Production Notes
Drums and percussion: R Thomas
Guitars, Banjo, Bass, lyrics, vocals: PS Perkins
Mixed, mastered, and produced by Mystic Tape Deck ©2026
Lyric Sheet
They plough their fields
They sow their rows
They weave their blankets for the nights when the cold wind blows
They swing their scythe
They reap their stow
And they grind their crusty bread with the soothsayer’s bone
They light their fires
Burn their effigies
All dancing deep in madness, rapt in ecstacy
They wave their flags
They wail and moan
And they beat the war drums with the soothsayer’s bone
They’re the prowlers on the prairie
They’re the keepers of the key
They’re the shadow steppers stepping, stepping over you and me
They’re the dreamers of the desert
And they’re never at home
And they stir their bubbling stew with the soothsayer’s bone
They pour their wine
They fill their grail
Collect the seeping gore in gilded golden pails
They nod and chant
Ascend the throne
And they pierce the astral veil with the soothsayer’s bone
They pick their battles
They win their fights
Adore their kings and revere their shining knights
They sacrifice the innocent
For sins they must atone
And they pick their rotten teeth with the soothsayer’s bone
They’re the prowlers on the prairie
They’re the keepers of the key
They’re the shadow steppers stepping, stepping over you and me
They’re the dreamers of the desert
And they’re never at home
And they stir their bubbling stew with the soothsayer’s bone
Addendums
The Soothsayer’s Bone — The Prophecy
The Soothsayer’s Bone represents knowledge that survives its knower. It is the remnant of a prophetic life, preserved after the voice that once spoke through it has vanished. The bone does not foretell the future. It remembers it.
As a Nazilic Arcana, The Soothsayer’s Bone symbolizes fate, uncertainty, and the terrible temptation to know what comes next. It asks whether prophecy is a gift—or merely another form of imprisonment.
Upright: Premonition. Fate. Hidden knowledge. The future glimpsed but not understood.
Reversed: False certainty. Obsession with prediction. A future altered by the act of foreseeing it.
The question of the Arcana:
If you knew what was coming, would you still choose to meet it?
The Soothsayer's Bone is said to be the femur of a prophet and psychic so ancient, their name has been forgotten to the mists of time. The bone has been passed down through a long chain of people in positions of great power around the world. It is said to possess great fortune telling powers, granting whomever holds it the ability to use it as a sort of diving rod to merge normally disconnected timelines and open a window through the astral veil - through which the future can be seen. The outcomes appear as implanted “memories” in the mind of the user, who can then “see” the future outcome of a chain of causal events as though they are recalling something they had already experienced.
The relic has a history of being passed down through a long chain of tyrannical rulers who have used the powers of the bone to forecast the outcome of military battles and political upheavals. It was especially useful in the hands of despots and oppressors who used it only for personal gain and securing their continuing authoritarian power.
While the bone could potentially be used to advance humanity and create a more just and peaceful world, instead it has passed the eons in the hands of simple minded evildoers who use it instead for personal gain and power over others. Some legends say that it was always meant to serve only the needs of its most selfish and hateful masters, but that one day it will fall into the possession of someone who will make great peace with it and vanquish evil from the Earth.
Nazilic scholars say that the relic has existed through multiple iterations of the great cycle, and is fiercely guarded by those in power who hold it, preventing it from landing in the hands of the one who will use it for the goodly benefit of all humankind. Many of these despotic leaders have insisted they be buried with the artifact, being unwilling to part with it even in death, but it has been dug up and robbed from their graves each and every time.
Nazilic monks believe it is their destiny to finally possess the bone, and that it will play a role in the final dissolution of the shining one by falling into the hands of one who shall rise from amongst their own ranks. So far, however, they have not been successful in obtaining it through several iterations of the great cycle.
Marginalia
Annotation 04-16A: The Heresy of Certainty
The Bone does not make tyrants; it merely finds them.
This has been argued many times.
A man who cannot tolerate uncertainty will eventually seek an instrument with which uncertainty may be destroyed. The Bone appears to provide one.
But the future shown by the Bone is not a command, it is an outcome.
This distinction is often lost upon rulers.
The tyrant sees tomorrow's rebellion and orders it crushed today. Seeing tomorrow's assassin, the tyrant kills him preemptively. He sees tomorrow's enemy and makes war upon him before the enemy has become an enemy.
Thus the future becomes the cause of itself.
The prophet sees what will happen, the ruler acts to prevent it. The act becomes the reason it happens.
The Bone therefore, may not reveal destiny; it may instead reveal the consequences of believing in destiny.
Annotation 04-16C: The Bone and the Grave
Perhaps the most curious feature of the Bone is that rulers always seem to bury it.
They know they are dying, and they know the Bone has outlived its previous masters. They know it will be taken from them.
Still they place it beneath their own bodies.
This is not rational behavior; it is possession carried beyond usefulness.
The ruler no longer desires knowledge, but ownership of knowledge.
Perhaps this is why the Bone is always recovered. Perhaps the dead cannot keep what the living still require.
Nazilic scholars have proposed that the repeated thefts from royal graves are not merely acts of grave robbery. They may be corrections. The cycle removes the Bone from the hands of those who have mistaken foresight for wisdom.
One Bell annotation adds a final observation:
“The Bone has never belonged to the powerful. They have merely been the latest to lose it.”
Annotation 04-16D: The Custodian Who Sees Beyond Victory
The Bone has belonged to kings, then emperors, then presidents. Then, men who called themselves neither.
Each believed the same thing: that knowledge would make him safe.
Each was wrong.
The old prophecy does not speak of a king taking the Bone; it speaks of a custodian. This distinction is preserved carefully.
The custodian does not ask, "How do I win?"
He asks, "What happens after winning?
This is the meaning of seeing beyond victory.
A battle may be won, and the victory may create a war. The war may create a tyrant. The tyrant may create the rebellion. The rebellion may create the conditions by which the next cycle begins. The Bone reveals the first event very easily, but wisdom begins with the last.
Nazilic monks therefore believe that the one who finally possesses the Bone will not use it to predict the future, they will use it to understand consequence.
Some claim this custodian will arise from within the monastic orders and will use the Bone in the final dissolution of the Shining One.
No such custodian has yet appeared.
Or so the records say.