(An excerpt from Jamfull, Crozef (Theologian), Speculations on the Unusual Beliefs of the Ancients: an exploration in mocking the ideas of people we consider primitive and inferior, Merdreterre Institute of Thaumaturgy Scrolls and Folios, Ur-et-Scatia, -497 usque in excrementum est.)
Of the many strange ideas and beliefs we have studied from period before the Rule of the Dragons in these previous volumes of this collection, we end with perhaps the strangest notion to emerge and take root in Ancient Ur: and, of that, of course, I speak of “Ubu.”
The discovery of the burial chambers near Matte Kudasai and Neurotica in Theela Hun Jinjeet revealed sufficient skeletal remains to begin a painstaking examination of the beliefs of these dead.
What we have learned is this:
First, Ubu cannot be considered a god (oh, great gods, what with your radiant and necrotic justice and smiting!). At least, not in the sense of the concept or being of a god (oh, magestic and wrathful!) typically understood by mortals.
Rather, Ubu can be better expressed as a personification.
Ubu is something like accidental creation personified into a being who creates not as an intentional act. Rather, around Ubu, creation happens. It is more consequence than cause.
Thus, if what Ubu is is personification, what Ubu does is reification.
For example, we might think today, “I am a god (oh great gods!) and I want to go somewhere. Therefore, I shall create such a place. Now, that it is, I shall be there.”
For those who believed in Ubu, it would be more like, “I think I will go. Oh, look, as I have gone, something has happened. That something is a place. It seems like a very nice place. I think I will stay a while. Oh, look, now that I have stayed here, something else has happened. I wonder what we will call that thing. Goodness, it has quite a lot of teeth!” And, so on.
Ubu is also responsible for cataclysm and disaster. These events of destruction are not a product of will or emotion, as they clearly are with gods (oh just and wise!) as we understand gods (we the supplicant beg you to spare us) today.
(Oh gods, great and mighty, take no offense at these words I write and spare me at least until the end of this volume. There are so few of us left in the Department.)
Rather, for those who believed in Ubu, destruction was always unintended consequence of an action Ubu took while doing something else. For example, that earthquake there was Ubu sitting down and that flood was Ubu losing his favorite jumper in the laundry. And, so on.
What we understand as cause and effect, the harnessing of arcane force in a directed way in a spell is completely alien to the mindset of the believers in Ubu. In the thinking of a follower of Ubu, being occurs and occurs and occurs and occurs. There is no will. There is no intention. There is no focus. There is no guile. There is no motive. There is no craft.
There just is… and is-ing in one long continuous sequence, which was called “Og d’ta a.”
Second, unlike the other strange cults and fantastic believes of the primitive humanoids, a belief in Ubu was commonly shared across Dwarven, Gnomish, Halfling, and Human clans.
It is, we think, about the only thing they ever agreed on, short of “these fucking dragons have got to go, and they’ve got to go now!”
A Dwarf would never be found believing in Tickity-Boo, the Gnome God of Putting More Than Two Things Together; not any more than a Gnome would be a believer in Avericia, god Wanting Things Others Already Have. A human would not be a follower of Brucherella, as a Halfling would not be a believer in Ping! The Enemy of Hospital-a Man-a! Each of these ideas being separate and unique to the humanoid community that embodied the spirit of each.
Yet, with Ubu, we find a cult of Ubu in the skeletal remains of Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling and Human.
It is of some speculation that we get the word “ubiquitous” from this commonality.
(Personally, I think linguists have far too much time on their hands. It is because their lounge is so much bigger than ours, which is an outrage.)
Third, unlike gods (please don’t smite me, I beg of ye!), who possess knowledge and power that mortals do not (oh, great gods, your greatness being the greatest greatness of all things great), by knowing Ubu, the follower of Ubu could learn more about Ubu than Ubu knew about himself or herself or itself. Ubu having no self-awareness or understanding of what it was Ubu was or what it was doing with creation simply by being, it could not express intention or purpose.
It is said, however, that a keen observer of Ubu could, somehow, deduce what Ubu would do next.
This was not exactly clairvoyance or prediction. It was deduction drawn from observation and study.
In particular, it was said that Ubu wore on his belly a pattern that would explain the direct of the events of creation, provided one knew how to read it.
The problem with this, of course, is that someone would have to espy Ubu to make such a deduction, and then study Ubu for a long period of time. And, as Ubu was supposedly in constant motion, and through that motion constantly creating as a indirect consequence of moving, it would be impossible to study Ubu without being eaten first by something that suddenly just came into being and possessing a great deal of teeth.
This idea that someone could know more about Ubu than Ubu is, of course, the most utterly preposterous idea in a long string of preposterous ideas put forth by primitive minds. This is further evidence that we Arcanists, with out advanced understanding of the harnessing of the arcane are the most advanced realization of intelligence (— but much, much, much lesser than the gods who are stupendous and magnificent!)
Thus, we have the strangely common yet utterly impossible non-god Ubu.
In the following pages of this work (should I live so long, praise be the gods) we will enjoy, in great and minute detail, the excruciating undertaking, its methods, data, and findings that have led us to this understanding.
For the young wizard, just starting out on her, his or its journey, we recommend having a classmate shackle you to your desk and lock you in your chamber prior to starting this study — we have found these actions greatly increase the probability that your complete your study.