I personally did not want to write about this on Christmas Day itself – obviously – but here goes: Reuters reports that Islamic State decided back in January of this year that it was acceptable to remove ‘infidel’ organs and transplant them into what Islamic State would define as ‘Muslim’ ones. Scare quotes used there because Islamic State’s definition of ‘infidel’ is as broad as its definition of ‘Muslim’ is narrow; there’s a reason why I prefer to use the term ‘cultist’ when referring to those people. It cuts down on the confusion.

Now I should note that, contra the reports, it doesn’t necessarily follow that IS cultists are selling the organs. Or, indeed, that they have the facilities to do wholesale ‘organlegging.’ We hopefully would have heard about this by now if there was an uptick in sold organs coming out of we-can-barely-still-call-them-Iraq-and-Syria. But in a way it doesn’t matter; the best-case scenario is still remarkably horrid. If you were ever morbidly curious of what we roleplaying geeks would call a Lawful Evil kingdom would look like, look no further than Islamic State. People doing vicious, nasty things because they want to do them, only they’re organized and methodical about it. As you can see, it’s a pretty much literally unholy combination.

But in good news, ‘infidels’ (read: Iraqi Sunni Muslims) are on the verge of prying out the last cultist holdouts in Ramadi*.  Once that city is liberated, then all that’s left is for the ‘infidels’ (read: everybody else in Iraq, but probably mostly the Kurds**) to eliminate Islamic State in Mosul and that should be mostly it for organized cultist activity in ‘Iraq.’  And not a moment too soon, either.  Living in a world that can spawn Conan-esque apocalyptic death cults is remarkably unpleasant; I’m personally done with that and I expect that the rest of you are, too.

Moe Lane

*Do not expect there to be many prisoners taken in the final push. Take that observation any way that you like.

**Do not expect the Kurdish regional government to ever really leave Mosul once they’ve taken it, it.