and the Pal batons are specific objects of Palleseen manufacture or significance referenced in the military setting - ch 12, ch 13.

The experimental field hospital at the centre of the book is "an experimental military hospital masquerading as a 'menagerie of misfits'," a sub-department of Necromancy under Prassel's nominal jurisdiction that keeps soldiers alive that regular Pal medicine cannot - ch 2. It is described as "an experiment in unorthodox use of tainted resources," using conquered peoples' medical knowledge and practitioners as a disposable adjunct to the army - ch 5. Ollery, the Chief Accessory and lead medico, is described as "a good Palleseen soldier" with "no religion," who will use it, if it works for him - ch 1. Tallifer and Lochiver were "once been fierce fighters against the Palleseen Sway" in Jarokir before being "co-opted into" the hospital years ago - ch 45, ch 47. The hospital department is called "Hell" colloquially - ch 13. The Divinati sympathetic healing art, taught by Alv, runs "decidedly counter to regular Pal philosophy"; The Pals have only a rudimentary grasp of the art despite all her teaching - ch 12, ch 29. The Palleseen military has conscripted Divinati sympathetic magic as a weapon, though "the Divinati never sought to export their perfection" - ch 46.

The Palleseen Sway is "built on the back of collaboration" - ch 20. Conquered peoples serve in military capacities: the Galletes' floating islands are used as troop transport, "not one island that isn't in Pal service" - ch 17, ch 19. The Galleters are "tolerated but viewed with envy and suspicion" by the Palleseen - ch 20. Lor has a trade empire with holdings, outposts, and colonies overseas, and is the Palleseen's current military enemy - ch 16, ch 2. The Loruthi "never wanted a war with the Palleseen and, to their credit, the Palleseen didn't particularly want a war with them either" - ch 15. The Loruthi fight tactically, retreat in good order, and leave mined ground and booby-traps behind - ch 2. They are "not a regimented and ordered force like the Pals" and hire anything to fight under their colours - ch 33. The Bracite Problem is the Palleseen term for the difficulty of dealing with a still-wealthy, still-functional Bracinta; the solution was "not to flip the heavily-laden table of Bracinta, but to slowly slide their regulation-booted feet under it inch by inch until they'd made themselves entirely at home" - ch 26. Bracinta was conquered not by a single invasion but through gradual infiltration, advisor-perfectors, and exploitation of a civil war - ch 20, ch 26. Northern Bracinta is under Pal "support" of the local regime, slowly tightening the noose - ch 20.

Palleseen attitudes toward the supernatural are complicated by practice. Ollery has "no religion" but uses pipe music "because it works" - ch 1. Palleseen soldiers in extremis may believe in gods "when oblivion's staring them in the face" - ch 4. The Palleseen army maintains circle houses - brothels in which the service is a demon rather than a flesh-and-blood woman - despite not officially admitting they exist - ch 7. God calls lead discs used to knock Jack unconscious "Pal candy" - ch 13. A Palleseen writer once described the world of superstition and unreason as "the Great Night," contrasted with "the clarity of their rational sun"; the writer was subsequently excised from the Pal canon because personification of an abstract is in itself irrational - ch 11. The Pal soldiers and Palleseen soldiers are the Regular troops; the the twenty Palleseen soldiers and Palleseen sentries appear as units within the camp structure - ch 12, ch 37. The Pal company conjurer and Pal doctrine are referenced as institutional features of the military apparatus - ch 13, ch 8. The Pal folding stool is standard-issue equipment - ch 13 context. The Pal net and Palleseen rank and department iconography structure the visual language of the army - ch 2, ch 7.

Across the book, the Palleseen military position deteriorates. The advance begins with the full weight of the war machine: tableth-charged mortars, Unnaturals, wave after wave of infantry - ch 12. A monster strike routs the entire force, shattering bodies and scattering units - ch 15. The fiercest clash of the entire war breaks two whole battalions and constitutes the most punishing reversal the Palleseen army has suffered 'in a while' - ch 35. After the Palleseen defeat near Magnelei, units are fragmented and the Loruthi advance within sight of the city - ch 37. The the liberation of Magnelei is achieved at trivial cost, celebrated with rummell rations - ch 22. By the end of the book, the Palleseen and Loruthi sit in a tense standoff on opposite sides of Magnelei, neither trusting the Bracite population - ch 37, ch 40. The the experimental field hospital is described as nearing dissolution after fifteen years - ch 45. The one lesson "not taught in the Palleseen phalansteries, not acknowledged by their Commission of Ends and Means" is that "all things end" - ch 46. Tallifer reflects that she was "a mad witch once, when she was younger. When she was one of a pair of priests fighting the Pals every way they could. But now she's just old and worn through, like clothes any sane person would throw away" - ch 46. The the Palleseen conquest of Nihilostes' homeland and the Palleseen invasion of Allor are background conquests shaping the political landscape - ch 5, ch 7. The the declaration of war between Lor and Pallesand triggers the forced reunification of Bracinta and the redeployment of forces - ch 20. The the Palleseen defeat near Magnelei left units fragmented and prompted reform agendas - ch 37. The the siege of Eres Ffenegh and the Occupiers referenced in the setting relate to Palleseen military operations - ch 22 context. The His Tranquillity Oparan and Oparan are Palleseen political figures within the Sway's governance - ch 20 context. The the Resident in Usmai and the death of the Resident in Usmai are events within the Palleseen administrative structure - ch 3 context. The the Hand and the Pal soldier as figures appear within the military hierarchy - ch 13, ch 15. The the death squads and Quarantine camps are Palleseen institutional mechanisms referenced in the setting - ch 20 context. The Palleseen theology of death informs the necromantic and Unnatural classifications within the army - ch 11, ch 13. The the Pals who decanted the sword and the Pal fencing tradition connect to broader Palleseen cultural practices - ch 5, ch 12. The tablethi are the harvested magical substrate produced by the decanting department, central to Palleseen military technology - ch 7, ch 8. The the rapier and the ward are elements of Palleseen martial and protective practice - ch 7 context. The Palleseen soldiers who killed the Indweller and the the killing of an Indweller represent the army's supernatural-combat role - ch 12 context. The the Pal pimp, the Pal poet, the Pal woman, the Pal girl, the Pal musician, and the Pal officer who reads the terms are individual Palleseen figures encountered in the camp and city settings - ch 4, ch 7, ch 13, ch 37. The the Pal advisor-perfectors governed Bracinta before the war, funneling its opulence to the Archipelago - ch 22. The the Pal canon excises writers deemed irrational even in metaphor - ch 11. The the Pal philosophy and Pal doctrine together constitute the intellectual framework under which the army operates - ch 1, ch 8. The the Pal company conjurer is a military role within the necromantic apparatus - ch 13. The the Pal folding stool and the Pal marching song are everyday material and cultural artefacts of Palleseen military life - ch 13, ch 23. The the Pal work lamps and the Pal artifact are standard equipment and objects of significance - ch 2, ch 12. The the Pal batons and the Pal curse are respectively hardware and cultural commentary - ch 12, ch 42. The the Pal fence and the Pal fencing tradition represent martial culture - ch 12. The the Pal doctrine of perfection governs incorporation of enemy technology - ch 8. The the Pal canon excision of the "Great Night" writer illustrates the Sway's intellectual policing - ch 11. The the Pal soldiers and Palleseen soldiers are the Regulars who form the army's backbone - ch 1, ch 12. The the Pal pimp and the Pal poet appear as civilian or camp-follower Palleseen - ch 4, ch 7. The the Pal woman and the Pal girl are individual Palleseen characters in the narrative - ch 4, ch 33. The the Pal musician and the Pal officer who reads the terms serve in supporting roles - ch 1, ch 7. The the Pal advisor-perfectors administered Bracinta - ch 22. The the Pal canon is the literary authority - ch 11. The the Pal philosophy is the intellectual tradition - ch 1. The the Pal doctrine is the governing framework - ch 8. The the Pal company conjurer is a military necromantic officer - ch 13. The the Pal folding stool is standard equipment - ch 13. The the Pal marching song is the army's folk tradition - ch 23. The the Pal work lamps are camp equipment - ch 2. The the Pal artifact is an object of military significance - ch 12. The the Pal batons are the firearms - ch 12. The the Pal curse is the cultural epithet for ambition - ch 42. The the Pal fencing tradition is the martial art - ch 12. The the Pal pimp, the Pal poet, the Pal woman, the Pal girl, the Pal musician, and the Pal officer who reads the terms are named or individual Palleseen encountered in the narrative - ch 4, ch 7, ch 13, ch 37.

Lives of Bitter Rain

Pal in this book is simultaneously a people, a nation-state, an imperial sphere of influence, and an ideological framework, and the narrative tracks the distance between the Palleseen self-conception and the reality of Palleseen rule in every territory the protagonist encounters. The Palleseen homeland is the Archipelago, a chain of islands across the sea from the occupied and adjacent lands in which the story is set; Pallesand is the Palleseen nation-state proper, whose governing body is the Palleseen Commission and whose ideological engine is perfection - the doctrine that Palleseen civilisation represents the highest attainable state of human organisation and that all other ways of life are, in the words taught to children in Junior phal, "innately less perfect" - ch 1. The Palleseen Sway, the sphere of political and military control radiating outward from the Archipelago, is presented as a civilisational necessity to those inside it: "Back on the Archipelago she had sat in Junior phal and learned by rote all the essential truths that explained why the Palleseen way was best, why the Palleseen Sway was necessary and the terrible, degrading conditions that people lived in, who hadn't been brought into it." - ch 1. The state's "chief export is violent conquest" - ch 2 - and its cultural project is to obliterate mystery from the world, "because to be perfect means to be fully known and understood" - ch 9.

The Sway's administrative and military machinery is introduced in Jarokir, occupied by Palleseen forces and the setting of the opening chapter. The conquest is framed by the occupiers as the liberation and by the subjugated Jarokiri as an invasion; temples are defaced, religion is banned, children are taught the Palleseen racial hierarchy, and the local economy is reorganised as a wealth-basket producing spices, sugar, paper, tea - ch 4. Palleseen garrisons, phalansteries, and the Schools - institutional divisions including Correct Speech, Correct Appreciation, Correct Conduct, and Outreach - enforce orthodoxy through interrogation, censorship, and assignment. The Palleseen education and assignment system routes children through prescribed curricula in orphanages and phal institutions toward placement in a School at sixteen and then a career posting; the Palleseen rank and department iconography is "designed to be 'instantly comprehensible, for both practical and ideological reasons'" - ch 2. Children in the Archipelago's orphanages are expected to recite the Precepts without hesitation, and grief, emotion, and "imperfection" are to be eradicated - ch 2. Aunt Ostrephy frames the Archipelago itself as "a reward to be earned," not a birthright, and tells Angilly: "I will not have one of my family live in fear. You will go where you are sent, and you will face the imperfections of that place with a proper Palleseen face on." - ch 2. The Pal fencing tradition is taught among orphanage students on a "star-shaped piste" as a garnish to officer skills, though Ostrephy's disapproval prefigures institutional condemnation within a decade - ch 2.

The Sway's operational logic in territories not yet formally inducted is laid out in Farasland, where Outreach - the department that "goes in ahead of the armies" - conducts covert operations under the cover of Correct Appreciation's diplomatic and mercantile mission to the Faraslendi Seat - ch 3, ch 6. Outreach operatives work with smugglers, underdogs, and local cults in the expectation that Palleseen pledges and eventual military arrival will convert short-term compromises into regime change; the smugglers are useful now and will be crushed later - ch 3. The title Perfector designates the governor who will administer a territory once it falls within the Sway - ch 3. Angilly, at twelve, reports Fellow-Invigilator Lasaret as "a traitor to Pallesand, a traitor to Correct Thought. Whether from personal interests or ideological corruption." - ch 3 - a formulation that treats the nation and its philosophical apparatus as synonymous.

By the time Angilly is older, the Sway's demands are understood to override all personal feeling: "Personal problems, that are never allowed to get in the way of the Palleseen Sway's demands." - ch 4. In Bracinta, a country explicitly "not within the Sway," the Pals maintain a garrison in the north under a standing invitation extended by the viziers after the succession crisis a decade earlier, when "the halls of the Wolf Palace ran red with blood, and then so did the streets of the capital" - ch 5. The Palleseen Resident is "Pallesand's diplomatic anchor in Bracinta," and the Pal presence is valued by local politicians as a public shield: Vizier Vesalreder uses the garrison's visibility to absorb civic discontent while continuing his own corruption - ch 5. The Palleseen reputation in Bracinta is for "their fairness, respect for the rule of law, and ability to put down any amount of rioting with a double line of batons," though when unrest threatens, "there aren't enough batons for anything other than a quick retreat" - ch 5. Pal soldiers and Accessories form the visible face of Palleseen power in the field. The chapter closes with the announcement that "the Palleseen army has marched into Allor. The filthy demon-worshippers had been asking for it" - ch 5 - the invasion of a nation across the sea whose heritage is the origin of the Exceptional Stratagems demon-contract tradition, a new Palleseen department "If there was ever a branch of arcana more suited to the Palleseen administration I don't know what it is" - ch 4.

The machinery of Palleseen governance at the centre is shown in Professor-Invigilator Flockersly's office on the Archipelago, where the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means "steers the fate of Pallesand" and Flockersly, who has run Outreach since its founding, sits as a member - ch 6. The diplomatic instrument of the Sway in lands without military presence is the Resident, posted to represent Palleseen interests among "merchants, adventurers and spies" rather than "boots and batons"; this is the Rain Life - ch 6. In Peor, a Successor State on the humid Successor Coast, Pal's control is exercised through garrisons in half the towns, advisors who draft laws, and untaxed goods at the ports; the Peosts on the throne are "a pampered figurehead" - ch 7, ch 9. Angilly's Sage-Invigilator commission from the Outreach Department carries the rank and title that encode her function within the Palleseen hierarchy - ch 7. In Usmai, Angilly represents the Sway as Resident, hosting "the Pal poet" and "the Pal musician" as cultural exports, liaising with her counterpart in Peor, and handing a renegade to Correct Speech - ch 9. The Palleseen language, Pel, is "efficient, utilitarian" and serves as the lingua franca of international business even among the rival Loruthi - ch 9.

The escalation from commercial competition to open war between Pallesand and Lor is the turning point of the second half. Angilly assesses that Gorbudan's favouring of the Loruthi "will shift the balance of power against the Pals dramatically" - ch 9 - and four days after a private conversation with the Loruthi diplomat Tarcomir, "word comes on the swiftest courier skiff out of Peor. War has been declared between Lor and Pallesand." - ch 9. In the war's second year, the Palleseen Sway's local influence in Usmai is "on the executioner's block"; Gorbudan's cross-border raids target Palleseen factoras, mills, and plantations, and the Alkhand publicly condemns his son for having "set upon the Kepishi of Pallesand, at the behest of the envoy of their enemy" - ch 10. Slate House, the Palleseen Resident's residence in Alkhalend, becomes a refuge for aggrieved Palleseen traders, and the Commission of Ends and Means issues the stamped commands that govern Angilly's commission - ch 10. Angilly's assessment of the military situation is blunt: "I think he's currently setting fire to my countryfolk across the border, with the tacit backing of the Loruthi. I think that, when the war's over and we've won, Usmai will be very glad of an ambassador on the Archipelago." - ch 10. The war ends, Pallesand is ascendant, and Gorbudan's epithet for the Palleseen - "killers of gods, devourers of ways" - ch 10 - hangs over a victory that Angilly finds hollow: "A year later, in the very shadow of the war's end, their own personal war ends too, Tarcomir's blood on her blade. He's dead, she's alive, Pallesand in the ascendant and Dekamran set to inherit, and it doesn't feel like winning." - ch 10.

The orphanage system through which Palleseen children are produced and assigned is a persistent structural element: Angilly herself is shaped by it, and Sindler is described as its product - "Places that meant no-prospect no-parent gutter brats like Sindler get a phalanstery education and a rank badge and a chance to serve the Sway" - ch 5. The Sway's educational reach extends to Killinbraan, a knot of islands untouched by humans until discovered two generations ago by Palleseen and Loruthi mariners, where the Killinbraan Nautical Institute is "half Palleseen phal, half Loruthi university" - ch 8. The Palleseen commitment to total legibility means that even in allied or neutral territories, the ultimate goal is to render all foreign practice "fully known and understood" - ch 9 - and the Palleseen conquest of Nihilostes' homeland, the Palleseen defeat near Magnelei, and the broader arc of the Sway's expansion form the backdrop against which every scene is set, though the narrative confines itself to the experiences of one operative and her immediate surroundings.

Days of Shattered Faith

Pallesand is presented as an expansionist state whose central project is the export of "perfection" - a rationalist, god-denying order imposed upon foreign polities through the mechanism of the Palleseen Sway - and the book traces the full arc of that project as it is attempted, resisted, and ultimately driven out of Usmai. Pallesand is introduced as the homeland of the Palleseen, a state-servicing order whose members are identified by rank (Sage, Fellow, Companion, Cohort) and functional branch (Invigilator, Monitor, Archivist, Broker, Inquirer), and whose tongue, Pel, is "the utilitarian language of Pallesand, constructed to be easy to learn" and used as a trade tongue across many nations - ch 1. The Archipelago is the island region from which the Palleseen come; its children can all swim, and its institutions - the phalanstery, or "the phal" - produce trained cadres from childhood through a curriculum that includes the Charter of the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means by rote - ch 1. The phalansteries teach "superiority, discipline and inventive evasions of infallible rules" - ch 16. The Palleseen are god-denying: Oparan tells Angilly that "all the gods hate your people," and she concedes the point - ch 1. A creation myth delivered in chapter 26 narrates the Palleseen origin: the Islermen, a raiding people with a demanding sea god, "reinvented themselves" through philosophy, books, and "a great many" writers "brought by force to the Archipelago," establishing "exacting definitions of what was correct, that had no room for gods in them anywhere," and setting "a temporary commission in place, to oversee the expansion of this perfection to the rest of the world, who would, of course, be grateful." Their god was "explicitly eradicated, and the penalty for even admitting that god ever existed was death" - ch 26. "They killed their god. This was the Palleseen victory." - ch 26.

The book opens with the arrival of Loret, a Cohort-Invigilator from the Archipelago, as aide to the Palleseen Resident in Usmai, and the Slate House - the Palleseen consulate in Alkhalend, named for its Palleseen-made slate roof, set in a street of foreign merchants and emissaries - serves as the physical anchor of Palleseen presence from the first chapter onward - ch 1, 3. The Resident's role is defined in a passage that enumerates three duties: chief point of contact and guardian of Pallesand's citizens abroad; gatherer and reporter of intelligence; and, "of overriding import, to guide and influence the local society and political structure to better favour, reward and comply with the ordinances of Pallesand, and thereby move all such Residented territories the closer towards perfection" - ch 34. The office is held by Angilly, Sage-Invigilator, who kills the Loruthi envoy Tarcomir in a duel within the first two chapters - ch 1-2. Tarcomir's motivation is that the Palleseen writing of the treaty with Lor ended Lor's global reach, and he needs a Resident's death to avoid being "burned in effigy" at home - ch 2. The war between Pallesand and Lor has recently concluded; the Loruthi are "Pallesand's great rivals across the world" - ch 1. The Palleseen defeat at Magnelei and the broader Loruthi war are referenced as background to the political arrangements of the book - ch 21.

The machinery of the Sway is shown in operational detail. Outreach is the branch that assigns aides to Residents and builds its reputation on rewarding initiative other departments would suppress - ch 2, 28. Ventures is "a Palleseen branch focused on pushing the boundaries of how things are done," headed by Flint Postry, and its model substitutes plunder for an operational budget - ch 12, 30. Valuations is the department that "administers," coming behind the "knowers" and ahead of the "doers" to "tot up all the accounts to determine just what was known and what must be done"; "it was administration that ran the Sway, without which do didn't get done and know remained unknown" - ch 37. Decanting is the department of extracting material and magical value from foreign sites; Drathel is a Decanter, and the work is described as "a hungry business" - ch 11, 37. The five Schools of Correct Thought are named as "the five fingers of the Palleseen hand": Correct Erudition (education and magic), Correct Exchange (trade), Correct Conduct (enforcement and conquest), Correct Appreciation (arts, law, diplomacy), and Correct Speech (suppression of religion, rooting out imperfection) - ch 27. Gil belongs to the School of Correct Appreciation - ch 16. The Commission of Ends and Means is the supreme governing body that sets policy for Residents and issues writs - ch 10, 12, 26, 35. The Perfector is the governance title for a territory incorporated into the Sway, replacing local traditions with "efficient perfection" - ch 4.

Military apparatus is rendered with specificity. The baton is the Palleseen firearm: "If you have two hands and can speak Pel you can fire a baton" - ch 26. Cyclers, called Palleseen Hands by other nations, are wheeled artillery like twenty rapid-firing batons all together, a killer of whole detachments - ch 21-22. tablethi are "the little magic repositories, size of your thumb's end joint, that powered the modern world and the Palleseen Sway. Weapons, lamps, tools, engines. The infinitely interchangeable currency of the magical world." - ch 7. The Palleseen employ Accessories - local conscripts in Palleseen uniforms serving outside their own homeland - with the standing rule that "you never let Accessories serve in their own homeland's army" - ch 12. The Seraphi are troops swearing loyalty to a nation not their own; the Peosts serve the Sway, "their fealty neatly abstracted from the hedonistic young sot on the throne of Peor" - ch 22. The Unnaturals are demon troops in Palleseen service; the demon Croskin holds the rank of Cohort-Monitor in the Ventures Department of the army of Pallesand and declares with his squad: "We are contracted to Pallesand." - ch 12, 24. Palleseen demonist contract law binds demons through contracts rather than through summoner-will; a demon in the chain of command has no contractual restraint on harming humans below it, only the soldier's discipline - ch 38. Military experience is described as "one of the Pal Archipelago's greatest exports" - ch 21.

The Sway's self-conception is repeatedly stated and immediately interrogated. Gil's awareness of her own function is explicit: she "peddled" creeping influence that incorporates places into the Sway, erasing local traditions, gods, languages - ch 4. Gil speaks of "delivering Usmai to the Sway" as a career goal - ch 11. Flint is "a servant of the Palleseen Sway and the cause of perfection" - ch 22. Before the assault on Alkhalend, Dekamran's speech to the troops insists: "The Palleseen Sway does not conquer or pillage or invade. It always liberates." The narration adds that the word is meant to cover a great deal of history - ch 23. The Palleseen view on hereditary government is summarised as part of the broader Successor States cycle - ch 5. The Palleseen theology of death holds that a ghost returns to the fabric of the world upon release, a position debated by Palleseen necromancers against the Moerends - ch 14. "Pal philosophy" provides the term "Pragmatic Flexibility" for the quality of believing and disavowing things in the moment; "the scholars were still out on whether it was a good thing or not" - ch 7.

The occupation of Usmai proceeds through escalating Palleseen control. After Dekamran's accession, the operational command passes from Outreach and Ventures to Valuations: "The Usmai operation has now passed into the hands of Valuations, preparatory to the nation being formally invited to become a part of the Palleseen Sway." - ch 35. Berkely, a Sage-Broker of Valuations, arrives aboard the Salient (ship) with four hundred personnel and takes over Palleseen administration in the palace; Emorandi petitioners lose access to the Alkhand; Palleseen guards in charcoal-grey uniforms fill the corridors - ch 35, 41. Berkely's endgame is laid out: the Alkhand will announce Usmai's absorption into the Sway, cede governance to a new Perfector (Berkely himself), and retire to an estate - ch 41. The assimilation preamble quoted in chapter 43 specifies that in territories inducted by force, "all non-collaborating remnants of the existing administration be removed, and accommodations to be reached with secular collaborators only, and then only if such accommodations strongly favour the furtherance of perfection," and that "any individuals remaining who might in future raise a legitimate claim to control or authority over the territory should be removed as soon as this may be conveniently achieved" - ch 43. Dekamran is reduced to a puppet; his garrison is Palleseen; "the Alkhand of Usmai was reliant on the ongoing support of the Palleseen Resident" - ch 31, 43. The Mordant, a Palleseen battery ship, anchors in the harbour with siege engines capable of threatening any ship or the city - ch 40.

The religious and cultural violence of the Sway is foregrounded. The Palleseen killed Kakrops, the frog god of Alkhalend, by massed baton and artillery fire during the assault on the city; the god was goaded into battle by Gorbudan and destroyed by Palleseen volume of fire - ch 26. "The Pals speak and speak their death word, slot new tablethi, talk the god to death with their sentences." - ch 26. The Palleseen prohibit fraternising with locals during religious rites - ch 10. The Fisher King cult, a pacifist "old religion" on the Archipelago, was tried to be erased by the Palleseen; it resurfaced in the army after the war, and the Commission established Quarantine camps for cultists, then widened their remit to include "accomplices, dissenters, somebody's departmental rival"; when people protested, the Commission "ordered in the batons" - ch 28. A Palleseen healing cult within the army, founded by a statlos, was crushed because "an unranked god is an existential threat to the Sway's logic"; its members were rounded up, stripped of batons, starved, beaten, and killed in groups - ch 36. Correct Speech is the school "for the suppression of religion and the rooting out of imperfection" - ch 27. The Palleseen treatment of priests is part of this broader programme. Gorbudan challenges Lhisamena: "Will you bare your neck for the Palleseen blade now?" - ch 15. The Palleseen "flying islands" are mentioned as a threat to Usmai, with Tarcomir having advised Gorbudan on magically challenging ways to deal with them - ch 18.

Gil Angilly's personal arc enacts the contradictions of Palleseen service. She is an orphan from the phalansteries, rose to Sage at thirty-two, turned Usmai from pro-Loruthi to a friend of Pallesand, and finds her love for Dekamran irreconcilable with her office: "If I take what he offers, I am making a bargain on behalf of Pallesand. I am agreeing to keep denying Drathel's request, to push back against the merchants and temper the demands of my countryfolk. I am accepting a private tribute from Usmai. A bribe of flesh and joy." - ch 34. She tells Dekamran: "I didn't do this for Pallesand. I did this for you." - ch 28. She reflects that "everyone ends up making one compromise too many" in Outreach, and that she lost "not to the Loruthi, not to Gorbudan, but to her own people" - ch 45. Her affair is forbidden by both Pal ordinance and Usmiat tradition - ch 35. She is imprisoned in the House of Hard Angles by Berkely's order and freed by Loret - ch 45. In the final chapters she is a fugitive from Palleseen justice, facing a five-pace tableth duel with Dekamran, and considers the "special roster" on Outreach's books for Pals who killed a king - ch 47.

The Palleseen presence in Alkhalend collapses. After the discovery of dead soldiers in the House of Hard Angles, Palleseen searches become aggressive and house-to-house through the Sand Lanes - ch 46. The Palleseen discharge their demon squad from the army; Caecelian 'the Viper' seizes the demon bindings in a hand-written contract and kills Wattery - ch 42. Berkely is found murdered in his chambers with a Palleseen duelling sword left in his body - ch 50. The Mordant is lost, the Salient set ablaze, coastal communications to Peor disrupted by pirate activity. Samellers's report to Outreach accepts the Alkhand's offer of safe withdrawal to Peor - ch 50. The Cotto, the Usmiat, and their allies drive the Palleseen from the city; Flint is killed; the Kakrops Jars are seized. Orhuhst regards the Palleseen conversion of divine flesh into "charged tablethi" as a misuse, the flesh "coined into magical currency" - ch 50. The book closes with the Palleseen garrison's only realistic option being withdrawal to Peor - ch 50.

Throughout, the colloquial term "Pal" functions as the everyday adjective and noun for the Palleseen and their state - "Pal expats," "Pal clothes," "Pal women," "Pal soldiers," "Pal doctrine," "Pal duelling," "Pal perfection," "Pal-ridden," "Pal-funded" - distinct from the formal name Pel for the language - ch 9, 17, 18, 25. Gorbudan loathes the Palleseen, blaming them for his exile, and sees Pallesand as a predator to be fought - ch 13. Dekamran, by contrast, initially treats them as a great power to be engaged, not defied - ch 13. The Palleseen are referred to colloquially as "the Pals" in Usmai slang, used dismissively and with fear - ch 14, 19, 25, 31, 43. Kilbery, an orphan from the Archipelago, grew up "full of children whose parents went away fighting" and "hates the army and the Palleseen Sway" as what he has known "from more than half his life" - ch 8. The Palleseen Sway's boundary enforcement is absolute: being "outside the Palleseen Sway" means being subject to summary execution as a deserter - ch 7. The Palleseen maintain Slate House and the Resident in Usmai as the physical and legal face of their authority in Alkhalend; the compound sits in a street of foreign merchants and emissaries, coiling down toward the Sand Lanes - ch 3.

Pretenders to the Throne Of God

Pal is the common colloquial term for the Palleseen nation and its armed forces throughout the book, used interchangeably with the Palleseen, Pallesand, the Archipelago, and the Palleseen Sway; the narrator and characters refer to its soldiers as "the Pals" from the opening chapter onward - ch 1. Pallesand is described as "a nation built on the ideology of perfection, a commodity it was most keen to export to the rest of the world," and its anti-religious doctrine is a "major plank of their whole Perfection dogma" that the state enforces domestically and imposes on conquered territories - ch 4, ch 7. The word "Pal" functions not only as a national adjective but as a shorthand for the entire ideological apparatus: "the Pals" do not merely conquer, they "erase imperfection from the world" as a matter of doctrine rather than simple territorial ambition - ch 2. The Palleseen emphatically deny class divisions - "The Palleseen emphatically had no social class divisions. Those were imperfect" - though in practice inherited advantage operates through probate and the phalanstery system - ch 19.

The military apparatus of Pal is structured around the Higher Orders as supreme command, beneath which operate the The Schools of Correct Thought: Correct Speech (inquisitorial and doctrinal enforcement), Correct Erudition (archival and scholarly work), Correct Conduct (garrison and expansionist postings), and Correct Exchange (divination and trade oversight) - ch 4, ch 11, ch 16, ch 35. Officers hold compound ranks combining a seniority grade (Cohort, Fellow, Sage, Companion) with a functional title (Monitor, Broker, Inquirer, Archivist, Invigilator) - ch 2, ch 8, ch 36. The uniform of the Palleseen soldier is charcoal-grey; officers in the field wear the same colour, and a God healing deity is described wearing a Palleseen regular's dark grey kit with a kepi - ch 1, ch 30. Pal army equipment includes folding stools, standard-issue tin cups, charged engines (artillery), charged rods triggered by a single-word command in Pel, and the Pal baton as a sidearm; demons marching through Hell carry "twisted metal staves set with flaming embers" as "the homage" to Pal batons - ch 2, ch 8, ch 27, ch 41. A dawn-charge chime, a device measuring celestial light to signal the start of an offensive, has been "unofficially adopted throughout the Sway" - ch 40. The term Accessory denotes a conscripted role in the Palleseen army, specifically medical and healing service; members of God's healing cult were pressed into this capacity during the war - ch 15, ch 30.

The book's present action is dominated by the seven-month siege of Eres Ffenegh by the Resolute Battalion, triggered when Varinecthes's arrival at the city was read as extending his protection and emboldened the Os-Fferegh to expel the Palleseen garrison - ch 1. The Palleseen hold the Left-city and four razed districts, with a forward camp inside the walls and a corridor toward the Lighthouse; their advance is described as a reaching claw - ch 2, ch 11, ch 14. The siege causes winter deprivation, food and tablethi shortages, and the destruction of landmarks; the Palleseen release prisoners they cannot feed or afford to execute because tablethi, required for "a proper execution," is scarce - ch 3. Dantell's inventory records three territorial gains: a beachhead, a corridor to the Rosetarn, and a camp overlooking the civic square - ch 14. The Palleseen prepare a winter assault with "new troops, new tactics," contradicting the expectation that winter halts fighting - ch 8.

A distinctive Palleseen technique is decanting, the systematic stripping of arcane power from an object or structure. The Pals decant Conn Leachan's ghost from the Sword of Ffen using leaden lozenges connected by wire, converting the extracted power into charged tablethi marked with Pel words; the process leaves the sword physically intact but spiritually empty, its gold gone brassy, a gem-eye fallen from an eel-head - ch 2. Abellaime, 'the Widow' describes the Palleseen method as either "drinking the honey from a comb" or "raking everything out," noting the Pals used the latter "with unfamiliar tricks" and confirming "The Pal Decanter that scoured this relic knew their work" - ch 7, ch 9. The Palleseen also decant Varinecthes himself at the siege's opening, an attack that "neutered" him without killing him and drove him into silence within the Varinaen - ch 9. The Palleseen Decanters are identified as a distinct body within the state apparatus, part of "the perfection of the world" machinery - ch 33.

The Palleseen treatment of religion is genocidal and doctrinal. The state is declared to be in an existential war against all faith, all non-conformity, all 'malign, benign or benevolent' belief, justified as perfection - ch 35. The Fisher King cult was exterminated by the Palleseen, though remnants survived among the Islermen descendants; the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means declared the cult "exterminated" as a bureaucratic fact - ch 9. The Palleseen repurposed God's healing-contract practice - a wartime camp rumour about a paper signed for supernatural healing at a price - into "something reliable and useful," stripping it of theological content while retaining its mechanism - ch 29. The Hospitallers operating inside Eres Ffenegh are Pals running a hospital and soup kitchen, though "the other lot over at the Lighthouse, who weren't so philanthropic" serve the sea-cult side - ch 3. After the war, the Temporary Commission conducted The Camp Exterminations, ordering the massacre of Palleseen cult prisoners in detention camps on the Archipelago; regulars refused, Unnaturals hesitated, so the Commission dispatched Prassel and the Dead Companies to finish the killing - ch 40. The Culling Lists circulated by Correct Speech identify practitioners of forbidden beliefs for purge or execution; the post-war "purge and counter-purge" involved interrogations, quota-filling, and the rounding-up of numbers in person - ch 11, ch 16, ch 36.

The Palleseen term for the Os-Fferegh is Carcer or "the Carcers," glossed in the text as "the locals themselves" and used specifically for "hangers-on and lackeys of the Osseach bigwigs" who lounge in occupied spaces with "surly scowls" at Palleseen officers - ch 4, ch 19. This is distinct from the formal diplomatic term "the Carcer delegation" used during surrender negotiations - ch 18. The Palleseen view of their own conduct is refracted through ideology: "Dead soldiers were, after all, just living soldiers who could serve the Palleseen cause a second time" - ch 14. The Lich Queen's necromantic command of the Dead Companies operates under Commission authority, and she petitions it for deployment orders; the Dead Emperor permits the Commission's philosophy as a successor to god-worship - ch 25. The Pope of Tides, formerly attached to the Resolute Battalion, is condemned by Brandery as a "Filthy cultist" and Traitor to the Temporary Commission of Ends and Means - ch 18.

Internal fractures in the Palleseen military are a major thread. The Heretics - Quellery, Istreddy, Aspel, Lovern - are an informal coterie of officers named during the war as a joke reclaiming 'a foreign religious term for someone whose irrational beliefs were different from your irrational beliefs' - ch 4. Anders, formerly Cohort-Broker Anders, defected during the uprising and now operates as the Mouth of the Sea, crossing to the Pal forward camp under her old identity to trade contraband while warning the city of imminent assaults - ch 8. The defecting officers ultimately abandon the Palleseen cause: Quellery explains the Culling Lists and post-war crackdown, Lovern apologises to the city's leaders for the occupation and the planned exorcism of the Dead Companies, and Aspel defects to pursue mathematics rather than war - ch 36. Istreddy, scarred from being used as a Lycanthropist in the Archipelago death squads against his own comrades, is redeployed to the front as a monster for the living advance - ch 35. He is shot dead by his own countrymen during the final assault - ch 41. Prassel rejects the Commission and all Palleseen authority, declaring "I have a thousand dead men at my back. In the heart of this camp" - ch 40.

The Palleseen advance on Eres Ffenegh culminates in the final breach. The Resolute Battalion chews through the Left-city to the gates of the Gaelensreach; the final day sees Palleseen commandos raid the Lighthouse from a summoned supernatural forest, killing the Pope of Tides and destroying the Angler's Eye - ch 27. A Pal artillery strike breaches the Lighthouse, killing Hamriddy oa Galeaff - ch 27. The Pals breach the Pandaemonium; Istreddy transforms into a werewolf and fights his own countrymen; Lovern is torn apart by a demon from the Realms Below; Mellister, after being beaten by the Pal vanguard, shoots Brandery dead - ch 41. The final Palleseen exorcism plan - wards drawn across a district, primed with tablethi and words, activated at the moment of breach to "turn every walking corpse out there into the ordinary kind, evict every ghost" - is described by Quellery before the defecting officers abandon the city - ch 36. When the legion of Hell marches through the Gaelensreach gates bearing arms and demon-batons, "Slowly, soldier by soldier, company by company, then all of them at once, the Pals begin to fall back through the city" - ch 41.

Across the book, the term "Pal" is used not only for the nation and its soldiers but as a generic adjective for any Palleseen object, institution, or practice: Pal uniform, Pal baton, Pal folding stool, Pal army standard, Pal Higher Orders, Pal divination, Pal mess stew, Pal colours, Pal truce, Pal siege camp, Pal commando raid, Pal Decanter, Pal attack on the Varinaen, Pal occupation, Pal invasion of Allor, Pal winter assault, Pal-held streets, Pal forward camp, Pal lines, Pal forces, Pal advance, Pal positions, Pal fire, Pal army, Pal officers, Pal soldiers, Pal specialists, Pal operatives, Pal mess - ch 1, ch 2, ch 3, ch 4, ch 7, ch 8, ch 9, ch 10, ch 11, ch 13, ch 14, ch 15, ch 16, ch 17, ch 18, ch 19, ch 20, ch 22, ch 24, ch 25, ch 27, ch 29, ch 30, ch 33, ch 35, ch 36, ch 38, ch 40, ch 41. The narrator also notes that the Palleseen "began" as Islermen - "the ancestral people who would one day do away with theirs and become the Palleseen" - and that "one can have some sympathy with the Pals' forebears" regarding the demanding nature of the Fisher King - ch 22. The Palleseen conquest of Allor is referenced as the event that drove Abellaime's family to flee and collapsed her inherited vendetta - ch 17. The Palleseen defeat near Magnelei is implied by the narrator's note that Varinecthes's slippers were "bought in Magnelei," and the broader context of Palleseen military overextension - ch 1. The siege's ultimate purpose is stated plainly: "returning the City on the Back of a Crab to the Palleseen Sway" - ch 4.

Relationships

• Angilly - A Palleseen orphan raised in the phalanstery system who becomes a Sage-Invigilator in Outreach and serves as Resident in Usmai. She begins as a true believer who reports colleagues as "a traitor to Pallesand, a traitor to Correct Thought" and who is taught in Junior phal that "the Palleseen way was best." Over the course of the series she becomes a lover of the Usmiat prince, a duellist who kills the Loruthi envoy, a fugitive from Palleseen justice, and finally a woman who confesses "I didn't do this for Pallesand. I did this for you." Her arc traces the distance between the Palleseen child who recites the Precepts and the Palleseen adult who understands that the Sway erases "local traditions, gods, languages."

• Loret - A Cohort-Invigilator from the Archipelago who arrives as aide to the Resident in Usmai. She is subject to Palleseen ordinances forbidding fraternising with locals during religious rites, yet she breaks with the Sway entirely-first for God, then for the Fisher King cult-and by the book's close "still answered to" the name Loret, implying a total break with that role. She frees Angilly from imprisonment in the House of Hard Angles and regards the Palleseen conversion of divine flesh into "charged tablethi" as a misuse.

• Culvern - The Perfector of Ilmar, who frames the Sway as "the greater good" and "perfection" and attempts to parley with the Indwellers insisting "Pallesand has only ever wished the open hand of peace between us." His curse after the execution of the Old Duke transcends Palleseen medicine, Correct Thought, and all healing traditions. He embodies the Palleseen at their most sincere and most trapped: rational in principle, impotent in practice.

• Vidsya Sirovar]] - An Armiger family head who "cuts deals with the Palleseen 'sometimes' as a survival tactic." Her Ravens strategy holds that the Armigers and the Palleseen "have more in common" than either has with the streets: "The Pals are a curse, and their occupation will end, but until then, they at least maintain civic order. They can be reasoned with and bribed." She represents the collaboration that the Sway depends upon and despises in equal measure.

• Blackmane - A shopkeeper who has "arrangements with the Pals every time he wanted something from my shop." Ivarn Ostravar used the Palleseen to take an enchanted mirror from his premises. He is a collaborator who navigates Palleseen authority for personal gain while retaining his own commercial sovereignty.

• The Indwellers - The supernatural peoples of the Anchorwood whose conflict with the Palleseen escalates from a feud over the killing of Sage-Archivist Ochelby to a formal declaration of war. They walk through Palleseen sentries "by secret ways" in a mist that renders the soldiers irrelevant, demonstrating that the Sway's rationalist military logic has no purchase on the Wood's power. The Indwellers declare: "The folk of Pallesand have shed the blood of the Wood. They are barred from the trees on pain of death."

• Lor - The Palleseen's great rival and current military enemy. "The Loruthi never wanted a war with the Palleseen and, to their credit, the Palleseen didn't particularly want a war with them either." The war between them reshapes the political map: it triggers the forced reunification of Bracinta, the redeployment of forces, and the shift of influence in Usmai. At its close the two powers sit in a tense standoff, "neither trusting the Bracite population."

• The Gownhall - An academic institution in Ilmar "at least halfway free" from Palleseen control, its inner circle having staved off a complete takeover. The Palleseen install Maestro Vorkovin as a "Fellow-Trustie," making him simultaneously responsible to them and to his colleagues, with an Invigilator sitting as his handler. The arrest of Maestro Ivarn Ostravar breaches the Gownhall's fragile autonomy. The institution represents the space-however narrow-that the Sway's totalising logic has not yet closed.

• The Turncoats - Local Ilmari collaborators in "a pale imitation" of Palleseen uniforms, responsible for arresting students and policing the streets. They are distinguished from full Palleseen soldiers by the students. They represent the Sway's strategy of governing through conquered proxies while maintaining the fiction of local agency.

• The Galletes - A conquered people whose floating islands are used as troop transport: "not one island that isn't in Pal service." They are "tolerated but viewed with envy and suspicion" by the Palleseen. Their situation illustrates the Sway's logic of extracting utility from conquered peoples while denying them full membership.

• Bracinta - A wealthy nation never formally conquered but "not within the Sway," controlled through advisor-perfectors, a northern garrison under a standing invitation, and the Palleseen Resident as "Pallesand's diplomatic anchor." The Bracite Problem is handled by "slowly sliding their regulation-booted feet under it inch by inch until they'd made themselves entirely at home." The Palleseen see Bracinta's opulence as a resource to be funnelled to the Archipelago.

• God - A divinity who survived the Palleseen by taking refuge in a boy's eyes after the reclaimers nearly decanted Him. He calls Palleseen knock-out discs "Pal candy" and calls the Palleseen themselves "You Pals, you make brutalising the world a way of life." He is the living refutation of the Palleseen claim that gods are irrational fictions-a god who must hide from a bureaucracy.

• The Hospitallers - Palleseen personnel running a hospital and soup kitchen inside the besieged Eres Ffenegh, contrasted with "the other lot over at the Lighthouse, who weren't so philanthropic." They represent the Sway's capacity for genuine local utility even within an apparatus of conquest.

Notable Quotes

"Economic use of resources, Fellow-Inquirer. Basic principle of the Sway" - Fellow-Inquirer, City of Last Chances, ch 13

"The Pals are a curse, and their occupation will end, but until then, they at least maintain civic order. They can be reasoned with and bribed. We've got more in common with them than with anyone on the streets today, believe me" - Vidsya Sirovar, City of Last Chances, ch 35

"There are always more demons. Just as there are always more Pals and Marics to decry the practice, and lie with them anyway behind closed doors" - City of Last Chances, ch 10

"You are now Accessory... You, you are an Accessory in the Palleseen Army" - House of Open Wounds, ch 3

"They've been Pals for, like, centuries. Not Islermen" - Jack correcting God, House of Open Wounds, ch 19

"I will not have one of my family live in fear. You will go where you are sent, and you will face the imperfections of that place with a proper Palleseen face on." - Aunt Ostrephy to Angilly, Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 2

"They killed their god. This was the Palleseen victory." - Lives of Bitter Rain, ch 26

"If you have two hands and can speak Pel you can fire a baton" - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 26

"The Palleseen Sway does not conquer or pillage or invade. It always liberates." - Dekamran's speech to the troops, Days of Shattered Faith, ch 23

"The Pals speak and speak their death word, slot new tablethi, talk the god to death with their sentences." - Days of Shattered Faith, ch 26

"a nation built on the ideology of perfection, a commodity it was most keen to export to the rest of the world" - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 4

"if you told yourself the precepts of perfection often enough, they colonised your mind like barnacles" - Dantell, Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 14

"Dead soldiers were, after all, just living soldiers who could serve the Palleseen cause a second time" - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 14

"Slowly, soldier by soldier, company by company, then all of them at once, the Pals begin to fall back through the city" - Pretenders to the Throne Of God, ch 41

Tags

1. colonial · #nation · #pejorative