Ib

Overview

Ib stood on the shore of the still Lake Ira in the land of Mnar before Sarnath existed, a city of grey stone whose inhabitants the chronicle calls thuum-ha, not quite men, not quite beasts, worshippers of Bokrug the water-lizard, content in silence until southern conquerors came at dawn with fire and contempt.

Ib was razed, its people slaughtered, its idol carried across the water as trophy. The conquerors built Sarnath and told themselves the past was dead. Ib was not dead. It waited in the lake with its god, and on the appointed night walked again in green fire to prove that extinction declared by victors is not extinction performed by gods.

Description

The original Ib was grey basalt, low domes, no spires, gardens of strange lilies that glowed at dusk. The thuum-ha moved without speech that humans could hear; their eyes were large and mild until the slaughter. The idol of Bokrug was green soapstone, amphibious features, revered not feared until fear became necessary.

Modern Ib, if the term applies, lies beneath Ira's surface and in dreams: rebuilt corridors, altars restored, processions that rise from the water on nights when Sarnath's ruins glow. The thuum-ha are fewer but not extinct. Their patience is geological.

Historical Record

Dawn attack, idol drowned then stolen, thousand years of Sarnath's mockery, then Bokrug's rising and the thua-maidens dancing on broken domes. The chronicle is moral and precise. Dream-cartographers place Ib's underwater gates opposite Sarnath's central plaza, a symmetry the archive finds insulting to probability and consistent with justice.

No waking excavation has found Ira; several sleep researchers have drowned in bathtubs after claiming to have walked Ib's new streets. Protocol requires waking anchors for any Mnar study.

Archive Notes

Treat the thuum-ha as sovereign, not as monsters. Do not assist treasure hunters at Sarnath ruins. If offered safe passage in Ib, accept only with a colleague on the shore who knows the alarm phrase. Bokrug is not metaphor. The lake is not still by accident.