If no one minds, I think this thread deserves to be retrieved from the Boatsman for a bit.
More knowledge and more hints about the Calendar Council have since been unearthed. Further, the Great Work, the Dawn Machine, and the Liberation of Night have been confirmed to be aspects of one theme; the Great Work being the concept, the Dawn Machine being the tool, and the Liberation of Night the ideological goal.
We know now that the Liberation of Night is the extinguishing of all Light in the Neath, and not as Zeedee (and initially I as well) presumed, an inundation of the Neath in Light. But how?
NB: spoilered below is a wall of text.
[spoiler]The Dawn Machine. A device assembled from luciferous items and those that amplify Light. It would appear that such a machine would be best suited for creating light, not snuffing it. But it turns out that apparently we’re all fools to believe that. How does it work? From the description of certain Destinies, it seems to have "broken" Light in the Neath. Fire still burns, but gives off no light. Maybe the Dawn Machine created such a ridiculously intense light as to have created a sort of "stack overflow" error in the fabric of reality? I know I’m stretching it a bit here, but how else would a machine that is seemingly used to create light result in the effects we have dreamed?
Colours seem to be involved. Colours of course being light, split up in different wavelengths. I am led to believe that the Neath holds to different sets of visible colour spectra, and accordingly, perhaps two different sets of light. Our mundane set being "white light", broken up into red, orange, yellow, blue, green, blue, indigo, violet, as well as some errata invisible to the human eye.But what of irrigo, apocyan, cosmogone and violant? Colours that appear to have certain metaphysical qualities to them - irrigo being the colour of forgetfulness, and apocyan perhaps being that of memory. Do these colours leave the prism originating from another light? Is that light "white" as our mundane light is, or is it perhaps a succulent and almost obscene "pseudo-green" like the Memories of Light? I think that the Gleam destiny among the Liberation of Night shows that these metaphysical colours are not affected by the Liberation of Night. It explains why February is so interested in a certain place painted in irrigo. But not to digress from the question that comes to mind here - where do these colours come from, if not from the Sun?
Speaking of February: she appears to be the mastermind behind the Liberation of Night, and perhaps the most uncompromising and implacable among all anarchists. I doubt there’s much of Goldman, of Stirner, of Rand, or of Bakunin in her ideology, although she is perhaps the culmination of all individualist anarchism that Stirner never could have dreamed of. Unabashedly anomist, she’s not content to abolish government or justice - she plans on destroying the very origin of natural law, which she apparently has isolated to lie, oddly enough, in Light. But Light being what it is - exuded by stars - and stars being what they are - something I am not Fated to say - she may have a point.
As a friend of mine said: "Girl has ambitions." Once London is doused in Night, it’ll be time to emancipate the Surface from the Light. And perhaps, down a Long Road, the assassination of all the stars in the night sky might bring anarchy and anomy to the totality of the universe.
Staying with opposition to the Sun, but leaving behind the Liberation of Night: December, the masked member of the Calendar Council (that we know of). Although I do not recall where exactly, I could swear that somewhere I saw the Mountain and the secret to eternal life as being described as "the cruel experiment of the Sun". December, curiously, doesn’t so much care about whether you bring the secret of eternal life to all, or whether you destroy it. He merely opposes it falling into the hand of a chosen few. Could this be an ideological opposition? If you dreamed of destroying the mountain and preserving life as it is, he tells you that you will be the "only truly free beings in the cosmos".
If the mortals are free, are the immortals not? What does this mean regarding the immortality of souls?
Notably, December is also much more affable than the Cheery Man made him out to be. When I first heard about him, I assumed he’d be an independent kingpin crime lord, affiliated with the Calendar Council as a means to cash in on the revolutionary potential for crime. But he seems to be an actually decent sort, though obviously not a smidgeon less violent than the rumours say.
Freedom seems to be what joins the Calendar Council. February seeks the very platonic ideal of freedom: to be free from everything, the end of all law and all "ranking" - no Gods, no Masters, no Laws, no Light. December seeks freedom from the threat of immortality - perhaps, in a slightly Gnostic interpretation, the idea of being forever bound to a material existence, a sort of hylic prison.
A little bit of March has been seen before - bringing Darkdrop Coffee to the citizens of London, at a discount price and snubbing any of Mr. Wines trade monopolies and restrictions. March could very well be a sort of market liberal (or, may God have mercy on us all, an anarcho-capitalist) who opposes the Masters and the Bazaars on an economic level, being a bit of a mercantile trickster. But then again, his ambitions could very well be bigger, and different, and simply not yet fully understood by me.[/spoiler]
I do admit the flaw of being a relatively recent arrival to the Neath, having missed out on no doubt many potential prior encounters with the Council, still not eligible for others, and lacking perspective compared to bigger pictures out of my sight. But here are my musings on the Calendar Council, delicious and most prized friends, and I hope they please and vex you.
[li]