Milhamah: Fighting Words
When a war of words goes hot
The ‘Illit Superstructure is a skyscraper city that’s home to the Bavel Macrostructure’s royal and elite castes. This commercial capital is ruled by brutal utilitarianism, promising promotions to a few ambitious immigrants while forcing most residents into slave labor. Despite its high elevation, ‘Illit’s scorching temperatures often cause its foliage to break out in fires. Beli Ya’al lives in the uppermost chamber of the city’s central Superstructure.
The scion of ‘Illit City, Liam ‘Illui is certain that he’s better than you. Once a promising young genius, he joined ‘Aravot’s Berurah investigative agency but fell from grace when seduced by dreams of being Bavel royalty. He quickly rose up Bavel’s ranks and became Beli Ya’al’s personal intern. He also grew horns and a cow udder. With the help of his flying elevator, he’s on a mission to burn ‘Aravot and the Holy Tongue Society to the ground… as a gift to his new master.
INKTOBER DAY 16 (COMPASS): Ba’al Tzafon is a distant relative of the Bavel Macrostructure dictator, Beli Ya’al. Representing the North Wind, he naturally hails from a hidden, shadowy land in the distant arctic. But he recently moved to Bavel City to join the villainous cult of Yetzer Ra’.
Tzafon is like Santa Claus with a literally broken moral compass. That compass helps Tzafon seek out encrypted letters in the Aural Grid and makes him a master of speech act ciphers. His half-Ruaḥ/half-Ba’al heritage also lets him disperse in the air and become invisible.
While riding on his neighing steed, Tzafon gives his “treasures” — wrapped exploding gifts — to the Nice, or sometimes he scatters or conceals the gifts for ambushes. He also pulverizes the Naughty with his spring-activated warhead sledgehammer.
Tzafon is based on the צפן shoresh root and broader family, which deals with the north, compasses, treasures, wrapping, turbans, sledgehammers, explosions, distribution, scattering, concealing, ciphers, concealing, neighing and more.
Beli Ya’al is the decadent leader of the Bavel Macrostructure. From his low-level office in Bavel’s Migdal Tower, he deconstructs the world’s nations and strangles speech through a censorship regime.
(In many ways, he just *might* have a passing resemblance to certain modern-day tech titans.)
Beli sees himself as a socially conscious dictator. He promises humanity a global jubilee from the burdens of inquiry, debate and truth under the inclusive mission of “one language, few words.” However, his leadership style is lazy, and he often spends his time having trivial fun rather than doing hard work. It’s no secret that his enemies call him the Worthless One.
His typical powers are based on the בלי shoresh root and family. He emits radiation that ages his targets. He corrodes equipment to make it useless. And he can stir up necrotic debris, set his enemies on fire, or cause waters to flood. Rumor says he can transform too, but no witnesses have ever seen it.
Beli is an aging hipster at heart who longs to embody the spirit of the age. He shows symptoms of male menopause. He is negative, cynical and against all ideologies except his own. While he holds the brainwashed masses in contempt, he ironically wears shabby vintage clothing to signal his connection to the common man.
In his free time, Beli is an avid pilot. He owns a wealthy cottage by the watercourse of Yaval, near the mighty Perat River. He plans to make his own Hanging Gardens like the Garden of ‘Eden, where he can put the Syntax Tree in its “rightful” place. But for now, all that grows is devil’s grass.
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