Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: The research of esoteric topics can be quite unpleasant and perplexing at times. Even mages have to deal with the implications and consequences of their actions. In this excerpt we look at the issue of ontological weapons. An object being a physical embodiment of a concept related to killing.
In 1944 a young maga by the name of Miriam Sauerbraun fled from Germany to the United States. She carried a box she later claimed to have stolen from an abandoned household. The holding allegedly once belonged to the Koenig family, though Palmira Sanna et al. disputes this detail.
Within the receptacle rested a single sliver of light roughly in the shape of a dagger. Though any magi in its presence can plainly see the object and physically interact with it, its image could not be captured using any known technology at the time, nor today.
This dagger became the object of my studies from 1973 to 1977. The notes compiled here are the record of my observations and experiments with what I’ve come to call an Ontological Weapon.
The first obvious issue is that we could not capture any image of the weapon. Though anyone present in the room could see it, pick it up and interact with it like any physical object, the cameras we had failed us. Every photograph or recording of the weapon we took came out clear, only missing the dagger.
Of course, we soon moved to other attempts to make some kind of image or model of the blade. One of my colleagues, doctor Ó Raghailligh, suggested a clay impression. And it worked. At least for as long as it took anyone to lose track of it, at which point it would return to a blank state. Sans a few fingerprints we left on it.
The experiments we conducted on the blade’s ability to cut were yet more confounding. One of the first tests we envisioned, and it was suggested in a joking manner, was to cut bread with the blade. We weren’t able to do that. Yet much later I stabbed a living chicken with it, and it died, though without any kind of stab wound persisting on the bird. And yet, I could swear that while I was ending the damn bird in the name of science, there was blood on the blade and on my hands.
Apart from that, I remember it being cold to the touch but not physically cold, as much as, if this makes sense, holding it sent chills running down my spine, almost as if the blade in itself had some kind of killing intent, a desire to be used — a purpose.
We’ve come to call the material the blade’s composed of “spirit metal”, or nóosýli. And we deemed it to be an Ontological Weapon. It was certain that this material had very low ousia, somehow existing as a pure concept materialised into the waking world from the dream. Not one of us ever had the thought that a non-self conscious meme could exist outside of the dreaming world.
And to be fair, to this day we’re not sure if its existence isn’t supported by us, by every one of us who experienced the weapon and that it will one day disappear if it ever happens to be forgotten by this world. By writing this book, we might have ensured its perpetual presence in this reality.
The rules and mechanisms by which it continues to exist are less critical than a different matter, however. And that is how such a thing could even exist or be made to be. We also theorised that this might be a Lunarian artefact that has somehow made its way here, to Earth. But our research left this thought in the realm of hypothesises rather than as a sound theory.
In the end, what we had on our hands was a killing idea, capable of taking a life in a way that ignored all corporal forms of protection. We refused to make use of it and yet had no way of disposing of the blade either.
Esoteric Musings... 