Looks like some random 13 year old boys came on the property after the ladies fled for their safety and wrote some "edgy" shit on the blackboard to upset the squares.
I'm mindful that there's frequently line diagrams of cave paintings and the like when being researched and thus
Ideograms Of The Tranch: Structure And Analysis
The Westcliffe site has been subject of much scholarly debate since its discovery in the early 2020s. Once such recent finding is the proliferation of wall markings found within the what is believed to be the main habitation space for Palace Eunuchs within the historic Tranch complex ("The Dome"). The predominate focus on this review is the "blackboard wall" found on the ground floor.
Although the crude penmanship, repetitive ideograms and paucity of spelling and grammar may point towards the presence of children at the Tranch - a theory that does help explain the various play artifacts found within the site - scholarly consensus does agree that the residents were most likely exclusively adults. The majority of markings on the blackboard wall appear to come from Late Era Tranch inhabitants, during the fabled "Final Collapse" (Earl et al, 2023).
The bottom left quadrant features a formalised grid pattern that is suggestive of some sort of code - the author hypothesises that this may have represented a rudimentary organisational structure used during the Early-Middle Era for allocation of tasks, although at this time, there is no evidence for such a developed hierarchical culture anywhere within the complex.
Several repeated ideograms can be noted on the board and throughout various areas of The Dome; these include
Fig 1A - The "Anarchist" symbol, denoting lack of formalised hierarchy
Fig 1B - The "Egalitarian" symbol, denoting adherence to the belief in equality for all
Fig 1C - A variant on the "International Squatter's Symbol", encased in a heart, typically used to denote a building that is being illegally occupied by non-residents
Fig 1D - The "Octaris", "Star Of Discord", or "Arrows of Chaos", typically denoting either occultism, chaos worship or insurrectionist anarchism
Fig 1E - An adaptation of "Born To Die", an absurdist method of communicating messages
The reliance on these symbols speaks to the lack of concrete identity in the inhabitants of the Late Era Tranch, the repetition perhaps functioning as a meditative exercise to distract from the impending failure of the site or as a crude attempt to invoke protection from the outside world. We see similar use of sigils in other archaeological sites such as Troonblinka. Indeed as
@clipartfan92 (2023) observes, the "RIP TORT STOP COP CITY" mantra is likely a memorial to Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, an anarchist folk hero who died while trying to occupy an abandoned prison, to stop police from building a training centre, further cementing the Squatters as tying their identity to a vague contrarian/anti-society impulse.
There are however some eccentric sigils that appear to have been created by this late stage culture - the repeated use of a stylised eye (
Fig 1E) and skull (
Fig 1D). The Octaris, eye and skull sigils tie in with inscriptions across the site - admonishments to murder and eat law enforcement officers ("TGIRLS EAT COPS") and homosexuals ("KILL TWINKS") the exhortations to destroy society ("END CIV", the depiction of a robot impaled by an arrow possibly denoting ludditism) and the persistent graffiti indicating a fetishisation of mortality ("Blessed is the match consumed in kindling the flame", "Praise the dead") point towards a continuity in worship on the site and a persistence in the previously established death cult; the Middle Era tranch was notable for the amount of effort that had gone into destroying the agricultural use of the site and subject to large scale animal sacrifice (Alpaca et al, 2022).
Whilst star and moon motifs (
Fig 1E) do appear several times within the complex and it has been theorised that this may represent a breakaway cult of moon worshippers, it is likely these are just crude attempts at naturalistic depictions, tying in with what are believed to be trees in the upper left quadrant of the blackboard. There are vague mentions of "rewilding" and this may represent a belief between Late Era tranchers that the destruction of society and large scale deaths will promote some sort of hypothetical-Eden; a belief we know today to be amusingly short sighted, as the denizens showed significant reliance on the society and technologies they claimed to hate.
Part of the board contains a list of prohibitions on sexual activity - "No Sucking, No Fucking" - and masturbation ("No gooning allowed") and this meshes with instructions elsewhere to "destroy gender". This would again show some sense of continuity with the Middle Era Tranch and the ritualised castrations that were undertaken, deepening the destruction of sexual capacity by outlawing it completely. However the author notes that this is more likely to be a satirical damnatio memoriae, overwriting the previous house rules and mocking the perceived anti-hedonistic stance of the Early Era previous emperor ("Fat Paul") - described in contemporary legends as attempting to crack down on using the then-resident cult as a "dating service" before fleeing with some sort of mythical bird-robot creature. Certainly the continued use of "T4T", indicative of the pseudo-courtship rituals conducted between the Palace Eunuchs, and the clearly ironic "clean up after yourself" would support this conclusion.
Overall, while opportunities for continued exploration of the Westcliffe site are limited, the recent discovery of the ritual markings has proven to be incisive. It does appear the previous collapse myth of hostile invaders was unfounded owing to the continuation of worship practices across the site, and the Late Era "squatters" were most likely welcomed in by the remnants of the Palace Eunuchs during the very last days of the Middle Era before the complex degenerated completely.
