Ether 11

During Com’s reign prophet bands also resurged, warning of God’s plan to savage the nation if they didn’t root out the old sins. By and large, the populace wanted to shoot the messengers, who begged protection from Com. He stuck up for them and they prophesied eternal blessings for him.

Com’s son Shiblom succeeded his father, while his jealous brother opposed him and started a big war. (Wait—didn’t I write about this already? I can’t keep track.)

For spite, Shiblom’s brother executed all the prophets his dad had harbored. But their deaths only seemed to verify what they’d predicted: wickedness followed by destruction, including the dead being thrown onto mass heaps of courses.

Many people realized it was all coming true. They changed. God relented, though it wasn’t clear how much their own pathetic mass-murderous conduct needed any punishment from God. It was its own summary demolition of a culture. God could just watch.

Among the dead: Shiblom. His son Ahah then reigned, barbarously. It was over almost before it started. His descendant Ethem (not sure the relationship) took over. Another bad news scumbag.

Another wave of prophets. Same message. Same response: we hate you all. The prophets expected it, but still cried about their poor conversion rate. Then they withdrew, en masse.

Moron [yes, that’s correct] succeeded Ethem. Same dungworthy rule. A pseudo-populist rebel group—all secret conspirators, with the old oaths and rituals—took over half the kingdom for more than a decade. Moron eventually won it back.

Am I boring you? I promise I’m not just riffing. You need my aerial yadda yadda perspective to see how nothing changes. It’s all the same dogs chasing their bloody tails.

One of Jared’s brothers had a descendant, a warrior who overthrew and enslaved Moron, whose son Coriantor was raised a slave.

In Coriantor’s time, prophets came and foretold doom for sinners. But a twist, sort of: God would open the harbors to a new migration to trample out this obviously disastrous one.

And you’ll never guess. No one listened.

Coriantor died, but not before siring a boy named Ether