"The mouth feeds on power and control. To control the mouth, you must starve it. You must fast. Give away your wealth to whomever passes you by. Obey your superiors without doubt or question. Spend hours doing utterly useless actions-- prayer works. Acts of self-denial and self-abnegation."

Oh Mordred hates that.

"You make yourself powerless." This is a fairly easy feat to imagine. Except-- "But if any kind of goal will feed it, how do you avoid feeding it with the goal of starving it? Or, I guess you could--" okay hold on

No wait this isn't relevant to fighting the Mouths, what were they talking about

"Well, the nuns believe they are obeying the commandments of their god."

His tone suggests what he thinks of any god that would command this, and is only made slightly less cutting by the fact that he doubles over in pain immediately afterward.

"Letting something else eat you so the mouth won't. I'm so sorry."

Kind of a silver lining how Oswald has the perfect skillset if he ever develops extra mouths. Evil truly does seed the tools for its own destruction!

"I-- worked it out-- five, ten minutes at a time-- before my Mouth woke up and I had to silence it with starvation-- I fed my mouth for years. It is hungry."

This is incredibly tragic and he needs to keep asking relevant questions come on come on they wanted to know things they aren't just in Ethiopia for no reason. "..........The site -- it, um, there was some stuff left but not a lot -- and the, the Italian researcher wasn't much help -- and, um--" HEY GUYS HELP HIM OUT HERE

"It was a site of veneration of the Mouth very long ago. I recognized the symbols from our own rituals. It... fell apart before I could do anything with it."

Mordred has, of course, been taking notes on this entire conversation. "Do you know other names for the Mouth? Everything has - a lot of names, we have guesses about which things are connected but not much more than guesses."

"The inner circle called it the Liar from Beyond. From the Dallol site and Acuna's translation of the Revelations of Dagon, I believe it to be the Prisoner of Dagon."

Nod. "Any connection to the Fisher from Outside, that you know of?"

"The Fisher from Outside is Gol-Goroth. Echavarria claimed that the cult venerated Gol-Goroth, but"-- he pauses and breathes slowly for several moments from pain-- "told the Inner Circle we did not."

Pause, to let him breathe. Mordred reminds himself firmly that Ayers specifically told them to ask him questions. "Do you know why he did that? Do you know what the cult wants, from venerating the Mouth?"

"Power. The Nectar--"

"Is Dagon, like, relevant to all this, should we be looking into him too-- uh, the Nectar does, what, it hooks you obviously and makes you focus and seek out sensation and also maybe worship it--" sudden flash of inspiration "--speaking of names do you know anything about Azathoth?"

"The Nectar makes you strong. It makes you more focused, yes, and smarter and more observant and more precise in your movements."

"...in Bangkok it makes you violent."

"Wittier, better able to catch the subtleties of social interaction, full of-- insight-- flashes of insight you could get no other way--" Doubles over in pain. "...It did not make them violent. But it does have its own price."

"In addition to the various prices of addiction?"

"It takes away your goals. You take it to gain knowledge. To learn how to make someone happy, or love you. To make yourself safe. To make the world a better place. And... once you are on it for long enough... you stop wanting whatever it is you wanted before. You want power, so that you can use it to accumulate more power, so that you can use it to accumulate more power, so that..." He cuts off his sentence with a gasp of pain.

"Was that all they were after, then? Did the cult ever have any goals that weren't just power for its own sake?"

"Echavarria perhaps did. Once. But-- once you're on it for long enough-- all there is, is power, and gaining more power, and showing off exactly how weak and helpless everyone else is before you..."
 
 
 
 

"Christ."

Lev is putting together some facts here.