Chapter 23: I'd Howl, I'd Scream, In Victory

Image Description: Two distant figures walking across a barren field. An abandoned tractor can be seen. The caption reads, “Everything they’ve built, they’ve built on bodies.” - Paige

## Credits

### Featured Voices

* Lucille Valentine as Paige
* Jimmie Yamaguchi as Hayward
* Graham Rowat as Dennis Duplass

## Meta Data

### Content Warnings

This episode contains scenes of vomiting, manipulative parenting, and minor self-harm.

## Episode Guide

Paige and Hayward begin to plan out exactly what a new god might look like.

## Description

### 'Upon The Birthing Of Gods': The First Instruction

This episode begins with birdsong and Paige reading from 'Upon The Birthing Of Gods’. The first instruction is to build a community, god-birthing is best done with others. Hayward wakes up to the sound of a cockerel. He is surprised and confused. Paige explains that he is her hostage, that they are at a farm house and that she doesn't know if he has a concussion. Hayward is taken aback by the way she is treating him if he is supposed to be a hostage. She gives Hayward a newspaper which talks about the events at the Kensey House as an act of political terrorism. Hayward, shocked, says that they’ve misinterpreted the events. Paige, perhaps reflective of her own situation, agrees with him. Dennis Duplass, Paige’s father, enters disrupting their conversation. They talk for a while before Paige tells him Hayward is a cop and Dennis abruptly leaves. Paige explains to Hayward that she thought Dennis had left when she drove here. Paige lays down the situation to Hayward: CLS authorities are hunting him down and the Peninsula has abandoned him.

They go for a walk. We learn more about Dennis Duplass. Hayward gags and retches. His helpless attitude from Chapter 18 seems to have returned. Paige asks if he ever wanted to sit in a tractor as a kid, clearly trying to cheer him up. He blows the horn in the tractor a few times at Paige’s suggestion. Hayward offers up some information from his own childhood as well. He feels guilty for what he’s done, he doesn’t know who he is without pretending to be the person he was. Paige suggests that he pretends to be someone else - a traitor, a revolutionary. Hayward agrees, asking what they need to do.

### The Second Instruction

Hayward reads from ‘Upon The Birthing Of Gods’. The second instruction is to come up with a simple concept that doesn’t infringe on the copyright of other deities. Paige and Hayward begin their discussion in the living room. Dennis cuts in on their conversation. Paige speaks about Our Lady Of Tomorrows and The Impassable Lith, how they were taken from their original purposes and repackaged as something else and used against them. Paige wants to make sure this cannot happen with their deity. Dennis provides an example based on profits, a tower block that people pay a fortune to own penthouses in because the higher you are the more the god appreciates you. Hayward mentions that the gods that always give law enforcement a rough time are the localised ones because they’re harder to understand if you’re on the outside of it. Paige acknowledges this but if it's local it’s limited and isolated. Hayward asks what the goal of this god would be, and Paige replies that it would protect those being sacrificed, only the powerless and those under threat. Hayward says the only example of something like that is the Smiling and Head-Shaking Child On The Perfectly Balanced Scales. Paige replies that it's too abstract, justice means too many things to too many people. Paige becomes frustrated with her father, who tells her that this plan isn’t going anywhere which causes an argument. Dennis Duplass uses the typical manipulative parent lines. Hayward is forced to play a peacemaker role, as they continue to argue. Dennis asks Paige how a god of the common people will be different when a god must feed. He leaves, slamming the door behind him. Hayward sympathetically asks if Paige would like to join him in rolling the tractor off the cliff.

They go on their second walk. Paige asks if she overreacted, and Hayward tells her no one ever really overreacts to a parent. The last thing he said has stuck with her: A god must feed. They don’t know how to make something outside of that, or if it would even be possible to. Hayward suggests it feeds on something small. Paige replies that it wouldn’t satisfy. They come to a half-buried shrine, which Hayward reads.

*‘Beneath your feet lies a defensive bunker manned by the Tementry Isle First Fusiliers. They gave their lives in service of god and nation. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.’*

It's a remnant from the last war between the Linger Straits and the Peninsula. Even here it seems like another war has been accepted as the only possibility. As Hayward cleans around the monument, something dawns on Paige. Their god won’t need to feed because it’s taking what’s already been offered. A god of victims and martyrs. Their god would only go to those in their final moments. Stealing sacrifices from other gods. It's both specific and universal.

### The Third And Fourth Instructions

They return to the farmhouse and the book. The third instruction is to look back at other abandoned, stray or outlawed faiths to ensure that the idea hasn’t been done before, or to understand why it was abandoned if it had been. Hayward and Paige find some useful and not so useful examples, such as: May Its Spear Impale Your Father Sufficiently To Fuck Your Mother and the Anointed Mother of Wounds.

The fourth instruction is to test the communication method. A conduit should be selected, someone who can relate strongly to the concept of the god. It suggests psychotropic smokes and teas, a meaningful sacrifice and a lot of patience. Paige, Dennis and Hayward stand in front of the monument. As a sacrifice, Paige draws blood from her palm and uses it to create a pattern. They go through the motions, including drinking hallucinogenic teas.

### The Fifth Instruction: The Birth Of A God

The fifth instruction is to focus purely on their god, and be fully devoted to it. This, like the last step, requires resilience. They continue to repeat the process. The chosen conduit cannot lose focus. They continue to read and heed the advice they’re given. Dennis speaks first, telling a story about a time when he betrayed someone, a man named Walter, whom he was in prison with. Walter went by a nickname, as he felt his true name was too weak. He revealed his true name, and his insecurities, to Dennis as a gesture of trust while they worked together. Only days later, Dennis revealed the name to others and joined in mocking Walter, effectively destroying that trust and any friendship that had been growing. Later, he was selected as a sacrifice, and even in his final suffering moments, inmates mocked him and his name. Dennis admits he thought of him often, suggesting that he felt guilty.

Paige continues. She talks about her mother, Gwyneth. She dies out of sight at a busy intersection. Her father doesn’t take her back to the grave after the funeral. But one day in the middle of Nesh they stand at a busy intersection and he realises that this is where it happened. That place becomes her grave to Paige, her mother’s memory. She would place white crocus flowers down on the concrete at the intersection. Hayward talks about the children who would go missing from the estate. His kickball game keeps dwindling in size. Nobody talks about it. Sometimes no one shows up at all. His mother tells him not to stay out after dark anymore, and buys a television to distract him in the evenings. New people move into the apartments. They join together to utter “My god, let this not be in vain”. Paige says that the marks are readily conjured, they haven’t given birth to anything but simply rediscovered something already dormant in the world. There is the sound of splitting concrete. Something new begins.

## Trivia

* Dennis reveals that he helped pay for Paige's transition.
* Hayward's first name is James.
* Paige has an ex named Helena, and it's implied their relationship ended due to her father.
* Paige jokes that her hostage taking approach was taught to her by Carpenter and Faulkner.

## References

1. ↑ Episode Release Announcement on Tumblr
2. ↑ Official episode synopsis at https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/5fec690f8211cf453a1b89e2