{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1172",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1172,
    "subject": "\"You are wearing a mask.\"",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-10-14T16:15:24+00:00",
    "last": "1998-10-14T16:15:24+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0019-0114@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Robert Borski",
        "address": "rborski at coredcs.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-10-14T16:15:24+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) \"You are wearing a mask.\"",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "When Severian first meets Agilus at his rag shop, Agilus is wearing what\nSev describe's as a skeleton or death's head mask. Sev, however, in the\ndimness of the shop (Wolfe specifically mentions the lack of light), does\nnot realize this until he sees \"a narrow black ribbon that stretched\nforward a finger's length from the hair above his ears. \n\n\"You are wearing a mask,\" he tells Agilus, and requests he remove it.\n\nAgilus complies, but several paragraphs later, Severian says, \"The ribbons\nthat held your mask...They're still there.\"\n\nBut Agilus says nothing.\n\nLater, at the Sanguinary Fields, when Severian faces his helmeted\nSeptentrion opponent in monomachy, he makes this observation: \"...in the\nshadow behind the cheekpiece I thought I saw a narrow band of black, and\ntried to recall where I had seen such a thing before.\" (Obviously, all that\nmemory is a grievous burden to ratiocination.)\n\nAnd then still later, after Severian leaves the arrested Agilus's cell, he\nnotices the following immediately outside, where he's tossed an orichalk to\nstarving Agia: \"...the orichalk was gone. In its place...a design had been\nscratched on the filthy stones. It might have been the snarling face of\nJurupari [a demon], or perhaps a map, and it was wreathed with letters I\ndid not know.\"\n\nSo what are we to make of these various incidents?\n\nWell, come with me now to SWORD, and to Chapter XX. Big Sev and little Sev\nare working their way down from the mountains and enter a high jungle. Here\nthey find a fetish that Severian believes is meant to prevent the coming of\nthe New Sun, while suspended from trees are strips of cloth etched with\narcane symbols. Not much later they're accosted, and \"...for a moment I\nthought the figures that stepped into the path were devils, huge-eyed and\nstriped with black, white and scarlet; then I saw they were only naked men\nwith painted bodies.\" Sev later describes one of these painted faces \"as\nexpressionless as a mask.\"\n\nEventually, Severian is made to fight a sorcerer's duel with Decuman,\nwhereupon, in response to a question by little Sev about who their captors\nare, he opines: \"I'm only guessing, but I would say this is an academy of\nmagicians--of those cultists who practice what they believe are secret\narts. They are supposed to have followers everywhere--though I choose to\ndoubt that--and they are very cruel.\"\n\nAgia and Agilus, I submit, are devotees of the academy cult. In fact, if\nthere's a witch anywhere in Sev's family (this, provided Agia is Dorcas's\ngrandaughter), it's Agia. In many respects she's like Circe, only instead\nof turning men into swine, she commands the shape-changing Hethor, who is\nboth slug and peryon (Beuzac is the fire salamander). And when Severian is\n\"rescued\" from the Ascian evzones that have shot down his flier, he\ndescribes the harpy-like peryon that carries him in eactly the same terms\nhe uses to describe the Erinyes. And who is it that the Erinyes especially\npunish? Those who've commited crimes against their kin--which is pretty\nmuch what Severian did when he took Terminus Est to Agilius's neck.\n\nRobert Borski  "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}