Hellspin Fortress

> "*Setting up a deathtrap for not one but two armies -- that's not a psychotic break. That's a plan with a twenty-year setup.*"
> ― Vahenz afrir dai Noum
>
>

**Hellspin Fortress** was a star fortress in the heptarchate. The site of an infamous massacre carried out by General Shuos Jedao, it is mentioned in Ninefox Gambit, Raven Stratagem, and Revenant Gun.

## Geography

Hellspin Fortress was just outside the Glover Marches, relatively close to Candle Arc and the Outspecker Colonies.

## Description

The Fortress was guarded by a gyre of corrosive dust and predatory masses. It was not expected to be a difficult fortress to capture.

## History

During the Lanterner rebellion, the rebel leader escaped to Hellspin Fortress. Kel Command sent Jedao, then forty-five and having inflicted four decisive defeats on the Lanterners already, to Hellspin with a large warmoth swarm to capture the fortress so that the Lanterners could be converted and the calendar repaired from the damage done by their heresy.

Instead, Jedao sent his entire swarm into the corrosive gyre and activated the first threshold winnowers, destroying over one million people, including his Kel forces. As the winnowers whited out further communication attempts among the dying Kel, Jedao used his Patterner 52 to shoot his staff, and then proceeded through the command moth, shooting everyone he encountered. He later remarked that he had not planned the shootings and criticized himself for nearly running out of bullets, remarking that a plan "that finicky" was a mistake.

Kel histories indicated that he did not resist arrest and was found on his command moth arranging spent bullets into patterns, but he related that they had used tranquilizing gas to subdue him.

## Casualties

Over one million people died in the Hellspin massacre, with survivors numbering in the hundreds.

### Kel

A habit of thorough inspections had allowed Jedao to plant bombs and logic grenades and arrange ambushes, contradictory orders, and failures of weapons and computer systems throughout his swarm, ensuring their doom. High General Kel Shiang had a niece who died at Hellspin; on Jedao's command staff, Colonel Kel Gized, Kel Jiang, and Kel Gwe Pia were with him when the massacre began and fell to his Patterner 52. Very few Kel survived.[citation needed]

### Heretics

The Lanterners and their allies included trusted officers, such as one woman from Maign City, and multiethnic recruits from the Outspecker Colonies and other areas who were placed in separate troops from others of their various beliefs and sent to die first. Soldiers and civilians alike, including adults, children, and wildlife, were destroyed by the threshold winnowers. Their slow, agonizing deaths were duly recorded by Kel historians, and made up the bulk of the million-plus victims.

## Legacy

The Hellspin massacre caused a major calendrical disruption, comparable to those associated with calendrical resets. The scouring operation performed on the site of the massacre after Jedao's extraction cost the heptarchate the price of entire systems and many more lives.

After Jedao was executed and placed in the black cradle, his life and effects were combed by investigators and historians trying to figure out why he had "cracked." All attempts were unsuccessful. The Shuos created a policy of purging everyone in their faction who manifested Jedao's signifier, Ninefox Crowned with Eyes. Kel Command readily accepted formation instinct as a way to control their troops, and carried suspicion of their own best generals so far as to deny them important campaigns and vital information in order not to hand them an influential victory. The black fingerless gloves worn by seconded personnel were replaced with full gray gloves. [citations needed]

The Hellspin massacre and its attendant calendrical disruption may have led the Liozh to investigate alternate forms of government, including the heretical democratic system for which they were purged.

## Trivia

* Commander Kel Menowen was present during the massacre, but her fate is not detailed in the text.
* Vahenz afrir dai Noum, citing how many things went wrong for the Kel, opined correctly that Hellspin was a long-laid plan designed to put Jedao in the black cradle.
* According to Jedao, all his anchors eventually studied the long list of Hellspin casualties.

## References

1. ↑ Hexarchate Map
2. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3, 12
3. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
4. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
5. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
6. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
7. ↑ Revenant Gun, Chapter 11
8. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
9. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
10. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 15
11. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
12. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 22
13. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
14. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 20
15. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
16. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
17. ↑ Raven Stratagem, Chapter 25
18. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 3
19. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter
20. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 22
21. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 21
22. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12
23. ↑ Ninefox Gambit, Chapter 12