Person
Chæmbo, The Barbarian
Also: Chæmbo · Chæmbo, the Barbarian · The Rump of Doom · Rump of Doom
The Rump of Doom: an ancient Rump warrior, outside every rank and Rump Factor, whose purpose has always been the extinction of all bird-kind; he unmade the precursor birds and Chickenheim, and captured Neith in 1777 AD.
Chæmbo, The Barbarian, is a Rump: an ancient and powerful warrior, the eldest of the Rumps whose names are remembered, and the most feared. John Herschel called him the Rump of Doom. He holds no rank and no Rump Factor, and he stands outside the Rumpish chain of command: even a General seeks his aid rather than giving him orders.
His purpose, for as long as he has been remembered, has been the extinction of bird-kind: every race of birds, and the Chickens, greatest of the bird peoples, above all. He hunted their forebears, the precursor birds, to the last; he made war on Chickenheim on his own, fighting in the flesh, until its destruction in 0 CP; and in 1777 AD (1898 CP) his ship, afterwards named the Neith-Taker, captured Neith, the entire moon, with many Chickens still on it. These are the best-recorded of his campaigns, not the only ones. He had fought many times before Chickenheim, across a career that was already ancient by then, and much of it has gone unrecorded. The common era is counted from The Peace that bears his name.
At the ends of worlds§
Chæmbo is no spirit. He is a Rump of flesh and blood, ancient but no less flesh for it: he fights on the ground, and an arrow loosed at him can find its mark, as one nearly did at Chickenheim. Yet when a world of birds has come to its end, he has always been there. He was there when the last of the precursor birds died, there when Chickenheim fell, and there when Neith was taken. To the Chickens, the sight of him has come to mean that a world is ending.
Before the records§
His exact age is not recorded. He is older than the IGRSE, the Rumps' first and greatest institution, founded near the end of The Great Doldrum around 11,500 BCP; before it the Rumps were a scattered and little-regarded people, and Chæmbo was already among them. The oldest accounts of him, which reach back into The Doldrum itself, already describe him as old. So little of that age survives that any such reckoning is speculative, but he is not thought to be as old as the Nine Realms of Bellakarth.
The oldest of his deeds that Chicken histories remember belongs to that age: the extinction of the precursor birds, an ancient race of birds and the forebears of the Chickens, whose name has been lost. He hunted them to the last. The Chickens remember The Great Doldrum as the Chicken-squalor, and it is believed that this is why.
Beside him, even the most storied Rumps are young. General Torumund Borgin was a Lieutenant at Chickenheim, and Lieutenant Gorginmeijer Borgleaus, a Petty Officer there, is still called "The Young Rump". Chæmbo was already old when the IGRSE was new, more than eleven thousand years before either of them is recorded.
The hunt§
Chæmbo's war is on all bird-kind, and he has never wanted less than its extinction. The Chickens, as the greatest of the bird peoples, have borne the worst of it, and he has hunted them throughout their history; but no race of birds is outside his purpose. The Peace that bears his name is the Rumps' subjugation of the Chickens; Chæmbo's own aim has never been to rule the birds, but to end them.
The Chickens believe his war on them began before time. In their faith, the Egg Halls beyond time hold every Chicken that will ever be, waiting to hatch, and their tradition holds that, long ago, Chæmbo broke into the Halls and ransacked them. It is why they say his war on their race has no beginning, and why no Chicken can ever count itself safe from him.
After The Destruction of Chickenheim, the Chickens scattered in The Chicken Diaspora, mostly to moons. Why moons is not fully known, but a small world is easier to hide on, and easier to leave, for a people still hunted by Chæmbo.
The Rump of Doom§
To the Rumps, Chæmbo is more than a warrior. His teachings are kept in a holy book, the Cæmbodeus, and are revered as scripture. Chæmbo’s Peace, the Rumps' long subjugation of the Chickens, bears his name; it has been reckoned for some two thousand years, and it is reckoned still.
In verse he is the Rump of Doom. In John Herschel's poem of 1837 AD on The Fall of Neith, Borgin, fleeing to Titan, "beseeched the Rump of Doom".
The Destruction of Chickenheim§
Chickenheim was far from Chæmbo's first war, but it is the best remembered. He went to it alone. He answered to no one: he chose to attack Chickenheim himself, fought on the ground in flesh and blood, and for years made the destruction of Chickendom his single purpose. The war settled into a long and bitter stalemate.
Long afterwards, the Rumpish forces came to finish what he had begun, under Commander Felix Don Grompulous. In the fighting that followed, a Chicken arrow was loosed at Chæmbo, and General Torumund Borgin, then a Lieutenant, took the arrow in his place. Chickenheim fell in 0 CP.
The home-planet of the Chickens was destroyed, and its people scattered across the known universe in The Chicken Diaspora. The long subjugation that followed bears Chæmbo's name, and the common era is counted from its first year, 1 CP.
The Fall of Neith§
For sixteen centuries, Neith escaped him. Chæmbo was hunting the Chickens across the countless moons of The Diaspora, and the one small moon beside Venus that had become the heart of Chickendom was a single hiding place among thousands; space is vast, and he did not have its exact place. The Rumps did. They had surveyed Neith and watched it for centuries, but they meant to claim the moon for their own, and they knew that when Chæmbo comes, he takes everything. They had heard tell of the ship he had built after The Fall of Chickendom, a new vessel made to swallow entire moons. No Rump pointed him toward it.
Then, in 1777 AD (1898 CP), with the RF-9 crippled at Titan and the Chickens of Neith believing themselves victorious, General Torumund Borgin did what no Rump had been willing to do: he summoned Chæmbo, and gave him Neith's location. No Rump commands Chæmbo; but Borgin had once taken a Chicken arrow meant for him, and on the strength of that old debt he felt he could ask. Chæmbo needed no persuading. He relished the request.
As the Neith-Taker drew near, its shadow, The Chæmbrolāmbra, fell across Neith and blotted out the Sun. The ship itself was hidden in that darkness, but some Chickens, Chief Kwimpala among them, understood what the darkness meant and urged the rest to flee. Many would not. John Herschel's poem remembers them: "Victorious Neith in Venusian umbra, / Heeded not the dawn of the Chæmbrolāmbra; / It vanished into the Neith-Taker's jaw."
Chæmbo took Neith, the entire moon, and those who had stayed were taken with it. Neith rests now, within the Neith-Taker, in the Kitties’ Paw; it has been no satellite of Venus since. One prize escaped him. Kwimpala flew out on a ship and cast the Cheeknomicron toward Earth in a capsule, and he was killed by Rumpish forces for it.
Among the Rumps§
Chæmbo is a Rump, listed among the Rumpnillion Bastadons, those spacefaring felines, but he stands above and outside their order. He holds no rank, and he has no Rump Factor. The Hassimir Council was established in 500 CP, five centuries after Chickenheim, and it has never assigned him one; a Rump Factor of 9, the highest the Council gives and General Borgin's own, is a measure he was never held to. The Rumpish military does not command him: its Generals ask for his help.
Shamatha Reikess§
Chæmbo keeps a pet, Shamatha Reikess, one of the figures listed in On Mankind.
Herschel's fear§
Of all the powers in the known universe, the one William Herschel feared above all else was Chæmbo, The Barbarian.