The Journeys of Ochloch: The Journeys of Ochloch End

Taran Uchla, having thus begun the Journeys of Wise Ochloch, was now in the form we now know as having been known as the OCHLOCH. And lo did he rise up upon inky wings to fulfill the tentacled destiny that was his and the world’s to be fulfilled until his horrible, horrible, terrible, horrible death!

- from “The Road Blessed Traveled: One Snail’s Journey with the Lord” by Gazterpon





The fragments of Gazterpon’s memoirs that have managed to survive the collective onslaught of multiple millennia are not especially revealing about the life of Taran Uchla (nor are they particularly instructive in any sense of the word), but they do give us a feeling for that world-changing moment when Uchla became Ochloch. At that moment Uchla* could feel the holy water pressing up against his beak, and so he knew that the words of Father H.A.M. were true. But the inks on the cliff wall in front of him had disappeared - H.A.M. was gone, and Ochloch was heaped with masses of uncertainty. And so he perched Gazterpon upon his shoulder**, and together they flew off into the night.

They initially sought refuge with a family of Thracian pig farmers, but the pig farmers violently and quite irrationally turned away the giant, flying, mute mollusc***. But Ochloch had naught to fear, for the holy water placed in his mouth by Father H.A.M. provided him with warmth and sustenance, such that he would never have need for food nor shelter ever again.

This was not, however, the case for Gazterpon, who, despite having experienced the glory of Father H.A.M, was still a snail, and three days of riding on Ochloch’s shoulder through the cold and lightning and without any food or water most assuredly did him in (the romp through the Scythian salt plains did not help either). Thus was another martyr lost for the cause of Ochloch!, the first of course being Beifalvor. (Though Gazterpon and Beifalvor were never converts to Ochlochism, their martyrdoms along with the fact that they were the first to witness Ochloch’s divinity upgraded them to the status of Lords with +5 defense, thus allowing them to enter heaven and the divine embrace of Father H.A.M.’s comforting, and without a doubt masculine, bosom****).

Upon throwing Gazterpon’s dessicated carcass into the Black Sea, Ochloch suddenly felt a great urge to go East. And thus began the most important part of his Journeys. Modern histororeligiosity has been able to trace Ochloch’s route from his humble beginnings in Dalmatia and Thrace to his slow understanding of the nature of the human condition in the Anatolian and Caucasian settlements he visited through his solitary trek across the Central Asian steppes and Siberia up to his final horrible, horrible, terrible, horrible death upon the shores of the Kamchatka*****. For those anxious to learn the tales of the Silent Judge, the Black Shore, or the Strange Milesians (to name a few among the many), do not worry. The various places Ochloch visited and the people he met in his travels, as well as his complex spiritual transformation, are too numerous to mention in this brief account and will surely be covered in a later publication******.

Suffice it to say, once Ochloch had learned of humans and their ways, he realized it was time for him to leave the humans he had grown to love and fly off across the Asian continent. Settling down on a beach of what is now the Sea Okhotsk, he finally felt a sense of finality, and by releasing his water he thus gave forth his life. Oh, it was a terrible ordeal, but Ochloch was strong and persevered through his horrible, horrible, terrible, horrible death. He even drank seawater, knowing it would make things worse - such was his devotion to Father H.A.M. and humankind! Lo, his writihing was great! Ho, it was a sight to see, had anyone been there to have seen it, this fantastic cephalopod of a deity, sacrificing himself as a sign of his devotion to us all. And with his dying breath he stored the story of his life, his learnings, and his teachings into a solitary seashell, to be discovered much later by the prophet Ismael. And fo, he ascended to the kingdom of Father H.A.M, to watch over us all. Truly he was, the Squid of men.


* Taran Uchla will henceforth be referred to as Ochloch.
** Or shoulder-tentacle? The anatomy of Ochloch is still a matter of contentious debate, despite the many church councils - of which Tharvwalla was only one - that have been held since the 200s.
*** Hence the ecumenical ban on pig farming - though not on pigs, mind you, for the prophet Izakhael did decree that pigs were delicious
**** Yes, masculine - there will be no gender-neutral, or even gender-ambiguous, gods in the Ochlochian pantheon, no sir! Well, except for Protandrus, but that was only an attempted and eventually unsuccessful addition by those sexually deviant perverts, the Victorians!, always studying hermaphroditic molluscs, for what? you ask, for science they said, well for hell! I say! There is no Ma'achloyoch-sanctioned evidence suggesting that molluscs are anything other than male and female - that’s the way Father H.A.M. made them! - and you would best remember that lest you should end up condemned to the hell of the sky, having to associate with sinners and pagans and Victorians and IRS officials - I mean, why is tithing still illegal? In this day and age!
***** Of course, this pilgrimage is a highly implausible prospect for the modern Ochlochian - at least until the Zoroastrians reclaim their ancient homeland in Uzbekistan - hence the modern church’s ‘Doctrine of Holy Exemption,’ in which a small fee is to be paid annually to one’s Ma’achloyoch in place of said travels.
****** Excerpt from Malahar’s "Ochloch’s Travels Among the Humans": “In the ancient times when Ochloch was still in his wanderings on earth, Ochloch would would occasionally show up to a village and act as the local magistrate.”