Motif · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

The Nebulars

A religious team of hunters — the Nebular Sin Patrol on the hunters' map, camped at Alucarda with a claim on Carl, bishop hats and a Ballad of Survival ('violence breeds chaos') — whose priests die in the street at Alucarda, caught between Carl's explosives and the mantises. Pacifists outside the dungeon, Drick says.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 28 — Toyotomi; Agatha is looking for Carl
• Chapter 31 — Drop troopers; Tripper
• Chapter 34 — The king's message; Rosetta's whip
• Chapter 69 — Interlude — Several days earlier; Interlude — Rosetta; Zarogoths
• Chapter 73 — An act of fiendish cruelty
• Epilogue — Epilogue: Don't Come in Last

Progression

One of the parties tangled up in the floor, in Carl's list with the council, the two kinds of residuals, the Apothecary, the Plenty, the Open Intellect Pacifist Network and Odette (ch. 28); the mercenaries look more robotic than them (ch. 31). King Rust calls Princess Formidable's theory of contagious insanity a crackpot theory that began with the Nebulars (ch. 34). Agatha turns out to be the rarer kind of residual, more in line with the Nebulars, who worship the Eulogist (ch. 69) — where Carl first heard the word, as a religious cult (ch. 73); the epilogue's news carries the mass suicide of one of their colonies (epilogue).