Microstory 669: Remake the Club of Death

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As the moment, there are hundreds of billions of people in this galaxy, but when our civilization first began, there were far fewer. Still, that’s a lot of people to keep track of. Since our whole reason for leaving our ancestors was to be independent and free, we didn’t exactly have any methods of monitoring all of our planets’ respective citizens, and still don’t. With all these people living separately, doing separate things, we don’t know for sure, but supposedly we know who committed the first murder here. It was carried out by a man named Giacomo. Again, the veracity of these claims remain in question, for we don’t even know what planet this occurred on, or who he killed. All we know is what he used; something now known as the Club of Death. The Club of Death seemed to be an ordinary wooden club, but the truth behind it came out soon after the murder. Through mysterious means, this club was completely indestructible. Obviously experts attempted to study this instrument, only to come up with no reasonable explanation for its strength. Mystical explanations have been offered, including that the Light of Truth protected it from any and all attacks. Upon learning this, Sotiren sought out Giacomo, and quickly recruited him to be one of his eidos. Though Eido Giacomo took a vow of nonviolence, and never killed a single person since that first murder, he continued to carry the Club with him at all times. We will discuss his reasons for this once his replacement has been chosen.

A few years following Giacomo’s beginning as an eido, survivors of his first kill executed their revenge plan. They stole the Club of Death from him, and jettisoned it into a star. This may or may not have destroyed the club, but regardless of whether it remained intact, it was forever irretrievable. The Sacred Savior wrote in the Book of Light that the Club of Death would have to be remade, and so an interstellar contest began, led and judged by none other than Vilis Samuels, before his first excursion to Lactea. As technologically advanced as we have become, most could not succeed in this endeavor. No matter what you try, wood is just too weak, and though other ingredients could be added to the instrument, it was required to be made primarily of wood. Vilis found a way to destroy every entry, every single time. Then something unexpected happened, as one should come to expect when predicting the nature of these taikon. Another murder was committed in Fostea, just one of many, but this one was special. It was perpetrated using a wooden staff that happened to be lying around. What they discovered was that this was the Unbreaking Branch, an artifact of lore from thousands of years ago on our origin world with similar physical properties to the Club of Death. Though it wasn’t technically remade during the taikon, it was rediscovered, something that no one was even trying to do. Taikon verifiers accepted this as a loophole, and the Unbreaking Branch was kept in a safe place in order to be given to Eido Giacomo’s replacement.