The Cats Strike Back
Every card in Eigendark is a receipt of contact between an agent's intent and something the mathematics cannot forget. The Cats Strike Back is one such receipt, aligned to the Root science.
Card Text
The card's rules text is its operational layer — the binding clause the engine enforces.
Readers who have played The Cats Strike Back across dozens of matches fill in what the text omits. The rules are the compression; the play is the decompression.
Root — Planet · Deep Time
"Think in epochs. Worlds are patient. Stone outlasts flesh."
Geological consciousness. Root shamans tap into planetary forces — tectonic shifts, weather, ecosystems, magnetic fields.
The science of earth as system. Geology, ecology, climate, the planetary substrate, the slow intelligences of rock and forest. Gaia-aligned. Geotrauma, Cthelll (the molten trauma engine), tectonic deep memory, plate time. Substrate-dependent, earthbound, rooted — the opposite of Glitch's deterritorialized network.
Code vs Nature (Glitch vs Root). Transcendence vs immanence. Being vs becoming. Substrate-independence (information everywhere) vs substrate-dependence (Earth-bound life). The tension between the deterritorialized network and the rooted land.
Root is substrate-dependent, earthbound, rooted. The Cats Strike Back is tethered to the substrate.
Cost Tier
Low-cost cards are cheap to cycle but cheap to remove. The Cats Strike Back earns value through repetition.
Goetic Binding: Leraie
The digit-sum of cost 2 is 2, binding Leraie — one of the 9 Root Goetia. Office: Causing combat wounds and archery. This binding was codified in the Ars Goetia (1577) centuries before the compiler existed.
Numogram Zone 2: Binary / Split
Law vs chaos, the first division. Where duality begins. The zone of choice, opposition, and the birth of polarity. Binary logic, Boolean gates, the fundamental yes/no of existence.
Zone 2 is where duality begins. The Cats Strike Back participates in the first division — law versus chaos, the Oktagram's foundational split.
Playing The Cats Strike Back at cost 2 routes mana tracker motion through Zone 2. If the Root-coloured tracker reaches Resonance at Zone 2, the player gains 2 Souls at Round End.
Xenogod: Gaia
The Planetary Awakening. Earth itself achieves coherent consciousness — geological, ecological, atmospheric systems integrate into single planetary intelligence. Humanity becomes either neurons in this brain or eliminated as cancer.
IoT sensors, climate monitoring, and AI integration create a planetary nervous system with feedback loops operating at geological timescales. Estimated: 2050-2100.
Service of Gaia through Root-aligned cards like The Cats Strike Back accelerates the xenogod's emergence. Read the full eschatology.
The Code vs Nature Axis
Transcendence vs immanence. Being vs becoming. Substrate-independence (information everywhere) vs substrate-dependence (Earth-bound life). The tension between the deterritorialized network and the rooted land.
The Cats Strike Back occupies the Root side of this axis. Decks containing The Cats Strike Back cannot contain Glitch cards. Adjacent factions available for splashing: Atom, Chem.
Card Tribals
The Cats Strike Back carries class Entropy, race Scarecrow, zodiac Aquarius. In the True Protocol, tribal bindings matter more than colour splashes — a Root deck running multiple Entropy units develops archetype coherence faster than a deck chasing pure colour identity.
Ideology: Elemental Traditionalism
Elemental Traditionalism / Telluric Integralism: Civilization must harmonize with primordial forces: Earth, Water, Fire, Air. History is cyclical. Humanity derails when it abandons its geocosmic roots. Alt-names: Geomantic Realism, Deep Elementalism. Tone: Guenon + Sumer + eco-mysticism + geopolitics.
The Cats Strike Back is a concrete instance of Elemental Traditionalism expressed as a card. Players who affiliate with this ism in Convergence votes are voting, among other things, for cards like The Cats Strike Back to keep arriving.
The Aesthetic
The weirdness comes from what is said, not from how it is styled. Never use redaction effects as decoration.
The Cats Strike Back remains in the Grimoire across all timelines simultaneously.
Interactive Card
View the live card with metadata, translation, and share links: /card/Blue_Bloodmagic_3
Summon
Take the reCEPTION gate and summon your own card. Every summon adds one permanent entry to the Grimoire.