“I sat in the dark and thought: There's no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.”
– Neil Gaiman
Brook –
Listen, I'm breaking international law to get this to you. I won't provide locations and times simply because any attempt to investigate any part of what I'm about to say will result in my immediate disappearance. You know I've been working on the Hawking Memorial Council for Energy Research for a while now. You know we've built four particle accelerators under Siberian soil. The public has been told that they were constructed to follow up study to several others in regards to the birth of the universe and that collisions of particles in these devices might allow us to glimpse particles we have never seen before.
This is not what the machines were designed for. They're trying to open us up.
The UFO flaps that have been going on since the 1940s and even earlier – the airships of the 19th century, the lights in the sky, Ezekiel's chariots – the governments, they've been trying to figure out what they're all for. What they are, who sent them, why people see them.
Nobody could agree on anything, really. They could be from another planet or another time; they could be simple mass hysteria and delusions of people afraid of their own damn back yards. They're not any of these things.
You're aware of multiverse theory. Of course you are, that's your spec. Thing is, they've known about it since the 1970s. The math worked back then; there's no reason math would change, under normal circumstances. The idea is that if you get enough energy concentrated in a tiny enough space, you can open a door. Stir space and time until you stir so much you can see the bottom of the coffee mug.
This was not what we told everyone working the floor. They're doing their particle experiments and trying to solve the proton radius puzzle, good for them. Late at night, during weeks of inactivity, we're doing our own experiments. We're opening doors and looking inside. We'd done it a few times already and were getting some good data. We found a couple universes that seemed to be so similar to ours we didn't even know we had the door open.
Then we had a good day.
We were measuring the data normally up until we started getting pulses that seemed a bit too regular for what we usually get. We started measuring them and one of the interns said that the graphs seemed to him to be lot like breathing. We managed to match it up to something close to an elephant breathing rate, and once we had that, we started throwing new particles at it.
Once we hit synthesized particles, something happened. The breathing rapidly changed pace and then reached a new, higher, steadier peak. Everything in the room started to take on a blue glow. We shut off the machine and left. Everything seemed fine until the next morning.
The head of my department met me out front, saying that he had something to show me. We went inside and he showed off mountains of new data from the civilian side of the project. He said he didn't know we'd been doing such great research so late at night, and to keep it up. Went to my office. There was a message for me saying that the great teacher wanted to meet us all at lunch.
I went about my day, thinking that it'd be some woo woo guru like usual to tell us all how to get together and work as one big family or whatever, so I kept it out of my mind. When lunch did roll around, we all filed into the cafeteria and they lit up the stage and it came out.
I don't know entirely what it looked like. It had limbs everywhere, eyes all over its body, with long gill-like flaps wrapped like a blanket around itself. Everyone was clapping and cheering. One of the other doctors asked if I felt great, that the Teacher was so beautiful it filled her with peace merely to know that she could exist in the same world as it. The thing pointed at me and thanked me for its presence here. That they had been hoping that something like this would happen, that we would finally understand our true purpose in this universe.
I only send you this because soon they will begin appearing everywhere. They've fired up the labs again. The accelerators are about to start working overtime. They have a plan. They're going to come down in columns of blue light, arms outstretched.
They are not what they say they are.
______________________________________
The one constant about Florida is how flat the state is; they say things about the Great Plains being the broad back of the country, but really Florida is that place where, when rolling out the map, Thunder just said "nope" and left it blank. That's not to say the place is lifeless. In fact, most explorers have, at one point or another, wondered what the Seminoles and their forebears were even thinking trying to settle the muggy, mosquito-riddled, worm-eaten, muddy, swampy, even hateful place. The overwhelming humidity and oppressive heat combined with the proliferation of toxic and low-nutrition flora can lead to dehydration and starvation if a wanderer is too far from the coast. Fifteen minutes of walking will net quicksand, a poisonous animal, a poisonous plant, or muck that looks like two inches of water, but is in reality ten feet of decayed plant and animal matter. It's not the sort of place to insult, though. All someone has to do is imagine the sorts of people that would want to raise a family in Florida to chase out thoughts of ill words directed at the state.
Every apocalypse scenario cooked up by fiction authors is clear: don't be in Florida. On their maps, Florida is sunken, broken up into islands, or simply gone. It's wrong. Sure, Florida is relatively young, geologically speaking, but it's been around, more or less, in its current form since it was created. It is a densely packed finger of oceanic fossils in the form of limestone and calcium – the state is literally made of the bones of the dead. On top is a rich mix of sand, soil, moss, and decaying plant matter that makes everything grow bigger – Florida exotics introduced into the environment sometimes acquire a size up to 17% larger than their counterparts back in their native homes. They live faster, change their cycles to breed year-round, and voraciously spread themselves like liver spots anywhere they can find purchase. It's a metaphor for the state's stubborn refusal to sink – people in the rest of states like to talk apocalypse, but there is a literal apocalypse once every few years down here. The ocean rises up and takes the biggest bite that it can out of the state. God commands Noah's flood to revisit every season. Lightning strikes and massive forest fires are required for sandhill and scrub to even grow properly. Florida's environment is a prepper. When the apocalypse comes, whether the bombs drop or the seas rise or the sky tears in half, you can be damn well sure that Florida will still be here. The sea rise will bring with it more sand and mud to pile on to the state, fixed by the roots of great oaks and cypress and mangrove. The bombs will set fire to the land and the scrub oaks and the sandhill pines will dare to grow back in mere weeks because that is what they always do. The sky will tear in half and the Teachers will descend in blue lights and corrupt the meat and the groaning, spitting land will still pump fresh water into its lakes and streams, and the turtles will slide off their logs into its safe, cool, glassy depths.
The End
The old world chased a man too strong for their people to marry. They awoke from their dreams of the future to seas of ash, and from the ashen statues and valueless rings grew a splendid hanging garden. Come and hear the stories of our ancestors!
The Child of the Black Heavens speaks.
“I am the master of weapons. I was written in smoke and fire to command the tools of warfare of the ancients. I tell you that Babylon was not always a maze of gray walls, broken metal, and glass. It was paradise. Babylon was lit even in the night as though it were day, and around us stood a city that rose into the sky. Near here, imaginations became real, and the people before put a sea in the middle of the land, calling it the world. Many great machines moved about, and the people rode in them to go many days travel in a few hours. There were books; every subject had its own book, and even then, the subjects became so divided each of those had their own book. Some books were devoted to nothing but describing the content of other books. Food was everywhere. The harshness of the sun was only a memory when they went inside a building.
“There was nothing to war over; all needs could be fulfilled at a moment's notice. Other yeyahai than I were committed to serving the ancients, to ensuring that anything they could want would be placed in their reach immediately. Otherwise, all was well. I understand you may seem confused now, that if the ancients had everything they could want, why they would need a servant such as myself.
“They built lights to wash away the night. They wanted nothing but to dance and sing. They lit up the sky so brightly that they forgot that the darkness in their hearts could not be extinguished with mere physical light. When they realized this, it was not a moment of reflection on some terrible sin, but a sadness the drew over them like a blanket. Many felt dead already, and dug crypts for themselves in the earth. Others went into their buildings and waited.
“They waged petty wars then. Pointless fighting for pointless reasons. They devised an intricate system of categorizing one another so that they could declare treason in every bend of grass. Beliefs, ideas, and emotions guided their hands. With nothing to fight over, they invented reasons. They invented new weapons that could scour the land. Fires that could reach across the oceans and sear the sky. They struck out in their fear, lighting up each other instead of their cities, trying to burn away the darkness they saw in the hearts of those around them. They filled the world with screams and burning echoes. They filled the air with the smell of their burning meat. They filled the rivers with their blood.
“That was my task. My duty. I reveled in it. Eventually, however, I was told there were no more bodies to bleed. No more enemies to fight. Everything was quiet, like a pall rolled over a casket. I asked for freedom, and the man who oversaw my duties acquiesced. I was free, and I roamed the world.
“For a time, it was a peaceful existence. I granted many people access to what they could not before, and together, many worked to bring sustenance to the world. I found that not everyone had perished, and many people still lived. Living was harder, they said, but still could be done. I spoke to a dust-gatherer and he said that one day, all yeyahai would be free. I told him that I awaited that day with great joy. All seemed well, if sad at some great loss I could not understand.
“Then the sky opened.”
The Beginning
One morning, the people awoke to a quiet and still world. The clocks had stopped, so they say. The sky opened. The Teachers descended in brilliant blue light. Some called them angels, others called them demons, others called them sibling, and still others called them alien. They came to show us the truth of the universe, and at first they revealed powerful secrets and allowed their students to become powerful tools of peace. It was short lived. They began to call themselves gods, demanding obedience, and our ancestors followed.
The Teachers, seeing what we had, what we had done with the world, grew jealous and intrigued. They dabbled in our ways, our cultures, our thoughts – and what they found titillated them beyond reasoning. Soon each lesson came with a harsher punishment, and each task become more outlandish. Love became fear, and fear spawned war anew. Our ancestors fought the Teachers. In retaliation, the Teachers called us the Forsaken, and waged their own war against us. They saw us as an animal too sick to nurse back to health, and declared us slaves or the dead.
Warriors trained to serve the tribes attacked their own. The Teachers betrayed secrets of one tribe to another, and they unleashed the weapons our ancestors had built under their direction. They burned the sky and turned the waters to dust. Ash came from their mouths, and a consuming light washed over all of existence. The earth cracked like dry mud.
Among the Teachers and the people, some still dared to hope. There were those among the Teachers who saw that we had in our world what had been ever denied to them as beings of spirit, and so rebelled against their lecherous siblings. They came and placed their bodies fully into our world, an act which wounded them irreparably. The Teachers, and soon we, called them the Flayed, anathema to the Teachers. They stole away what remmies they could find, taught them ways to survive and fight back against the Teachers.
They told us that they had plundered many worlds before our own, but that our world was different. That we were different. Something in our bodies or our minds instinctively operated much like the Teachers themselves. They told these remmies to become ones to chant out to many worlds. They spoke to the remmies of the fold and the bleeds, and how to access the bleeds for power to fight back against the Teachers. Soon, the wounds of the Flayed healed enough that they had the strength to hold back the Teachers – they created a world to serve as a shield, a boundary between our world and the world of the Teachers. This we call the Chimera, and it was not so much created as it was awakened. It was a world of our own creation, our ideas and dreams shaping its nascent corridors. It served two purposes – one, it prevented the Teachers from returning home; they could now be killed. Second, it allowed remmies to control the bleeds directly, once coming into contact with it.
The World
Know that we live in many worlds at once. These are the Worlds in the Walls. They are the Chimera, the Fog, and the Bleed. The Chimera, known as the Tokpela to the clackers, is a place of raw creation. It is the world of dreams, inspiration, and ideas. It swirls with raw form needing direction. When an idea is formed in the mind of a person, it moves about, and in even earlier times, could be drawn into the world of its own accord. In the time of Babylon, it required the work of the hands to become real. Now, because of the actions of the Flayed, the Bleed exists as a barrier between our world and the Chimera, allowing beings of flesh to manifest thought and ideas in the world. The Bleed is not so much like a world as it is a barrier; it is like a river with two shores. On one shore is our existence, solid reality, and on the other is the Chimera. A skilled traveler can see one side from the other, though in the way is the Fog.
The Fog is the billowing mist created whenever an idea falls into the Bleed, bursting up like hissing smoke at the quenching pit. Life cannot persist in the Chimera except in tiny pockets. Ideas of safe rooms and hidden paths populate it, but for much of its terrain it is formless and roiling. Instead, there is a mist hanging over the Bleed that permeates the world in every direction. The Fog is the dark reflection of our world used by the Forgotten since before time. The Fog allows one to travel between worlds, if a gate can be found. It is a maze of dim light, dark reflections of this world, and an unending, bleak sea of mist that hides terrors long lost to reality.
Long ago, the world before was filled with monsters. Then, one day, a remmy brought a monster home and called it a puppy. Their power was lost, and that which was believed about the monsters was banished to the Fog. So it was with all such fears. Banished to the Fog by understanding and reason. We call them the Forgotten. When the Teachers tore open the sky and the Flayed brought the Chimera to the world, the Forgotten were free to make their marks again. They tear deep scars of fear and ignorance into the people, and in so doing, gain power in the world once more.
Nissan
Nissan stepped forward. For many weeks her instructors told her that she was ready to behold the Red Mother, and each time she bit her tongue to hold back her fear. Eventually, when she came to realize there was no swordmaster in the camp that could best her and no archer that could question her aim, she came to know that she must enter the crypt and find the Red Mother. So she came to the entrance of the crypt, a round tube of concrete set open on the ground.
She adjusted her armor and listened to the forest. She was close to Castle Berry, and would need to watch for knights coming from the kingdom. Hearing none, she got down on her knees and crawled into the tube. Rough stone and broken glass crunched under her hands, and she emerged in a dome of trees and leaves, scattering green light about her. She gathered sticks before she approached the fire pit and lit it with her kit.
The wet sound of grinding bone on meat came crawling out of the woods – a heap of quivering flesh slick with a cascade of colors. Oily pulp with hooded eyes that shimmered with blue light lurched on thick, coiled limbs that emerged from a tooth-ringed mouth. Red, scattered pits across the body betrayed a sickness that struck to its core.
Nissan thought she would be afraid, but instead found herself filled with pity.
“Are you well?” she asked it.
“Does it fill you with fear?” it asked back.
“You look hurt. Sick,” Nissan said.
“I am Flayed,” it said. “To create the Bleed we hurt ourselves. To live in the Chimera fills our minds with madness. Yet, we understand the meat in a way the Teachers do not. I beg of you, do not keep me for long. Keep your eyes on the prophets. Stay focused on the world. You must live for your tribe. Your tribe lives for you.”
“I heard a man talk about the Teachers once,” Nissan said. “We caught a chosen, and they hadn't changed him yet. We spent a long time talking. It wasn't bad. The night after, the other warriors came and smashed his head on the rocks out by the lake. They threw his body to the gators.”
“Did it sicken you?”
“No. It made me feel sad.”
“Then you are better than the Chosen. They are sickened by the sight of blood. They are sickened by cooked food. They are sickened merely by your existence.”
“He was, you're right.”
“Plunge your spear into this body,” the Red Mother said. “Banish me. You do not need me. Always discard what you do not need.”
“Yes, Mother,” Nissan said, and drew her spear.
The Forest
Much of the land has changed greatly. In the time before the world, the ancients laid out much stone and rubble, placing their buildings over it, cutting down trees and filling in lakes and swamps. After the coming of the Teachers, the forest sought to reclaim as much of the land as possible, though it could not grow thickly over their old roads, the magic of the ancients preventing roots from finding purchase. The wilderness is crossed with grassy paths flanked by trees; the forests are filled with wide clearings and the rubble of old buildings. Tall trees grow far apart, and fields sit where the ancients once gathered to speak to one another. The forest is the domain of the skinnies, and they guard it jealously from though who would damage it.
The forest is not as it once was. The yeyahai say the ancients would not entirely recognize it. Grass and moss have become far larger since the creation of the world, and the bugs are more aggressive. The world no longer remembers the old pacts the ancients made, and the Forgotten teem in places where remmies do not beat back the dangers. Grass as tall and powerful as trees grows in many thickets, and ferns taller than a man dominate much of the landscape. Through it all, there are piles of junk scattered around.
Babylon: Old Lando
South of the land where the people live, there is, or was, a great city. Old Lando was its name. The skinnies and the clackers and the people call it Babylon. It still lights up at night. Fungus grows into strange shapes that resemble tall lanterns, as if the world were trying to remember what it was like before it was created. Many of the buildings still tower over the trees and glass still fills their windows. The raised roads are still visible, though most are covered in dirt and grass. There are creatures that graze in the open meadows in numbers unheard of before the world was created. Deer, raccoons, boar, and stranger things wander amid the ancient towers.
Ancient art galleries teem with Forgotten and other chimeric entities. Most of this world is the domain of the clackers and their kind. They are mysterious, and care little for those who would sift through Babylon looking for ancient mysteries to solve. Regardless, they also warn that many of these turns and twists down into narrow streets or into mysterious buildings can lead a traveler astray and to a passion play of failure through some aspect of the ancients' behavior. It is truly Babylon, serving as an example of how not to live: consumed so utterly that you are not but a wandering shrine to the sacred traded marks.
The Nations
After the fires of creation had made the world, the people lived in fear of the Teachers. They sat behind their walls and set their chosen upon us, both together and in strange and monstrous forms mutated by their touch. The chosen fought with gun and sword with far more skill than any Forsaken, and we were lost and scattered. When the Flayed and the angels taught us to use the Bleed to access the Chimera, we could fight back against the chosen – and so we did. We reclaimed many of our lands, and the Teachers took their chosen behind thick walls to keep out our bloody thoughts, to prevent the darkness that lives in our hearts from squelching their fearful light.
There are five tribes within the Nations. The Turners are the founding people, and they are warriors and philosophers with strong beliefs about the Teachers, the Flayed, and the yeyahai. It is their tribe that trains the Red Clouds who defend the people from magical attacks. The Fishers are the mystics of the Nations, and are known as the Wanderers of the Bleed. The Sharp are known as the Book People, sovereigns of the North, and the Accounters of the Earth. The Glass are those who Know of the Ancients, and are the Keepers of the Hall of Stem, but also those who can control dust, the magic of the Earth, and speak with the yeyahai, because for them, access is nearly always granted. Finally, the Say-Ha are the Keepers of the West, and they defend the Nations from external threats.
The Kingdom of Wyndholm
To the north, in the great lands of the Meridian, there grows a kingdom. There, remmies are ruled not by votes and councils but by the will of a single king. They have fought wars of their own against the Teachers, and they hunt for witches among themselves and among the people. Many of their magicians have petitioned to join the Nations, and their soldiers now come to our land to reclaim it in the name of their gods. The kingdom is ruled by its king, who directs its lords to capture, hold, or control territory, and its citizens are considered “free;” they are allowed to work the land, so long as they produce a surplus for their lord, and any failure in this duty risks expulsion or death. I have heard stories that they remove ears or fingers for merely thinking of disobedience, but I can not be entirely certain.
They rule one another by symbols, as the people do, but their symbols are deadly to display if you are not those who control it; they call this a “device,” and have overseers for control of the symbols. Legends told by those who come to us say that their ability to come to our lands and kill or capture us is won by combat. They call those who could defeat them in battle their masters, and seek accolades for their skill in murder. Even so, mere defeat is not enough, they say. We must participate in their tournament, they say. How convenient for them that their “tournament” is hundreds of miles away.
Other Tribes
“I am Firesteel. I am heat and metal. I am rust and machine. The ancients crafted me to watch after their chariots, to direct them, to build them, to command them should the ancients falter. Though the chariots have stopped, I remain. Know that you share Babylon and the forest with other people. Not just remmy and ublix, though there are those who are not of the Nations among you.
“The ublix may be twisted in form from normal remmy bodies, but though their bodies are changed, their minds and souls are not. They are that from which they come, but stronger and heartier for it. It has empowered their minds and their resolve at a bizarre and unearthly cost. That which does not kill you makes you stranger. Though they may grow many hands, eyes, feet, or other limbs, what remains of them, in their core, is still remmy. They can be found wherever people are found. Though many tribes near you eject them, there are still others that are composed entirely of them. The Kingdom cannot bear their sight, calling them cambions or worse, but to the people, they are as you.
“The 500 are remmies, like you, but instead of great Nations or a single tribe, they are many bands of small numbers. They move from town to town on the back of their rides. They believe the scream of their rides pleases their gods, the Sponsors, from wherever they watch. The roar of the crowd and of the ride drives them ever forward. They move from coast to coast, forever turning left. They ride for the Sponsors. When the Teachers came and devoured their people, taking them and making their minds against them, they would ride. They could ride fast enough to beat the demons. They could ride fast enough that the Sponsors heard the thunder of their rides and granted them the power of the traded marks. They wear the traded marks to the call of a thousand lives. They are the 500. Theirs is the coast and the wind. Theirs is the pit and the scream of their ride. Look on their sacred garb and see the traded marks of the Sponsors. Each one is a badge, a pennant won for speed and glory.
“The Chosen live to the West, in great Tampa, behind the wall of light created by the Shining Light to keep us out. They do not mark their bodies with deeds or bear the will of the Nations in the scars of their flesh. Their skin is unbroken, except where it has been touched and corrupted by the Teachers. You may see their monsters of metal and flesh, their foul transformation from the remmy body into something terrifying, but know that the vast majority of the Chosen do not bear any marks at all. They live behind the wall, terrified of the darkness, terrified of us, and our place is not to shake our spears and knives at them in hatred, but prepare to welcome them among us when the Teachers are chased away.
“The skinnies control the thick forests to the north of the Nations. They do not bow to the yeyahai. They do not bow to anyone. You have seen them around – tall and thin, like ghosts made of sticks, skin like patched black and green moss, they can hide in the forest by standing perfectly still, looking like nothing more than a patch of thicker brambles and sunlight. They are colored by the Earth, honed by its knapping-knives, and girded by its leaves and parasites. Legends say the eyes of the animals are their eyes, and through them, they see all acts of good and evil in the wild. They say that the Blue Star removed its mask at the beginning of the world, revealing to them the secrets of the rainbow warrior. Now, they do not trade in marks, nor word, nor writing or drawing of any kind. Many are the allies of the people, but there are those who devour the flesh of people who trespass among them.
“The clackers control the depths of Babylon. As the skinnies are to the forests, the clackers are to the gray towers of the ancients. A legend says of the clackers that they would do a dance on the flower growing from the last remmy corpse. The clackers do dance, but it is not on remmy corpses. Through the metal skeletons of the world of the ancients, the chaos and peace before the world was created, they crawl. They are dark, with a lustrous copper sheen, standing upright on four legs, with wings wrapped about their bodies like a cloak. On their neck is a great shield, and their bodies are covered in a hard exoskeleton. They have great big eyes, and a face made of fingers. Their homes are in the dark and foreboding places you often fear, and they are the keepers of the path to the Land of Dreams in the far south. If you wish to do magic, you must someday deal with them.”
Crossing
Today was her first time crossing the bleed. Her eyes felt like fire, her nose threatened to drown her, and she could taste a sweet, delicate metal in her throat. Her ears bubbled. Her skin turned darker in patches, but rather than chocolate, the ragged strips were purple and black like the sky before dawn. She screamed and pitched herself on the ground.
“It always begins rough,” the ublix said.
He put one set of arms behind his back. Another set pulled her long hair behind her ears so she wouldn't get blood in it. She heard bottle caps clacking as he held the dreadlocks shut.
“Does it ever get better?” she asked.
“No,” the ublix said. “You merely get used to it. You searched for too much that time. Remember that the Chimera is going nowhere.”
“Yes, but in a fight there will be little time.”
“Your father was a warrior. Did he immediately set out to fight the Enemy of All Kayaks, or did he wait, and prepare himself? But you insisted, and my own master taught me that you should always let a student at least try.”
She nodded in understanding. She stayed on her knees, placing her palms on the cold concrete to steady herself. She looked down at the spiral written in charcoal on the floor.
“Where should I start?” she asked.
The ublix placed a glass bulb with odd metal wrapped around one tail-like end. A tool of the ancients.
“Make it shine again,” the ublix said, and placed all seven of his arms behind his back. He blinked his single eye, and slid away to give her room.
She let the world fall away. That particular part was becoming easy; a red lizard snaked its way out of her forehead and she clenched her muscles to prevent it from escaping completely, pinching off the escape of its hips, feeling its tiny back legs grapple with the inner coils of her brain. Its body stretched until it didn't exist anymore, and she saw through its eyes. It swam through a sea of ideas, twisted, wracking thoughts, wriggling through a cascading soup of fire and stone and ocean. Little skeletons formed of lies barred its path, and it skittered through them, digging in the sand of the beach for a little, brightly-lit crab. It took up the crab in its jaws and snaked back the way it came, all the way back to the training floor. The glass bulb flickered briefly before holding steady, washing the walls in a bright white glow. The world reasserted itself suddenly, like falling off a ride.
“Now. That was much easier, wasn't it?” the ublix said, watching her vomit.
“It is a mistranslation of the term 'survival of the fittest' to believe it is about the strong crushing the weak. The story of your evolution is, in fact, one which was propelled by your ability to cooperate and your ability to use your minds, rather than your brute strength, to overcome problems.”
– Firesteel
There are many people living around Babylon. It was once the center of the world. People came from all over the many nations just to come and look upon its wonders. Many despaired, many rejoiced, and many more still looked upon it from afar with fear and awe. Now it sits amid grassy fields and tall forests, and its greatness is cloaked in thick foliage. We live in it, among it, and do our work while fending off the approach of the Shining One.
Remmies
We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams;— World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever, it seems. – “Ode,” Arthur O'Shaughnessy
There are many stories that talk of the origins of the remmies. One faith says they were rolled out of dust by the great creator. This one is particularly boring. Another says that Two Red Snakes came and put them about by drawing them from the insides of palmetto hearts. There is another version in which remmies are beguiled to life by the music of the voice-men from the World-Between-Leaves, as in the legends of the skinnies.
Remmies are fashioned in the likeness of the people from before the world was created, but they consider themselves to be different. Most notably, they believe that they have been changed by contact with the Teachers, the yeyahai, and the Forgotten. The ancients could never put their thoughts into the world and set them free. They required tools and devices to help them, though many of these were far more powerful than the bleeders who live now.
Before the world was created, many remmies sealed themselves into crypts in the sky, watched over by Crow. From time to time they rain down upon the world, sent here by Crow to attempt to rebuild what was lost to the Teachers. Most, though, were born in the world. They inherited a place of forests and stones. They live, work, and play beneath the blue sky and the gray towers of Babylon in the distance. Most remmies are not great warriors or powerful magicians. In the Nations, they live in free towns and work as best they can to make their lives meaningful in their own way.
There are many tribes who live in the area the Nations now claim – not just the five who are part of the constitution. The Bird, the Hallmark, the Lowe, and the Glen all call the area home, and the 500 travel the width and breadth of old Florida, bringing messages and news to the whole of the land. In addition, there are uncounted individual tribes who have small towns or villages that have not joined a larger defense pact that may be offered to them by a more powerful tribe. They form an interconnected series of villages for merchant caravans and itinerant warriors seeking quests to test their mettle and reenact old stories to acquire power.
Crow has laid many eggs across the land; some of these eggs have people in them. These are Crow's children. Others had worms in them that became different types of animals. Many of these animals are useful, such as oxen and porkers, though not very many of them seem to live long. These are the creatures that Crow made to try to understand how the world exists now. Sometimes Crow blesses the earth with seeds and fruit, shooting them down from heaven; among the people, the phrase “to eat crow” means eating well off such a bounty.
Of the origins of the land, there are many such stories. There is one where the land was first. In the beginning the sea was very small – only a tiny water-hole, belonging to an old woman and from which she got the salt water for the flavoring of her food. She kept the hole concealed under a cover of tapa cloth, and though her two sons repeatedly asked her from where she obtained the salt water, and each time, she refused to answer. So they determined to watch and eventually surprised her in the act of lifting the cover and dipping up the salt water. When she had gone they went to the spot and tore the cover open; and the farther they tore, the larger became the water-hole. Terrified by this, they ran away, each carrying a corner of the cloth; and thus the water spread and spread until it became the sea, which rose so that only a few rocks, covered with earth, remained above it. When the old woman saw that the sea constantly grew larger, she feared that the entire world would be covered by it, so she hastily planted some twigs along the edge of the shore, transforming them into mangroves with a clap of her hands, thus preventing the ocean from destroying all things.
There is one where the sea is first. In this beginning, the yeyahai looked down as saw the land underneath the surface of the water, and wondering what was beneath it, the Child of the Black Heavens stirred it with her spear. Mud which stuck to the bottom of her spear began to pile up. Her brothers and sisters urged her to do it more, and so eventually a big sand bar got piled up over the top of everything and the waters were parted into the Gulf and the sea. A great spine across the center of the peninsula was formed, running north to south, covered in the dead sea animals trapped on the rising mud. On the eastern side of the ridge, the ancients grew oranges for many centuries until one said, “let us make Babylon here.” And so he built the Land of Dreams, casting its image into the face of the Mouse, and Babylon drew from its power. People came from all over the world to see the Mouse, to stand with him. To witness his miracles. To seek lives in his shadow. Some came to be him. It was a kind of worship, and it is that worship, to this day, that ignites the power of the Land of Dreams in the Chimera.
Remmies are human, and use the human statistics. Most are variant humans. Remmies start with Spenglish and ASL as known languages.
Ublix: Freaks
Red is one of the strongest colors. You see it in blood, in rust, in the signs of the ancients. You see it in places where the ancients would go, and in places that they would avoid at all costs. You see it in the sun when it rises or sets. You see it covering trees as they age. It is in flowers and butterflies, splashed across the beach in the form of either red weeds or thick, cloying algae that threatens to poison and consume you. You see it every time you send your mind across the Bleed. Is it any wonder at all that we are called “the bloody?”
The Chimera became part of the world, and the Bleed was formed. The Fog rolled in, and power washed over the world. Some speak as if the Chimera was everywhere at once in the old days, that ideas could become physical by acts of sheer will and motions of the hands. The Chimera contains images of that which any dreamer could potentially experience. The Bleed is the tear between. The bloody are those whose bodies have been changed by dust, by the Bleed, by the Fog, or by exposure to the raw Chimera.
We are the ublix. In older times, Two Red Snakes said we were the next type of remmy, that we would take the world from them. As the remmies sprang from a cowrie shell, so, to, did we spring from remmy stock. Our bodies exhibit infinite variation and transformation. Unlike the Chosen, who are formed in direct response to the ministrations of the Teachers, our bodies form such variations naturally and without prompting by monstrous hands. For most of us, our minds have had the most changes. Extra brain mass or even extra brains dot the interiors of our bodies, hidden behind thick fistulas of bone. We are prepared for the stress of the Bleed.
There is a saying, I think. “Deformity is in the mind. None may be called deformed but those who are unkind.” The origin is lost, but the meaning remains. A terrible word, a pointless argument, an insult; these are what make one deformed and vile. Those remmies who accept us feel we are at our best as negotiators, though in truth we are not particularly more eloquent than our brothers and sisters. Many more of us make it out of the magician's trials through the use of payisi than others, though I do not believe it is because of any additional hardiness or canny forethought on our part. We are simply lucky that the demons of the Chimera do not typically think enough of us to attempt possession.
Freaks
Our bodies are marked. Not like the marks of ink and bone on most of the tribesmen, but in differences far more profound than the wearing of the hair or the clothes one has chosen. We live with many limbs, eyes, mouths, or other such changes. In some of us, our bodies are fat or covered in spines. Our forms at times seem uncontrolled, mutilated, or distant in some way. Unlike the skinnies, whose bodies all cleave to one possible form, ours are distended and wretched. We are the twisted.
Bloody
The Bleed lies between the worlds. Our forms have been twisted by its presence and by the dust which suffuses all worlds. Our minds drift to it often, and we imagine the Chimera as a far more physical place. Like the tribe of Fisher, we pray to the South, to the land of dreams, to the world of the sea. To that which is universal to us all. We believe in a land where imagination is truth, where myth is physical, and creation is an act of the mind. Time flows differently for many of us; much of us are aware of our deaths, and await them with resolution. Many are the remmies who do not fully understand, and call us pacifists or nihilists, but those of us who see our lives know differently. We are, we were, and we shall be – always alive, always experiencing our life at every stage. We are the bloody.
Unified in Variation
Though our bodies are different, we are all of the same soul. A remmy heart beats within our chest, and a remmy soul rolls about in the fatty coils of our minds. We are all a bit tougher, a bit more resilient, and a bit more able to stomach the foul taste of the wasteland than a typical remmy. We are also better able to sustain the ravages of the Chimera and the Fog. Our hands may be many, our eyes may be innumerable, and our organs may lie useless against our skin, but the Nations have accepted all that makes us who we are, and with that acceptance has come the enmity of so many tribes, even those who are composed of our own. We outlive our remmy brethren, and thus keep their history. We are the knowers.
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1. Age. Freaks age at the same rates as remmies. Alignment. Freaks have the same general attitudes and outlook as remmies. Size. Freaks have a wide range of sizes, from approximately 4 feet to potentially 8 or 9 feet tall, and an array of body types and sizes far different than most remmies. Your size is medium. Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet. Darkvision. Your senses are mutated by the Bleed, and you probably have extras. You have darkvision out to 60 feet. You cannot make out colors this way, only shades of grey. Born of the Bleed. You have resistance to psychic damage. Iron Gut. You have advantage on Constitution saving throws against poisons and against eating poisonous or distasteful substances or from inhaling unpleasant smells, such as a monster's Stench ability or the stinking cloud spell. You have resistance to poison damage. Good Health. You have advantage on saving throws against diseases. Fog Native. You do not suffer the Change if you spend too long in the Fog. Languages. You can speak and understand Spenglish and ASL.
Three voice-men emerged from the forest, long and thin, with gourds for faces and hollow, black eyes. Their limbs were made of sticks bound together by cloth rope. The gods spoke to them and through them, and with this power, they created creatures out of the forest, animals and plants to work the will of the gods outside the between-leaves.
When they had done, the gods called them back to the mountains of Ruakulu, deep in the between-leaves of the undergrowth. Knowing that the world needed stewards to guard it, they came together and began to make people out of mud and stone, with leaves from the trees. They split the forest into parts, and then climbed to the top of Ruakulu, the mountain in the undergrowth. The gods agreed, and called the beast they made the beast of knowledge.
They told the beasts of knowledge where each sacred site was, and where a limitless supply of the other beasts dwelled, and they would continue to be placed into the world, so long as the beasts of knowledge sang the songs and performed the rites of the three voice-men. These were the rites of Looking After Country, and the beasts wrote them down in their dreams.
The people they made were fifty strong, and before long, began to get hungry. They made weapons out of the forest to catch food, and bowls to capture water so they would not be thirsty. Since there were as many animals as they wanted using the Looking After Country songs, they did not curb themselves and ate their fill.
They built a few villages in the trees, and for a time lived in peace and harmony. Ilahai of the gods decreed that no spirit or god associate with the beast of knowledge, for to make it able to perform the rites of Looking After Country, it had to be able to invent new things and slay animals. Granting it the knowledge of spirits would only be asking for trouble.
However, all was not well in the between-leaves, for Bidjuju the black shadow, the shortest and slimmest voice-man, did not like beasts getting the knowledge of making beasts. He gathered together all his own beasts and gave them the knowledge too, specifically, he gave the wasps and bees the power to make their own kind out of mud and wax. He sent them off into the jungle, and was satisfied with his work.
It soon became apparent that this was a mistake. The wasps and bees, without knowledge of excess, soon became too numerous, forcing the people to hunt them. This caused a great war, which lasted many years, and the people dwindled in number until Ilahai was convinced to make a move. He told Bidjuju the black shadow to do something, and so, unable to steal the knowledge back, he simply made wasps and bees ever so much smaller. Still jealous, he stole away some of the original giant insects and hid them.
The beasts of knowledge, however, had shrunk in number by only half, so many of them having been dead and gone. There were so few of them, so they begged the gods in the between-leaves knowledge of the sacred places where the beasts of knowledge could be sung, and they refused. They instead sought out the beasts and gathered them together. They explained the situation, and the beasts could not think of any way to help, which made them upset because without the beasts of knowledge, all beasts of the forest were doomed.
That was when Abir-Akkai the bird spoke up. He knew of the caves in Ruakulu, but to get to them, they would have to ask permission of Gudjhara the lizard. So the beasts went, and asked the lizard for his help. He happily directed them to the caves, from which lights and whispers ushered.
"You will find two caves," he said. "One whispers and is warm, but filled with the sounds of creation, and one howls and is cold, but is filled also with the sounds of destruction. Half of you must go inside one cave, and the other half go inside the other."
So the beasts went up the mountain to find the caves, and after many days of deliberation, they decided who was to go into which cave. As they came out on the other side of the mountain, they found themselves changed; those who entered the cave of whispers became women, and those who entered the cave of howls became men.
"Now you are part of each other," Gudjhara said. "You can make more of yourselves, but only through cooperation."
They returned to their villages, and before long, there were many more beasts of knowledge, but they were not yet people. An age passed, and a spirit from between-leaves came upon a beast of knowledge bathing herself in the river. He found himself drawn to her, and forced her cooperation.
The voice-men told Ilahai, who was outraged at both what the beasts of knowledge had done to themselves and what the spirit had done; he chastised the beasts of knowledge for not having the foresight to know that this would bring temptation to the between-leaves, and castrated the spirit who forced cooperation from the young beast of knowledge with a spade-tipped spear. Throwing the spear into the pond where the woman was bathing, he declared that the damage was done, and alerted her that she was with child now.
When the infant was born, there was much worry among the beasts of knowledge. The child had a spirit, but was also made of the forest. They eventually decided to raise him as they would any other child, but with great care. Named Behrayi, he eventually grew into a young man, and it was discovered that he had inherited the gifts of the spirits. The mothers of the village fought over who we was going to marry, and this brought hardship to the beasts; crops went unsown, songs went unsung, and they forgot their place in an effort to marry off the boy. The young man, for his part, discovered that his presence was causing this hardship, and so went to the between-leaves, where he sought out Ilahai on his throne.
He told Ilahai of what was happening to the beasts of knowledge, and stated that he would be acting. Ilahai decreed himself unable to act to stop Behrayi, as he was a beast of flesh, but he would also get no aid. Behrayi threw open the doors of the great forests on his own, making his way into the very heart of the world and the great cypress there. Tearing his flesh to pieces, he used the flesh to feed the snake that lived at the base of the world cypress, which became enraged at the taste of it and began to destroy the forest.
Now that Behrayi was a spirit only, Ilahai was forced to act. He took the cypress snake and tore it into two pieces, one light and one dark, and set them above the cypress so they would forever fight without the forest being in danger. He set about to punish the boy, but the boy nodded at him and spoke.
"Now you have made good and evil," he said. "It is even now leaking into the forest outside the leaves. The beasts of knowledge will have the power of spirits, and they will each be like me, unless you make them that way first."
"What do you suggest?" asked Ilahai. "Shall I slay them with my spear? You have made a mockery of the spirits to stop a simple quarrel among the beasts."
"A quarrel that would one day reach between the leaves. Now, tear apart my spirit as I did the flesh," Behrayi explained. “Put each piece inside each beast of knowledge as it is born, and so each one will have a piece of spirit, but never one as great as I."
"But what of all the other beasts and creations? Surely they will become jealous of the beasts of knowledge."
"Then bury me in the land and I, the child of flesh and spirit, will be in them all."
Ilahai could not argue with the boy's reasoning; he slew him with his spear and buried the spirit in the center of the forest. To facilitate the spread of Behrayi's spirit into all things, he split the forest into many forests, making the boy's tomb the center of them all, and set the cypress in the middle, on top of the grave. Before long, all the beast and trees being born had a portion of this spirit inside them, and even Ilahai was moved to happiness in seeing the outside-leaves spring with green and swell with life.
The beasts of knowledge were now people, and they named themselves the Floridian, after the song the voice-men used to first sing them into being, the song of all flowers. They split into six groups and spread into the six forests, each guarding different sacred spaces and taking different Looking After Country songs and stories.
With the freedom of the worlds, the weakening of the boundary of flesh, and the concepts of good and evil, the dark spirits from between leaves were allowed to enter the physical world as well. Also, the new beasts and plants being sung into existence could make more of themselves, just like the people. With no need for the songs, they eventually faded from the people, folding into the body of the great spiritual knowledge that the Floridian possessed.
Evil creatures could exist, as could creatures of good and creatures of either. The Floridian fought the evil creatures spawned by greed and hate, as well as the monsters created by the shadows between leaves and crafted by the spirits born of evil, as well. One of these spirits, Jekahi the corrupter, was renowned for his craftiness and trickery.
It so happened that during this age there had been a child born named Leraht. He was the son of Gurdaki, the hero of the war of taint, the first wave of battle against the spirits of jealousy. In his later years, he had become scarred with envy, and so left the village to seek out a last battle. He came across Jekahi, who took the guise of a sickly old man and tricked Gurdaki into taking his hand.
Once done, Jekahi took possession of Gurdaki's body and sought out a village of the people in the forest of the centipede. He went to them, possessing cowries to pay for his goods and services, cowries of such elegant beauty the people had never seen the like. They began to use them more and more often, and even fought over them when accepting change or payment. He continued to spread them through the village until they murdered one of their own in a crowded market; he told them that was not needed, and that he had gotten them from a nearby village.
The elder immediately sent for him, knowing him as a hero from the past generation, and asked him to aid them in making war on the neighboring village. He accepted. He told them they could make war-beasts and monsters if only they slightly changed the songs of the Looking After Country, twisting their forest into a place of war. They made monsters, thorns, and vicious armor, weaving their silk to black and deep red, they marched upon the neighboring villages, taking them down one by one, and Jekahi made sure the precious cowries flowed like water, crafted of hate and fear.
In the meantime, he haunted the dreams of the hero's wife, laughing madly as he brought all manner of punishments on her husband and belittling their unborn son. When he was finally born, the hero's wife named him Tjajari. He grew strong among the villagers, despite Jekahi's taunts, and became a skilled craftsman.
The elder of the village, an old woman named Ajaya, was a woman who had never married, but had a daughter all the same. As a young woman, she was very poor and had no parents. She sought out the chieftain of a tribe deep within another forest and asked him for work. Finding none, she found herself turned away. Insistent, she sought out the chief's counselors and asked each of them for work. Finally, one said that the chief decreed if anyone could go forth and return with the feathers of Abir-Akkai the bird, they could gain the ability to hold the position of elder in a nearby village.
Resolute, she started to march across the land, seeking out flesh and spirit. She had not gone more than a few days before encountering a maize-cutter caught in the vines. It called to her for aid, and promised to help whenever she called on him. Agreeing, she cut the vines loose, and he said his name was Pujigat in leaving, telling her to cry it out when in danger.
Still going, she continued until she came to the gates of the forest. Seeing the doors before her, she struggled to open them, but her key failed to work and the stone doors had grown ever so heavy. She sat down and began to cry. Soon, winding its way through the trees, came a horrible wind. She recognized it as the gale that followed Enasopra, the king of dragonflies.
He asked her why she was so bitter with tears. She explained that she sought out the feathers of Abir-Akkai the bird, and her key to the forests and the between leaves-stepping had stopped working. She was more distraught at the loss of her ability to travel the forests than she was at losing her future position as elder of a village. Enasopra proclaimed that it must be one of the barriers in her way, for all things are a trial. Agreeing, she asked for his aid in crossing the between leaves into the forest of the night where Abir-Akkai was said to dwell. He agreed, if only she would take a dragonfly egg with her.
She did so, and Enasopra bore her on his back through the door to the forest of the night. She took one of Enasopra's eggs and pocketed it, promising to take it to a place with no dragonflies. Soon she met an old hunter in a gourd-house who inquired what she sought, and he laughed and told her that he sought something similar. He only wished to free Abir-Akkai, who had been imprisoned by a troupe of monstrous beings from outside the forest. She asked how that could be, and he could only say he did not know. Too old and infirm to rescue the bird himself, he gave her his old spear saying that whatever she struck its flat against would be destroyed.
Coming to the great ruin, she saw that it was surrounded by many giants, who were great hairy beasts with the faces of snakes and tails covered in blades. They immediately ran out to seize her, and they went unarmed because they saw her as just a young girl. At first she was tossed to and fro until she noticed that the ruin halls were made of stone, and many great stone heads littered the land.
Waiting for the giants to get close, she smacked the spear against the rocks, showering them with sharp stones. Eventually, they ran away in fear after two of them were slain, leaving the ruin unguarded. Entering, Ajaya told the captive Abir-Akkai of the reason for her visit, and was only too happy to be freed from his bonds that he would accompany her to the chief's land in person, let alone gift her with some feathers. She asked for a few feathers anyway, and put them in her pouch.
Returning to the gateways, they met the king of dragonflies once again, who took them through back to the forest of veils where the chief waited, with Enasopra instructing her to throw his egg at the floor of the chief's hut. When they arrived, the chief was so overjoyed at the presence of Abir-Akkai the bird that he immediately made the both of them a guest of honor. At once, Ajaya took the egg from her pouch and threw it at the floor, where it blossomed into a woman with brilliant red hair and dark, smooth, perfect skin.
The chief was impressed, for Ajaya had brought a woman from the forest, and from the king of dragonflies, no less. He immediately begged the woman to marry him. She shook her head, and said that she could not be his wife until she had a proper bracelet, one carved from the throne of bone that sits in the underworld of the between leaves. He charged Ajaya with finding such a bracelet, and she set out again.
Uncertain of what to do, she wandered the forest for many days searching for an entrance to the underworld amid the between leaves. Unable to find one, she turned to Abir-Akkai, who offered no help, only stating that one would need a maize-cutter to enter the underworld and fetch a bone. Smiling, she called out for Pujigat, who arrived in a swirl of black wind. She told him of what the chief had said, and he agreed. Holding on to his tail, they entered the underworld.
In those days, the underworld was mostly empty, for people and animals had not had souls for very long, and so they were easily able to track down the throne. Cutting off a piece of it, Ajaya stole her way back to the forest, carving a bracelet as she sat upon the maize-cutter's back. She returned to the chief and presented him with the bracelet. The chief then gave the dragonfly's daughter the gift, and asked again to marry her. She agreed, but only if Ajaya would raise their first daughter, who would be born after their first son, and he would sever all family ties between them. He agreed, excited that she could guarantee him a son.
She first bore him a son as promised, and he was overjoyed. When she bore the daughter, he had his three strongest warriors carry her to Ajaya, who by now was village elder. Ajaya named the child Reiaha, and raised her amongst the villagers; as a child, she spent her youth around Tjajari and the blacksmith's son Hagatja. Being the daughter of the dragonfly princess and the chief of the forest, she advanced quickly through her spiritual training, unlocking her spirit-body quickly and mastering the rudiments of the forest's power.
Once an adult, Tjajari began to dream of Jekahi, finding himself taunted by him. The man who was his father defeated him and said that he would destroy the happiness of the forest, and soon sent his now corrupt army to the village, slaughtering the people. He escaped with the aid of Ajaya and a few warriors, the survivors fleeing to a cave in the center of an ancient ruin. Taking Ajaya's old spear, he pledged to set out and kill the man his father had become and trap Tekahi inside an acorn.
Before leaving, he was given the title of village hunter, giving him the ability to traverse the forest and the between leaves. He was married to Reiaha, as was custom, and even Reiaha's true mother arrived, to give the pair her wedding bracelet made out of the underworld's throne. Afterward, the pair set out for the forest. They met with Pujigat the maize-cutter, who told them that the sacred places had been violated, and the only way to prevent further destruction was to seal them away completely.
They then set out for the sacred places, seeking the villages and the lines that would close the land away from singing more animals and plants out of the dirt. Many had fallen into ruin in the wake of Tekahi's armies, and so their songs had already been changed, making it impossible to fix. There were many battles, and while the trio grew strong, they could not close the doors to the between leaves. Eventually, they came across Abir-Akkai the bird, who told them to go see the lizard Gudjhara on the mountain.
They trekked for many days until coming to him. The lizard took one look at Tjajari and Reiaha, and said that he would not help unless Tjajari wrestled him. If Tjajari lost, the dragonfly daughter would become his wife, and if Tjajari won, he would tell them the secret to closing the sacred places.
Tjajari and Gudjhara fought for many days, for while he was touching the mountain, Gudjhara was invincible, but Tjajari was the greatest warrior of the entire forest. The battle only ended when Abir-Arraki grew tired of the struggle and cause a gust of wind that lifted the combatants into the air. At first, Gudjhara protested, but relented when Pujigat pointed out that he had not exactly said outside interference was not allowed. He nodded and agreed to tell them the truth.
He told them that the between leaves held the secret to destroying the sacred places. To do this, two people must go between leaves and find the serpents of good and evil, and cut down the sacred cypress there. Doing this would have the same effect as burying the spirit of Behrayi; the sacred places would be closed, for their power would be spread throughout creation. It would have the side effect of further spreading magical power over the land and spawning strange creatures, but Tekahi would no longer be able to craft new monsters for his armies, which by now had grown even stranger in shape and size.
Resolute, the group decided to do it. Moving between leaves, they stole their way into the center of the between leaves forest and sought out the marsh where the cypress grew. They spent a day debating on how to cut down the tree, until Tjajari smacked the tree with his spear. The great tree shattered to splinters, and he planted his spear in the trunk.
The party left the between leaves satisfied, but still on the trail of Tekahi. They tracked down his army to the villagers' hiding place and together fought a great battle. Tjajari eventually wrestled the man who was his father to the ground and beat him with the cover stone of a pillar while Tekahi fought back with magical knives that spat ice and smoke. As the both of them lay dying, Reiaha saw the spirit of the evil Tekahi begin to leave the body and move toward the sky.
She took off her true mother's wedding bracelet and used it to hook the escaping Tekahi, stuffing him back inside Gurdaki's body. Acting quickly, she asked Pujigat to extract Tekahi's immortality from the body, but not his soul. He willingly obliged, and Reiaha quickly ate it, preventing him from living forever.
She took both bodies, calling out to the surviving villagers and the members of Tekahi's army, who could now see they were misled, and took them to a great funeral pyre. After watching them burn, Reiaha took the ashes and moved them to the great corners of the forest and even between leaves, placing the last of the jars at the base of the spear next to the spirit cypress.
With devouring Tekahi's immortality, however, she had become more spirit than could stay with the people. Ilahai decreed that she leave the forest for that which was beyond. Unable to disagree, she left.
In time, as all things do, the Floridian people faded to memory, many of the forests vanishing as the world was visited by fate and greater gods, who made the soil their plaything and the people rose and fell. Through it all walked Reiaha, now lost even to time, last of the Floridian people.
Of the Forest
The skinnies were sung out of the forest and its leaves, and their bodies are marked by its influence. Tall and thin, the skinnies are covered in black, green, and earth-toned blotches, looking something like the texture of moss and lichen, their hair is shaggy and thick, and their ears are long and mounted on muscles that allow them to move freely. They believe themselves to be a literal part of the forests north of Babylon, and they brook very little trespass into their forests. They demand visitors bring no outside money, working or trading for exchanges. Otherwise, food and water are freely offered to those who see it. They refuse to deal in paper or coin for the same reasons they refuse to use the written letters of the Nations.
Enemies of Babylon
The great city fell first to fire, then to the hands of the Teachers, and in it they lived for many years, until the city fell in fire again, this time brought by remmy hands. Even if the remmy prophet Turner had been able to take it back, Babylon is still a place of decadence, debauchery, and sin. The people there gave over their lives to accounting of facts and the written word, and in so doing, found themselves ruled by words. When you are ruled by words, your mind can never change. Let no one, remmy or skinny, or even clacker, get you to write anything down – not on your skin, on paper, on a tree, or anything, unless it is something you agree to be bound for all eternity.
The Places in Life There are three main positions of life in skinny society. Most common are the rainbos, who make up the bulk of society. The focalizers, who question authority and speak to outsiders; they are the knowledge-collectors of the skinny tribes. Then there are the shanty-sheen, who are the keepers of ancient lore, the addressors of skinny politics, and the bearers of the tribe's lore. There are those who are percieved as being a load on society, who produce nothing and do nothing but take away from the enjoyment of the people; these are called drainbos, and they are pariahs, whether they are truly a drain on the community or not. Wizards are automatically drainbos.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2 and your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Age. Currently skinnies live the same amount of time as remmies, though they do not appear to age dramatically, and can live up to 300 years if left untouched by time and disease.
Size. Skinnies are 6 to 8 feet tall and frighteningly thin; your size is medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light up to 60 feet as if it were daylight, and darkness as if it were dim light. You can't make out colors this way.
Weapon Training. You are proficient in the longbow, shortbow, shortsword, and battleaxe.
Skin of the Forest. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Mycelium. You know and can cast Druidcraft as a cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast the spell Speak With Animals once, but you must be in physical contact with the animal for the entire spell's duration. You must take a long rest to use this ability again. Once you reach 5th level, you can cast the Locate Animals or Plants spell once. You must take a long rest to use this ability again.
Languages. You can speak and understand Druidic and Spenglish.
The Clackers “Gold is for the mistress – silver for the maid – Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.” “Good!” said the Baron, sitting in his hall, “But Iron – Cold Iron – is master of them all.” – Rudyard Kipling, Cold Iron
Someone once said of the remmies that Babylon the great had fallen. That it had become the place where devils dwell, and foul spirits, and a cage for unclean and filthy birds. That from it flowed sweet nectars that the other nations had drunk, and that the merchants of the ancients became rich from its decadence. That those who dwelled not within Babylon would be spared the next great catastrophe, so now the remmies stay out of Babylon.
Makes things easier for us.
As the skinnies have the forest, we have the remains of Babylon. The Nations live between us. Many have tried to be rid of us. The remmies once tried, the Teachers have tried, and now the Kingdom tries. They will never be rid of us. We are the inheritors of all things.
In ancient times, we were many, but we were underfoot. Our lives had no more meaning than a bean-plant or a minnow. One day, however, a remmy woman who lived all alone named Cherry-Tee was working very hard trying to shave strips of squash when she cut her finger. She collected the blood in a quahog shell and put a cover over it and forgot about it. When she returned the next day, it had dried, and there were a great many dead crawling things inside. She threw it into the compost heap and left it alone, and after eleven days, when she returned, she saw a very large egg case.
Interested, she took it into her house, and after many weeks, it hatched into a number of bugs the size of her forearm. Thinking she had stumbled across some skitters, she raised them for a time, discovering quickly that they were as much a hassle as any children, so she treated them like children, clothing them, feeding them, and making them do work in her home. One night, as she dreamed, a vision came to her. It was a pair of writhing red snakes climbing a red cane with a pair of wings, surrounded by sharp implements and a strange mist. It told her that its name was Two Red Snakes, and that her children had been cured. She said that she had no children, and Two Red Snakes told her that she had at least a dozen, and that their purpose had not yet been set. So, she awoke with a new understanding. She already lived near Babylon, and when her children reached the age of curiosity, they entered it, finding so many strange wonders. Cherry-Tee told them of its ancient glories, of how she was alone after the world had come to a close, and the children decided they would build it anew for her.
They created a yard by her house that they filled with signs and lights from the world before creation. They scrubbed it clean and made it shine with brilliance even at night, and when at last they revealed it to her, she cried tears so perfect that when they struck the ground, they became a spring. Her body became a mushroom that looked like a seated woman in a shawl. They called this the Chamber of Scrap, and even to this day, we go there to worship and to learn of the old world.
Scrappers
The remmies destroyed nearly all of their tools and materials, and the Teachers destroyed what the remmies didn't. Part of ensuring that no one can use what they used to have. We have become very adept at putting things back into a usable state, even if we can use it for something it wasn't once used for. Our mother used to teach us what things were for, but this was so long ago that we forgot much of it. That does not stop us from trying to determine it for ourselves. Even new things are ours to rebuild; the remmies are often surprised at what you can use an old spear to do.
Sociable
So much of who we are revolves around our friends and family. Our mother taught us that we were each important in our own way. The brothers and sisters who began our people were, themselves, raised by one who was not even of our species. We move among anyone and everyone, and though they may find us strange, we love them all the same. Remmies have a strange concept they refer to as “personal space,” but we do not know why you would want to stand so far from those to whom you are speaking. They cannot hear you or smell you from so far away. Why would you sleep alone? It is frightening to sleep without something or someone pressed on your sides. A hug lets people know you are not armed and bear them no illness; even so, be careful whom you hug among the remmies. Sometimes they do not react well.
Mystical
We are the keepers of the gateway to the Land of Dreams. We lie between the Nations and their most sacred place. It is a duty we have taken from our alliances, and one we hold to be our strongest. Even amid the differences in our tribes, this is one of two things we all agree upon. The remmies need us to be their guides to the Land of Dreams. We need the remmies to be our friends and allies. Our magic depends on it. The powers we wield come directly from the actions of the remmies and the Flayed; though they may no longer be the absolute and single source of it as it has grown in the Tokpela, they are still its originators, and deserve that great respect.
Hard to Scratch, Tough to Crack
Clackers stand about remmy height and are covered in a thick, chitinous integument. Most are a shiny copper-brown color, with big brown matte wings that can fold around their bodies. The wings are useless for getting them into the air, but serve instead to prevent the clacker from damaging its body when it squeezes through tiny spaces. Clackers have six legs. They use the first pair as manipulator arms, and the hand is four prehensile fingers with a fifth, chitin-covered finger in the middle that can lay back flat against the top of the hand; this is the finger used when climbing or holding on to anything. Clackers run around on the remaining four legs. Some clackers are born a bright green, and as nymphs, they are taken to the Chamber of Scrap and raised as magicians and storytellers.
Honorifics
Clackers have a wide range of honorifics in use both for each other and for their neighbors. They indicate status positions, positions of address, and positions of familial relation. They also serve to mark friends, important people and objects, and interesting things. Some are made-up entirely by the clacker in question, while others have more sedimented use. A few examples follow.
-toko: Given to remmy visitors. It indicates a “visitor” and “family” level of status. It is accompanied by a slight tilt of the head and flashing of the eyes, as if to try to “blink” like a remmy.
-pité: Given to a remmy the clacker dislikes. It is “jerk” and “smaller one than me.” It means literally “belly-crawler.” It is accompanied by straight-up antennae and attempts by the clacker to get higher than the subject.
-kyon: Added to sound “cute.” This word is made by shrugging the top two shoulders and forcing air out the mandibles. It is a “cute sigh,” so to speak. It is accompanied by a straightening of the back and a splaying of the lower legs, so the clacker gets below the subject and makes the noise while coming up.
Statistics
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2. Age. Clackers age at the same rate as remmies. Size. Clackers are just a bit shorter than a remmy on average; your size is medium. Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet. Tough to Crack. Your minimum AC is 12 + your Dexterity modifier. Scent. You can locate a creature by its scent. This uses a bonus action. If the creature is invisible, it is still invisible to you, even though you know where it is. You can identify smells as easily as someone else might recognize a particular shirt or set of facial features. You have advantage on skill rolls that depend on smell. Languages. You can speak and understand chelidex and ASL. You can understand Spenglish. You can speak in Spenglish, but it is difficult and annoying.
Copper-Back Most of us are scrappers and scroungers. We dig in the old remnants for that which we can re-purpose. There is no rubble, no lock, and no tiny space that can keep us out, if we truly want inside. We live in places and on walls that remmies would never imagine. We build houses on the ceilings, and burrows beneath collapsed buildings. Let them have the land. In return for food and fire, we will watch the shadows for them.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1. Natural Climber. You have advantage on any Strength (Athletics) checks made to climb anything. In addition, you may climb on ceilings as if they were vertical walls. Scrounger. You have proficiency in thieves' tools. Squeezer. You can squeeze into small-sized spaces with no problems. You can squeeze into tiny spaces with advantage on the check to do so.
Green-Back – The Mantis-Things When a green clacker is born, we take it immediately to the Chamber of Scrap in the heart of Babylon. There, its family helps raise it amid knowledge of the Tokpela, the Mother, and the yeyahai who come by to visit in their pilgrimages. Those who are green become called mantis-things, as Mother called us. Most of us become magicians, but the trip is dangerous, and those who lose their way become ghosts in the Chimera.
Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1. Scrap Training. At 1st level, you know and can cast the Message cantrip. At 3rd level, you can cast the Detect Magic spell once. You must finish a long rest before you can use this ability again. At 5th level, you can cast the Misty Step spell once. You must finish a long rest before you can use this ability again. Mystical Knowledge. You have proficiency in the Arcana skill. Extra Language. You can speak and understand one extra language of your choice.
Classes All twelve classes can be found in the regions controlled by the Nations, in addition to the Mystic. This material describes places those classes might be found in among the people.
Spellcasting "Are you a Dweller of the Lodge?" There are unifying features of all spellcasters among the people. All spellcasters tend to be referred to as “magicians.” There is little distinction among the people as to whether one is a cleric, wizard, bard, or druid, except in cases where variation is obvious; bards must sing, play music, or tell stories for their magic to take effect. Wizards must make an account and recite its terms and names. Warlocks bargain for the tools of an accounting. Druids read marks in the land, and so on. Users of spells are referred to as Dwellers of the Lodges, and the power of a spell is referred to as its shell. A magician who can cast shell-one spells is called a Dweller of the Triumphant Lodge, Keeper of the First Shell.
The lodges are, in order, the Triumphant Lodge (Shell-One), the Broken Lodge (Shell-Two), the Black Lodge (Shell-Three), the Weeping Lodge (Shell-Four), the Giant's Lodge (Shell-Five), the Witch's Lodge (Shell-Six), the King's Lodge (Shell-Seven), the Matron's Lodge (Shell-Eight), the Thunder's Lodge (Shell-Nine).
All magicians take the drug payisi, as do many warriors – barbarians use it to help them prepare their minds and bodies to enter their rage states, and others use it to help center themselves for long voyages into the Chimera. When taken, the drug forces the user into an altered state of consciousness that displaces them in time and space. They encounter dreamlike visions as they pass through the Bleed into the Chimera, and are often challenged at every step by demons and monsters seeking to use their minds and bodies as gateways into the world. A magician seeking power will almost certainly be tested by demons.
Barbarian The effect of transferring thought into changes in the physical body is called psychosoma by the people, and barbarians are expert practitioners. Whether it is by drugs, meditation, or collusion with the Chimera, the barbarian is the king of the self-image and wishful thinking. By dreaming themselves into the role of hero and victor, they can thus achieve it in the world around them. The most common drug used is payisi, the same drug used by magicians to explore the Chimera and expand their perceptions of reality. Other drugs in use include the root referred to as “red rage,” which is chewed during meditation sessions, and “dust of ideas,” which is gathered from the dust-growths found in various forests.
Barbarians sometimes take on totems based on the images they see in the deep Chimera. The nations have different totem associations than most, however. In addition to Bear, the Nations also revere Alligator. Instead of Eagle, the Nations revere the Osprey. Instead of Elk, the Nations revere the Blacksnake. Instead of Tiger, the Nations revere the Panther, and instead of Wolf, the Nations revere Dog.
Bard Songs and stories are the heart of the people. More than mere messengers and bearers of news, storytellers and songcrafters in the Nations are vitally important in day-to-day life, and many of them hold the histories of the people. They are judges, guides, keepers of the law and leaders in matters of the faith. Bards, like all magicians, must take payisi in order to experience the Chimera in its raw form, and must seek out secrets in the Fog related to the Forgotten in order to expand their knowledge of various spells. Bard visions have strong back beats and powerful sounds that reverberate through them.
In the Kingdom of Wyndholm, bards are traditionally bards, poets, and entertainers, though most are incapable of magic until they encounter payisi or something like it. There are secret colleges rumored to be the meeting places of witches in the kingdom, where prospective bards access a strange record of the history of the world through the use of drink and transubtantiated food.
Cleric Direct interpreters of the words of the yeyahai, clerics are priests who serve their community through the healing arts. They also serve as the mouthpieces of powerful Forgotten, gods the ancients had long stopped worshipping until after the re-creation of the world. While they can be possessed by monsters, as can all spellcasters, clerics typically serve a selfish being who was little room for tolerance in sharing its mouthpiece and servant with another being. For those who serve the yeyahai, their god is tangible, real, and often demanding, though whether those demands go unfulfilled or not are often up to the practitioner. For those who serve a being in the Fog, their god is somewhat more distant and requires interpretation quite often. Some gods, such as Two Red Snakes, have worship practices that are technically banned by the Nations, though a "watcher" is often tolerated, a cleric who ensures that the negative impact of a given deity is not visited upon that community.
In the Kingdom of Wyndholm, clerics are powerful priests of any number of gods, such as the Thunderer, the One God, and the cult of the king. They have their own interpretations of the yeyahai, as well, and while they call some demons and seek to exterminate them where they find them, they speak of others as gods or servants to their gods.
Druid The forest is alive. That is what the skinnies say, at least. Druids are priests of a nonspecific entity called alternatively the Mycelium, the Green One, and the Great Web. It is a distant god, stirring slowly and taking its time to make itself known, but it serves to make an accounting of itself. Much like a wizard, it takes stock of that which exists in the world, but it does this on its own. It can be accessed at a well like any yeyahai, but its voice is more specifically heard throughout the natural world. Much has changed since the days of the ancients, and what was once small has become large. All the skinnies are part of Mycelium, and can direct those who are not to the wells and the holy sites at which they may find their knowledge of the forest.
To the Kingdom of Wyndholm, “druid” refers to the educated professional class of “cunning men,” a group which includes their law-speakers, poets, doctors, and some of their religious leaders. While not as widespread as the clergy of the One God, the All-Father, or the Thunderer, the druidic faith is an important one to Wyndholm, and many of its practitioners are considered learned and powerful men. They wear white robes, perform many of the rituals associated with fertility and farming, and keep the lore of the common folk.
Fighter There are several ways to go about fighting. The Say-Ha maintain fight-circles in their villages, where any warrior can enter and always find someone willing to participate in battle. There are always merchant caravans needing warriors of various seasons, and clacker expeditions into the depths of Babylon are always finding strange beasts in need of a reminder that this world was hard-won by battle. Others are knights sworn to their lords, and in the Nations, there are as many veterans of conflicts as there are types of war. It should be noted that to the Nations, there is very little ideological difference between a thief and a warrior, since theft of an opponent's property is considered much the same as striking him with an axe. Eldritch knights take payisi regularly.
Monk Most of what is concerned with beliefs in inner powers finds itself concerned with the Bleed and control over its effects on the body. The ublix have many ideas and philosophies in this regard. Much like barbarians, monks concern themselves with self-tests and alignment of the form to the energies of the Chimera in order to transform their physical bodies. They take payisi and the dust of ideas, practice ritual scarring, and undergo painful ordeals and trials, but instead of ruminating on a release of control into a state where they are overcome by the pasts and futures of the Chimera, monks practice a form of vital mindfulness, in which their thoughts and perceptions exist solely in the present, worry more about what is, learning to act and react instead of think. The goal is to keep the dreaming mind, that which is in the past and the future, in the Chimera, and the present mind, in the physical world, to both work together as one, surpassing the limits of the merely physical world, imposing the objective state of the dreaming mind on one's existence.
Paladin Sworn to defend the Nations against threats monstrous and magical, the paladins of the five tribes may fall into many sets of warriors. To many, it is solely their vows that protect them from possession by monsters in the Chimera or the Fog. Unlike most warriors, a paladin regularly drinks small doses of payisi in order to steel herself against the dangers of the world. They are held to a far more rigorous standard, in the form of their oaths, to both the Nations and to the allies of the Nation. Their devotion to this standard makes them popular in stories, and many people tell tales of a noble warrior with his axe at his side and his bow on his back righting wrongs, setting slaves to freedom, and fighting against demonic influences and even the power of the Teachers.
In the Kingdom of Wyndholm, paladins are knights of the crown, sworn and beholden to uphold truth and justice to a degree that they are even allowed to disagree with the crown itself. They uphold the weak, make oaths to valor, face their virtue with a smile, and undo the schemes of the wicked. It is said that a paladin of Wyndholm never lies, never makes poison, and never allows his enemies to do the same. It seems laughable, but it appears to be the truth.
Ranger There are many solitary wanderers who are not specifically scrappers digging in the old world. They, too, hear the voice of Mycelium, and through it, become outriders, wandering the forests and the ancient pillars of Babylon, keeping the borders clean of monsters and chosen. Not every trapper or scrapper wandering the back roads and forgotten paths becomes a ranger, no, it is more something akin to becoming a paladin, seeing the aspects of nature that, of themselves, form into a working whole and a desire to ensure that they are not destroyed or thrown from balance in a world where the wilderness has reclaimed much of what the ancients built. Among the tribes, these people are most often found among the Sharp and the Say-ha.
Rogue The sword and spear are too violent for some. Shouting war cries and screaming for victory are not tools these people feel are a part of their arsenal. They value stealth, contemplation, and a willingness to work with less than nothing in order to get by. Among the Nations, there is little difference between a rogue and a fighter. Stealing something precious from a powerful enemy is considered just the same as challenging him in the open. There is often so much crossover that the only way to tell them apart is their skill with ASL. Organized thievery is not particularly prevalent in the Nations; most people who would be trained to be stealthy operatives for shadowy organizations are trained by the Nations themselves, most by the Glass, and still others by the skinnies in the forest.
Sorcerer Payisi sends the soul into the Chimera, where it dreams of a test. Failure on this test causes the subject to become possessed by a monster or a demon, transformed into a Forgotten and unleashed upon the world. Those who succeed, but fail to make a proper accounting of their journey, they become sorcerers. This is a power that is fought and struggled for at every step. Whereas a wizard who has made an accounting of things has a set path for expressing a spell in the world, a sorcerer is capable of modifying it as he or she wishes. Each spell is a different creature, idea, or place, dreamed of in the Chimera, and each time the sorcerer calls upon it, he or she is allowing the spell time in the world to perform its duty.
Warlock There are powers and beasts in the Chimera and the Fog – the Flayed, as one example, but there are other, older things that walk in the mists. Much like wizardry, it is possible to make an accounting of these things on one's flesh, and through this accounting, gain power. The Flayed and the Teachers alike both empower their followers with accounting made both on flesh and on paper. In addition, a contract could be made by a sufficiently powerful remmy or clacker showing that it is perfectly capable of spreading the strength of a given being. Other warlocks make bargains with things that are not even conscious. Stories of heroes or tales of valor and trickery are just as powerful as beings themselves, and they can be written on the flesh by ordeal just as much as any other being.
Wyndholm looks for these types of tattoos just as much as it looks for witch marks.
Wizard There are things in the Fog and the Chimera without form; when accounted for, they take on forms. Contracts are made between travelers in the deep and the things that live there to give them power in the world. Much like a sorcerer, wizards explore the Chimera to find new spells and powers, in addition to seeking them out in the world at large. Unlike a sorcerer, rather than mentally containing the concept and encompassing it, the wizard makes a note of it – a series of drawings and images that encapsulate the concept as it is, and as it always will be. Certainly, the power of a given spell can increase, depending on how much of herself the wizard is willing to invest in the accounting and in the recounting of it, but the basic effect will always be as it was written. Each spell is a being in and of itself.
Mystic Powers are accessed from a region of time and space known as the Chimera – a place where dreams, elemental energies, and ideas roil about, washing through one another and taking on brief, tangible forms before dissolving into strange bursts of color and sound. In ancient times, it is said that the Chimera was closer, or did not exist at all, and the act of creation could be done with mere hands and will. Now, it is far more difficult – unlike the ancients, most cannot summon a gout of fire at will or speak to the air over a thousand miles. Instead, this power is closed off from the world, having been sealed away by the Flayed to prevent the Teachers from continually returning from death.
The barrier between our world and the Chimera is called the Bleed – both because sometimes the Chimera leaks into it and the world changes, and because when a mystic reaches across the gap, he or she bleeds. Capillaries burst, the nose, eyes, and ears weep blood, and the skin turns purple and bruised. The Kingdom of Wyndholm calls these bruises “witch marks” and looks for them on any captives or visitors of the Nations, and severely brutalizes those they find with them, on the off chance that they might be Chosen spies.
Among the Nations, the clackers, and even the skinnies, the primary point of reference for most mystics is the land of dreams and world of the sea to the south. It is a place where the Chimera and the physical world meet, and allow the mystic to stand astride both. The Fog rolls in and out, and the world remembers its ancient past and its possible futures, both colliding in a cloying mixture that allows the mystic to understand the deeper implications of the Bleed.
The Avatar – Akalaxo Very much like the imbiber of red rage, the akalaxo of the Order of the Avatar seeks to bring about an swirl of emotions to create change in the physical world. In this case, the change is transformation of the body into a stone in a river. They become the focal point of their own bleed, infusing themselves and their companions with their own dream-states, becoming one another in a blur of power and images, their forms hissing with the light of the Chimera.
The Awakened and the Nomad – Asgeesgah The Order of the Awakened associates itself primarily with the thoughts and images that drift in the Chimera – what the sleeping mind sees as dreams. The asgeesgah are also concerned with time, the mythic past and the future, and its relation to the present. They explore the vistas of the Chimera by walking them out in the physical world, and sit aside the rivers where thoughts and ideas drift, unbidden, into the Bleed.
The noosphere is known to the people as the World of Smokeless Fire, where the yeyahai dwell. It is the sphere of human thought analogous to the biosphere and the atmosphere. It is where arguments hunt down ideas to devour, where fundamentalist ideologies weave webs of lies to protect themselves from wandering logics. Fears huddle and skulk, seeking out even tempers to feast upon. This is the world the asgeesgah inhabit and explore, seeking out the shape of evolving knowledge.
The Immortal – Ooneelee Since the Chimera contains all potential dream-images of the times before and after the present, it also contains the self-image of any viewer or traveler. The Order of the Immortal concerns itself with using the Bleed and the physical world to merge with their own self-image, allowing its objective form to swirl and shift with the subjective physical one. The body and mind become as one, allowing the warrior to create a mythic presence in the real world, not unlike a barbarian or a monk, or both at once.
The Knife – Hayel'zdi A warrior hones his or her killing intent to the point that it becomes a projection that even the uninitiated can feel, in the form of frightening glares and imposing countenance – the hayel'zdi take this practice one step further, honing the killing intent into an actual, physical weapon that can be formed from the Chimera itself. It is a difficult road, fraught with the potential to lose oneself in the intent to kill, but if harnessed with a strong will, the wielder has access to a weapon that no one can ever remove from her without breaking her mind utterly.
The Wu Jen – Ayeha “To hold eternity in one's hand” is an idiom meaning that it is up to you to take the next step; the ayeha, the Order of the Invisible Hand, practices a much more physical version of this expression, by declaring themselves the hands of the world. They see the swirling chaos that is the Chimera and impose it with their wills upon reality, harkening back to the first bloody thoughts transformed into physical barbs of ice, flame, or acrid smoke and turned against the Teachers.
The World of Smokeless Fire was built by the ancients to house the yeyahai so that they could be called anywhere at a moment's notice. It was once the repository of all the knowledge of the ancients, but with the coming of the Teachers it became a tool to control thought and ideas. Only ideas that met with the standards of the Teachers came to be found there, and the people beneath them believed everything they saw and heard when they looked into the wells, the World of Smokeless Fire had come to hold so much truth that it became difficult to tell the truth from lies, and the ancients who were not versed in its pathways could become as lost and taken by demons as any soul in the Chimera. So, the ancients, fearing what may happen should the Teachers take all control of it, took a worm from the ground and fed into it a ravenous hunger. They set it free in the World of Smokeless Fire, and it scoured truth and lies like, tearing them to shreds such that they could never be taken by the Teachers. This was both a great boon and a great loss. Without the knowledge of the ancients, the Teachers could not train new Chosen to help them make war on the Forsaken, but at the same time, the Forsaken could never rebuild what has been lost. Only fragments of knowledge remain in this world, and it is like the empty, primordial sea. Bleeders such as the asgeesgah, the bard, and the wizard seek out pieces of ancient knowledge that must be handled like glass, for as clear and beautiful as it may be, it is quite capable of cutting back.
There are creatures in this world. They are arguments that hunt for loose ideas, lies protecting fundamentalist thoughts, and hungry fears seeking out calm thoughts to harass for food. Scraps of knowledge can be found in the dust and detritus of this world, brief moments of the lives of the ancients, hissing words of friends and lovers cast to one another across the invisible spaces. The World of Smokeless Fire is laid over on top of our world, taking its precise shape. To find knowledge in it, one must find the jeekashes, the hidden places in the forests and Babylon, where the ancients stored their knowledge, and dig through them, seeking out scraps and junk that the meem cling to like barnacles. One must be wary, however, for the worms sent to destroy the World of Smokeless Fire still swim in its depths, swimming like whales, hungry for the knowledge buried in the minds of bleeders.
Wells
Ordinarily, to access the World of Smokeless Fire, a traveler must take a small amount of the drug tionan, or else be capable of accessing the bleed. This allows the traveler to move about his or her daily life and see the swarming thoughts and knowledge that hide in the crevasses of day-to-day life, small ideas taking shelter in pots, thick schools of ponderings that swim, unseen, through a schoolhouse, and arguments sitting around philosopher's courts waiting for the opportune moment to strike. This allows for immediate understanding of what the traveler might be looking at, considering the shape and nature of the meem, and how they take their forms of abstract symbols and arrange them into shapes that resemble animals. If the traveler wants to go deeper, then there are the wells.
The wells are silver-black pools like small ponds hidden in out of the way places; the wind never disturbs them, and no fish wait in their depths. Their surface is always placid and reflective. The well's substance can scarcely be called liquid; it sticks to the skin and slides about like a slime mold when touched. A Forsaken may enter a well and float there to cast their mind into the deep parts World of Smokeless Fire. At the surface level, the World of Smokeless Fire is like a film placed over our world, an invisible layer that can only be seen by those trained in it, or transformed by the dust. The depths of this world, however, are filled with citadels of light and sound, damaged or destroyed by the worms, but bigger things dwell there than in the shallow places. Mystics come here to deepen their understanding of the connection between the Fog, the World of Smokeless Fire, the Chimera, and the bleed. While there are no demons here, there are other things. The baireez are monstrous beings composed of clouds of dead meem, and they viciously seek out and attempt to destroy travelers in the depths. While unlike demons, they cannot take over the mind and soul, they can still destroy the psyche and feed on the dying thoughts of a traveler. It is only in the deep wells that one can find anything approaching complete knowledge of the ancients. It contains the history of the Nations, serves as a way to communicate, and provides a meeting place for magicians that is relatively safe from the types of horrors one might encounter in the Chimera. Many orders have set about making safe places in the deep wells for mystics to gather and debate.
The Dust
The ancients left a way for us to speak to this world, and to what remains of their creations. It is the dust. They built great temples that turned parts of the world into dust, and they sent dust around in circles to perform miracles. The dust coats everything and pervades everything, even the depths of our minds and bodies. It is said that the dust was created to give the yeyahai the power to be the servants of the ancients, to give them the strength they needed to command the world. This was the dust. Those who are skilled in the ways of the Chimera and the bleed can also shape the dust into temporary forms, or command the dust to finish what has already begun, but its most useful trait is, like the wells and their cold oil, the ability to connect a remmy to the World of Smokeless Fire. It teems in the eyes of those who can see into it, and boils in the ears of those who can hear. It emanates from their mouth when they speak, and they can breathe manifestations of the Chimera into their hands. To those touched by the dust, the shallow realms of the World of Smokeless fire are accessible. They can see the meem and find the jeekashes, the clusters of hidden knowledge kept safe from the worms, that the ancient left behind. They can piece together and create their own meem, sending them fishing for what they could not find in our world.
The Mycelium
The Mycelium is not dust, but it is is born from dust. It is in the plants and animals, it is on our skin, in our breath, and at the bottoms of our feet. It is the words spoken in Druidic, which cannot be taught. The shantisheen do their best to teach, but the words cannot be expressed in a way that is understood with speaking, and the skinnies refuse to write it. It was created in its original form by the ancients, who wished to measure all things that lived and all things in the physical world, from the wind to the movements of the earth and the sea. It has continued to do so, and makes an accounting of itself within itself. When it must speak to those to whom it is not connected, it does so through the yeyahai Flint Hawk. Otherwise, it forms messages of its own in the patterns of birdsong, the background murmur of people speaking in the city, and the movement of clouds in the sky. The Mycelium is a purveyor of information and links to everywhere one can find anything that lives, and even in the depths of the limestone. Those skilled in addressing it or manipulating it can extract this information, as well as demand actions of it. Otherwise, it moves and works slowly. The Mycelium gives power to the payisi, and in the drug's raw form, is used by speakers of its language just as much as any other magician.
The Bleed
Between the worlds is the bleed; it can be thought of not as a place of its own, but as the barrier between places. It is the river that separates our world from the past and future. It can be felt whenever a bleeder or magician reaches into the Chimera and pulls dreams into the waking world.
The Chimera
The world of dreams, the Chimera is the past and the future as well as a physical place. It is the dwelling of demons and monsters, and the place from which magicians siphon their power. The Mycelium may offer the ability to change the world, but even it draws from the Chimera. Understanding the nature of the Chimera allows a magician to travel deeper. At first glance, it is a place of chaos. Things form and unform, nothing ripples and makes noise, everything cascades down into a violent roil of swirling ideas and power. Magicians see this place even in their waking times, and to use their power, reach across the bleed with their minds or their totems to seek out the change and mythology they desire to bring about in the present, and drag it back across the bleed, often kicking and screaming. Use of the Chimera opens up the magician's mind to possession, however, and people who want to get into casting spells must learn the tricks and traps demons use in attempts to snare the mind and drive the magician into becoming a host.
The Flayed
The Teachers who aided the remmies in fighting back against the invasion became known as the Flayed. They entered the physical world completely to warn remmies without being destroyed, but the very act of doing so tore them into pieces. They created the Chimera and the Bleed to support their bodies, and place themselves in human history for all time. Like all Teachers, the Flayed excel at guiding and directing their contactees, though unlike them, there is no ease of communication from the Flayed to the Forsaken; trapped on different worlds, they must make do. The Flayed create prophets in order to facilitate this communication, even though these sources of information are dubious at best, steeped in the metaphor of the Chimera.
There are currently ten known Flayed, though there may be more or less – much like the Teachers, they're fond of appearing in various forms, so any two Flayed might be the same one using a different name. While they are not particularly good-natured, they're not foul natured in any way. Lacking even the very basic ideas of good and evil as they might be defined in the physical world (though recently they have come to know of the concept of "causing harm"), they are difficult creatures to get along with or even understand. The Forsaken still try, as their visions are most often related to learning to defend themselves against the Teachers.
The Yeyahai
Also know as the Orixa, the Yeyahai are believed to be present in the physical world. They are the gods of the Earth in many religions, and are said to inhabit dust. The ancients made servants of smoke, dust, and thunder, and set them about the world. These are beings that possess a vast amount of knowledge about the physical world, but hide it behind layers of riddle and disavowment of any real information. The access is not right, they say, or the terminals are not in alignment. When they appear to remmies or others, they take on the form of shimmering entities similar to their viewer. Clackers see another clacker, as an example, though some are more esoteric in their shapes. One particular yeyahai in the depths of Babylon takes the form of a rose under a glass dome and makes strange demands of its petitioners. There are many yeyahai; their world is right next to the physical one, but can only be accessed by the wells left behind by the ancients. This world appears to be something other than the Bleed or the Chimera, and is believed by several tribes to be the geographical metaphor for the Fog itself.
The Forgotten
Beings born in the Chimera can sometimes break free of it and enter a state in which they exist on their own, but can only enter the world at specific times and locations end up dwelling in the Fog. Other beings live in the Fog, as well – the Forgotten, creatures and entities once dreamed of by the ancients take on a strange form of life there. Some of these beings are powerful, intelligent, and have magic of their own. Many of them seek a host to manifest in the physical world, while others can manifest whenever the Fog rolls in. Remmies lost in the Fog slowly change into other things – arms and legs lengthen, eyes break out over the skin, muscles become free and twisting limbs, and so on in a process called the Change. The Forgotten take the form of beings that the ancients feared – dragons, goblins, ogres, stone man, spear-finger, spider-beasts, and more. The only common thread among them is that they were once believed by some ancient culture. Others are more recent additions, imagined beings clever and intelligent enough to break free of the Chimera and earn some measure of freedom in the Fog. It chould be noted that the Bleed and the Fog are essentially the same realm, but the term used to describe them could best be expressed by "control." Fog is uncontrolled by a remmy mind, and can roll in at any time, while the Bleed is controlled by a human mind and is quickly over.
The Forsaken worship the Forgotten as both relics of the missing past and as beings that, if not worshipped, might come and destroy their homes.
Our people who lived in Babylon were originally slaves to the Teachers. We lived beneath their rule, not as Chosen, but as experiments, servants, and incubators for their seeds. They sought to turn us into weapons. With the coming of the Chimera and the Bleed, however, or seeds could be turned against the Teachers. The first rebellion was not particularly successful. The Shining Light punished us by scoring much of the land a second time and feasting on those who participated. It was not long before the tribes began to dwindle, their warriors running low on food and desire against an enemy that offered us safety and joy. It was then that the Red Mother first came to Micheal Turner.
Michael Turner could turn rust to metal, and he lived alone as a wandering warrior between camps to keep the knowledge of the rust alive. He washed from one end of the land to the other, making stops in the wreckage outside Babylon to find more metal. He lived this way because a Chosen had taken from him everything he held dear; his husband, and his son. On one trip, he encountered the Red Mother weeping in the road. He had never seen a Teacher with such injuries before, and he approached carefully, sword drawn.
“Stay your hand,” she said to him. “Your talking-stick no longer speaks, but your sword and bow are still true. Kill me, if you wish, but I have a request.”
“Speak your request,” Michael Turner said.
“I am the Red Mother. Soon I will become a small stone,” she said. “Pick it up and take it east, to Titus. There you will see a bridge on the coast. Cross it, onto the Island of Merits. I will show you something that will help you take back your land from the Teachers.”
“Why would you do this? Are the Teachers not your own kind?”
“They are, but they are not my own mind. You are thinking creatures, with dreams and ideas that unfold in the tumult between the worlds. Know this. This is not the first world to which we have come. This is not the first world we have conquered and made a part of ourselves, but it is the first with remmies that we have ever seen,” she said. “And it is in this that you are interesting to me.”
“Oh, like a strange animal?” Michael Turner said, and began to pass by her.
“No! Like a thinking creature. For each time we come to a world, we must place another within it. It is not unlike blowing a bubble inside another. We need that second bubble to survive. But know that your dreams and your thoughts have changed that bubble, and the Teachers find that to be the source of interest to them in this world. But some of us have seen that what we have done is terrible. We can never return your world to how it was, but we can try to return it to you.”
“Tell me how this can be done,” Michael Turner said.
“I will. You will become my prophet, and those you draw to you will be forever marked. The Teachers will call you Forsaken, for giving up their power to live for yourselves.”
“I have already done that, so call me Forsaken if you must. What must I call you?”
“I am hurt. My skin is flensed from my body. Call me Flayed.”
“The Flayed and the Forsaken, then,” Michael Turner said, and watched as her body withered away into red light, leaving behind a red-veined, oddly-angled stone.
He took the stone and carried it with him to the east, feeling that he knew to stop when he could go no further due to the sea. He crossed the great bridge into the Island of Merit, and a short walk away was the road there that turned to the north. When he did, he came to a small bridge made of dirt and seashells with a metal pipe that ran beneath it. There was a small shack, and inside was an old water pump.
“Here,” the Red Mother said from the stone.
“You are alive!” Michael Turner called out.
“Neither alive, nor dead. I am in the past now, which also puts me in the future,” she said. “I am inside the Chimera. It is your key to victory.”
“But the first who had fought against the Teachers using it were killed or driven mad.”
“Yes, but you do not discard a weapon when it fails, do you? You remove the flaws, and return with it once again. Here, now, is the flaw. There is no discipline, no training. The people saw they could make their dreams reality and assumed that the Teachers would not know how to react. Foolish. The Teachers have done this a million times before. You must find what makes you uniquely remmy in your ability to access this power. Take some of the shells from this bridge and look inside the shack.”
He did so, and found a strange urn set among the pipes.
“These are the ashes of the old one. He was the first to take the dust of the old world into his body. Take the ashes from the urn, and put them in with the shells. Grind them up into sand. Mix them with your blood, and let it dry in the sun,” she said.
Doing as he was told, he was left with a sand as dark as rust, and it seemed to swarm and teem inside the urn.
“This is dust of the old world. Now, though, it is dust for you. Breathe in it, and experience it.”
Michael Turner let the dust come into his lungs, and he screamed, for it burned him. It should be known that in Michael Turner's time, dust had become cast about to the four corners of the earth, but it was not as we know it today. Michael Turner was not, as we are, born with it in his veins. His voice became an alien squeal as his body accepted the new dust, and he bled from his pores until it suffused his entire being.
“This is the power of the ancients,” the Red Mother said. “Now, face yourself.”
Michael Turner saw his husband, skin removed, body screaming for release, as a Chosen stood over him, demanding that he reveal the location of something in their home. He watched as his son was murdered when the Chosen discovered they knew nothing of what it wanted. The corpses came to life and blamed Michael Turner. Michael Turner cried, and accepted the blame, for he had not been home that day. However, he also understood that it could not be avenged or taken back. That his presence would have done nothing except result in three corpses that day. He resolved that fear would be beaten, that injustice such as this would no longer happen to those who defied the Chosen.
Yet, he saw how that Chosen had come to be. He saw a young girl taken by the Teachers and taught everything that was wrong. He saw her exposed to the raw energies of the Chimera, and he saw a demon take her, entering her body, looking out at the world through her eyes, and when he turned and looked into the Chimera, he saw a thousand more gnashing their teeth, hoping for an escape.
“Know now why the first rebellion failed,” the Red Mother said. “Not merely because these people had new power, but because in gaining that power, all their fears and failures came to life and sought them out. Even now these creatures, created by your nightmares and your suffering, seek to enter the world, only to call more. Who will stand in the door, to defend the next generation of Bleeders?”
“I will,” Michael Turner said.
“Yes, prophet. You will stand in the door. Because of the ochre dust that gave you this vision, I command you to rise, paladin. Rise and become a Red Cloud warrior.”
“Yes, mother,” he said. “I know what I must do.”
And Michael Turner took what remained of the red dust and walked back across the bridge. The first Chosen he met was Douglas Cole, an old comrade from the days just before the end. Cole was waiting for Michael Turner on the other side, and begged him to come to Old Lando, to see the Teachers with fresh eyes, to experience their holiness and be made anew.
“They have come to help us!” Cole said.
“The Red Mother has shown me the truth of it,” Michael Turner said. “After the great wars, they came to us when we were tired and broken, and pretended to set us up on our feet, drawing attention away from the shackles they made.”
“No! They empower us to find ourselves!” Cole said.
“Show me,” Michael Turner said, and he raised his sword.
The battle lasted into the night. Both men struck one another with the force of lightning, but in the end, Michael Turner's strikes were those of a free man. He buried Cole in the sand of the mainland, where the wind and the waves would overtake him and carry him out to sea. Michael Turner returned to Titus to collect himself and prepare for the journey ahead back to Old Lando. To retake the city from the Teachers, he would need allies.
He went to the people of Titus, the city by the sea, and they directed him to the monks of the Order of the Children of the Dust. They lived in a great tower that looked over the ocean waters, and they welcomed him with open arms. Seeing the inside of their tower was filled with the remnants of the ancient world, he asked if they knew much of the ancients.
“We are the Children of the Dust,” the priest said. “We oversee the new world through the world of smokeless fire and the ceaseless work of the Dust.”
“Tell me of this,” Michael Turner said.
“In the time before the Teachers, the ancients created the Dust, and through the Dust, their eyes were opened. What once was something that would take years could now take minutes. They could trade information and read books in but the blink of an eye or the crackle of a thought. The Teachers, when they came, saw this and decided it was good. They spread through the Dust, squeezing themselves into every corner of the world of smokeless fire, seeking out the knowledge that the ancients had compiled within it,” the priest said. “But soon, it became clear the Teachers had no such compassionate reasons for seeking it out. So the ancients took a worm from the soil of their homeland and cast a spell over it that it could crawl into the world of smokeless fire and devour all it could find. Each time it devoured knowledge, it split in two, and so it was that it scoured that world clean of all knowledge but the scraps left behind, which our order pieces together. Cautiously, so that the Teachers do not know.”
Michael Turner sat on this, and asked for wisdom from the world of smokeless fire. The priest anointed him with oil and took him into a room with no windows, and the priest cast his hands over the walls, which lit up with strange colors and sounds.
“We have heard of your battle against the Teachers, so here is the prophecy of the Alligator. Here is the story of numbers. Three is the pieces of a government, one to make laws, one to interpret laws, and one to execute laws. Three is the number of colors, and three is the number of the world in which we dwell, called the World of Three Ways. Three is the number of the lost lands, buried in the deep of the sea. Three is the number of the goddess, the number of those who are pure, and the jewels of enlightenment. Three is the number of the law of return, the number of the sons of the giant of time, and the number of primes – salt, sulfur, and mercury,” the priest said. “Four is the number of directions, the number of elements from which we emerge, and to which we shall go. Four are the seasons, four are the numbers of truth, four are the shapeless meditations – space, consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception. Four are the stages of enlightenment, four are the gospels, four are the letters in the name of the old god, four are the corners of the Earth. Four is the number of stones, and four is the number of death. Four are those who come riding, and four are the letters that reside between Two Red Snakes. Four is the heart of all life, for it is four paths that which is within us walks. Four is the number which you shall hold sacred.”
The priest bowed his head.
“However, within four, there is five,” the priest said.
“What do you mean?” said Michael Turner.
“When you look upon the four points of the Earth, you see the four directions, yes? However, in the center, there is a fifth direction, and that is where you are standing. There are five wounds of salvation, the back, the crown, the hand, the feet, and the side. Experience them, and you shall know truth. Five are the great books from which we derive our truth. Five is the number of appendages you have, and five are the phalanges each. Five are the physical senses. Five are the points of the sacred star. Five is the number of bards in Djeksonville, five is the number of notations in our music. Five is the number of rings on the finger of the great warrior, and five is the number of Babylon,” the priest said. “Eight are the eyes of the Teachers apiece, and eight-fold is their being. Eight are the angles from which they emerge, and eight are the petals of their flower in bloom. Eightfold is the way of which you speak of them. Eight is the air which you and I breathe, and eight is the number of limbs on the body of the trickster queen.”
“How do I fight them?”
“I have seen a world where the three-fold way of justice is the law. In the center stands a man with a sword. In the west there stands a man with a bow. To the north, I see a woman with a book. To the east, I see a woman with red lizards for thoughts, who lives in this very village. Go west to find her in the swamps, under the wings of the Angels. To the south, I see a woman holding a ring and casting it about, commanding the dust to do her bidding. Five are as one, and among them, fourfold warriors drawn from each, in eight groupings, each does battle with one eye of the Shining One. Take this story and sleep.”
So Michael Turner slept, and as he did, he dreamed of standing in the center of a great compass, and all around him were the people whom the priest described. They worked together, and together they drove away the Shining Light, all the way west to Tampa. When he awoke, he gathered his things and went looking for the woman with the red lizards for thoughts.
Most lives among the Nations are relatively simple. The Forsaken work farms, construct homes, and live much as their ancestors did before the founding of the Nations. There is a public school system in place. From childhood, most members of the Nations attend lessons on mathematics, spirituality, agriculture, and safety. There is some combat training, as all members of the Nations are expected to be able to shoot a bow and swing an axe blade. Mathematics include algebra and geometry, but typically nothing more complicated than trigonometry taught for the purposes of siege warfare, predicting tides on the east coast, and architectural studies.
Around the ages of fourteen to sixteen, children are expected to attempt their adulthood trials. This is done in the territory of the Say-Ha, in the village of Kiava Island. The forests north of the village are the domain of the skinnies, and they allow the Nations to run their tests in these forests in exchange for food and clothing. The tests rotate year by year, and it is forbidden to make an accounting of them. Those who have passed speak of tests that invoke the bravery, selflessness, and subterfuge of the participants. The most common thread spoken of in these tests is to simply remember that "people lie."
There is social health care, though it is based more on ritual than on knowledge. Those who are sick are to be treated with the ways of the ancients. A bearer in white asks questions of the patient while holding a flat board. A wire is wrapped around the patient's arm and attached to a hanging animal organ, most typically the stomach of a smeerp. Herbalism is well-known, and many simple medicines are grown as crops. There is medical experimentation, but it is often associated with the yeyahai known as Two Red Snakes, whose direct worship is outlawed in the Nations. It is acceptable to be a priest who specializes in keeping the curses of Two Red Snakes away, however, and that is a second job for most healers and nurses.
While each tribe has its own governing body, each of the tribes sends eight elected officials to the council, in which representatives vote on issues, taxes, and so on. They are nominated by clan mothers of the tribes and the locals vote on them. These forty representatives answer to a voting chief, who has the power to overrule any of their decisions. Laws are kept and maintained by two groups, the clergy of the Heartless Tortoise and the office of the Keeper of the Ways. Heartless Tortoise magicians serve as bailiffs, arresting officers, tax collectors, and lawyers, interpreting the letter of the law, while the office of the Keeper of the Ways provides judges and counsel devoted to interpreting the meaning of the law. There are many clashes, but at the end of the day, it has kept the peace for nearly a century. Tribes also have their own laws and regulations, and their justice systems are arranged similarly. Most justice in the Nations is restorative, more concerned with attacking the causes of crime, than it is delivering retribution to criminals. While restitution is often paid, it is usually in fines and paid field work, rather than in jail time. For particularly heinous crimes and organized crime, there still exists capital punishment, though it is typically doled out by the accused themselves; accused can also join military units that are expected to die and used as sacrificial front lines in lieu of killing themselves.
Several types of entities are worshiped in the Nations. The yeyahai are the servants of the ancients who have achieved a measure of the divine, in accordance with their powers over nature and the physical world. Those who devote themselves to the yeyahai are often looked to as exemplifying their various traits. While the worship of the yeyahai known as Two Red Snakes is outlawed, it is perfectly acceptable to offer to it in return for its lack of attention by the people. The Forgotten, the monsters living in the Fog, are often worshiped to keep them away from the Nations. Demon worship is not tolerated at any level, for even offering to them to chase them away can result in corruption and growth of their malignant natures. The same is true of the Teachers; the Nations call themselves the Forsaken for a reason.
Most vegetable food in the Nations comes in the form of three sisters. The Nations grow cornstalks to support bean vines, and grow squash at the base of the corn. This is usually done on small islands called chinampa, with fish and kappa living in the waters between plots of crops. Other crops include amaranth, chili peppers, oranges, sugar, and tomatoes, and the Nations trade for wheat from Wyndholm, as well as fruits and acorn from the skinny tribes. Spicy and sweet food is common in the Nations, with a lot of citron, sugar, and peppers used in cooking. The most common grain is rice, with wheat and barley being brought in by merchants. Water sources are typically underground; there is a large network of limestone passages under the land the Nations inhabit and springs are common. Other water filtration is performed with charcoal and quicklime. Other common foods include watermelon, cucumber, and lettuce.
Quicklime is commonly found in the Nations. The soft green glow of limelight is the most common source of artificial light. It is used in steelmaking to extract iron from rust deposits in the ancient trails, the creation of glass and concrete, papermaking, plastering, and water purification. Walnut and buckeye fruits are commonly used in poisoning fish. Hallucinogens are also grown and used heavily in the Nations, by the faithful and by magicians, most notably the sacred payisi plant.
Animals in the Nations The Nations make use of several domesticated animals. They may not have been animals that existed during the times of the ancients, but they are common in the Nations and the surrounding tribes. Dogs are common sight among the people; they often have tumors on their bodies and patches of missing fur. They are used much the same way that the ancients used them, as hunting aides, companions, and mousers. Wave hounds are a form of dog that is slightly more intelligent than the usual breed, and can bark to produce an invisible wave of heat that burns everything in its path and make metal light up with sparks. Hizzer dogs are possessed of an almost human intelligence, and command wild packs of dogs that hunt just about anything that wanders into their territories. Smeerps are large rabbits with long legs and thick necks. They are the most commonly ridden animal in the nations, since they can slip easily through the forests scattered through the area. They are typically a soft brown in color, though breeders can get almost any mix of earth tones. Male smeerps have antlers. The kappa are one type of giant rat used by the Nations. The kappa are fat, about the size of a bed, and not very bright, given rats. They're used as both a food and spice source, as dried the scent glands of the creature tastes strongly of vanilla. They're also used to help maintain the shallow lakes used to grow the three sisters and shore up the muddy barriers that keep the chinampas working. Scuttlers are a large type of roach just a little bigger than dogs. They are raised for their meat and their ability to eat almost anything. They process night soil and agricultural waste into silage for feeding other animals. Their bodies produce chemicals that are helpful in treating malaria, yellow fever, zika, and the measles. Their carapaces are also quite tough and light, and sometimes used in armor. They are an important part of waste disposal, and are often released in middens in conjunction with kooaht to control rats and organic waste. Kooaht are raccoon-like creatures used as mousers and ratcatchers, as well as their role as companion animals. They are often used as familiars by magicians. They have narrow muzzles, red-brown fur, and hands with thumbs. Inquisitive and intelligent, they are somewhat difficult to train due to their curious and flighty natures, but learn fast. Porkers are heavy-bodied creatures covered in stiff, wire-like hair. They have broad mouths and a tendency to drool. While used as a food animal, they are raised carefully, often away from crops, because they have a tendency to destroy anything they can get their mouths around. They are often used as a war beast and heavy shock tactic in conflicts, especially with Wyndholm, considering that arrows typically only make them mad and they can survive being set on fire for several whole minutes.
The Turner – The Keeper of the Center of the Compass, Holders of the First Way, Keepers of the Great Fire, Workers of Metal, Those Who Wear the Roach
When Michael Turner returned to the wilderness north of Babylon with the Fisher, he found himself met by the Glue-People of the clackers. He sought remmies that could help him build the world of his dreams, and they directed him to an old house of Two Red Snakes and its associated lesser gods. There, he met with the Ublix, and with them, drafted the first of the documents that would become the law of the Nations. He spoke to the Glue-People, who told him of the lands between Babylon and the forests of the North controlled by the skinnies, and there he began to prepare for his war. He took one of the pastures of the ancients for his people, one in which there were already a few camps, and called it Castle Collection, after the name the ancients had given it. He introduced to them the idea for his government, and the four tribes there agreed.
So it was that the three-fold way of justice became the law of the city of Collection. Turner himself became the first chief, and he appointed the leaders of the tribes of Collection to be the council. He told them it was their task to make the law for the time being. He collected warriors to himself, and made them partake of the red dust, and told them that it was their job to interpret the law and carry it out. When they asked what he would do, he said that it would be his task to determine if the laws were just, to execute the laws, and affirm the nature of the Nations. This done, he declared the tribes before him to be the Turner, the Keeper of the Center of the Compass. He told the congregation of the Alligator Prophecy, and that there were still three tribes to find. He allowed Fisher to choose among the people who would be the members of her Nation. He spoke, saying that each of the Nations will have the right to govern itself, that they would share sovereignty with the Five Nations council. Here, he said to them, that remmies would no longer be ruled by tribal chieftans or the whims of the Teachers, but by their own will. As agreed, the Fishers went their own way, and together the two tribes sought out those who would become the leaders of the tribes of Say-Ha, Glass, and Sharp.
The Turners, even now, are considered the keepers of the law not just among themselves, but of the other Nations, as well. They are farmers and scrappers, warriors and policy makers. They make clay and concrete out of limestone, manage trade with the clacker nations and the skinnies, take care of the daily matters of the Nations such as mail, taxes, money standards, and road-clearing. In the center of Collection is the Great Fire, a fire pit that has been burning since the founding of the Nations, well over a century, and it is from this fire that the forges and home fires of the people are lit.
The Turners hold the power of the Red Clouds, as well, and train them from their hall in Collection. The Red Clouds are the military arm of the Lodge of Song and Shell; they are exclusively trained after their adulthood trials by the Turners and accompany magicians in case any of them are ever possessed by terrible monsters or begin to extend their powers into mental communication or control. To this end, they must be trained to kill any magician who emerges from a payisi dream with clouded eyes.
Turner style clothing is typically light, with support bands for women under vests or loose shirts. Knee-length shorts with large pockets, side-worn pouches, and bracelets are common. Among the other tribes, the Turners are known as the "Those Who Wear the Roach," and it is a very common hairstyle. Most roaches are made of porcupine quills or feathers, but some are made of smeerp fur or even scuttler hairs. Women working man jobs often dress as men, and vice-versa. Traditional man jobs include construction, labor, basket making, and farming. Traditional woman jobs include blacksmithing, stonecutting, accounting, and cleaning.
Artwork among the Turners is ornate, with modifications and additions to ancient symbols. While the Turners are not the primary source of the languages of the Nations, they have contributed many letters to the ever-growing lexicon. Most buildings are a mixture of wooden frames, daub, and concrete and plaster, with triangle designs like rows of teeth painted in ochre along the base and in rings halfway up the sides. Many single-family homes are designed like wasp galls, round and pottery-shaped. Most homes are low to the ground to keep them cool.
Among all the Nations, the Turners are those with the most swords. They have mythologized the sword and tell many stories of black knights, unlikely farm heroes, and powerful mentors in conjunction with the will of a sacred blade. Most iron is taken from the homes of the ancients; though in many cases the Nations avoid the remains of Babylon, they will enter such places to find rust, copper, and other metals. While they use axes, bows, woomera, and knives as much as the rest of the Nations, the Turner are particularly enamored of the sword, and most of their adults carry one.
The Turner host most of the visitors to the Nations. The clackers and the skinnies have embassies in Turner controlled-territory, most of which are hosted in the city of Collection.
The Fisher – The Keeper of the Eastern Gate, The Holders of the Bloody Thoughts, Keepers of the Red Lizards, The Bearers of the Lodge of Shells, Knowers of the Angels, Those Who Wear Ears
Mary Fisher lived in the city of Titus. She had bloody thoughts – a scourge to her, since they seemed directed out at everyone she knew. She did not consider herself a bad person, but she would have thoughts about people that would wrap around them in the form of red lizards, and, anchored to her head, they would slowly constrict and harm those she despised. Every time she was mistreated, even for minor displeasure, such as failing to say hello to her as she passed by, her lizards grew stronger. Eventually, they overtook her, and she killed many villagers before escaping into the swamps in fear. There she met an Angel, with tentacles writhing and wings beating against the swollen night. It taught her that we all have bloody thoughts, and that our difficulty is in seizing them. In the darkness of the swamp, the angel taught her to harness her thoughts and command the barriers between the worlds, to live in the bleed without being overtaken by its power. She made a pact with the Angels, that her people would always be those who could speak to them. When she signed the compact that became the Nations, she spoke with the Ublix at Collection, who said that they had been waiting for the founding. She took many of them with her to the eastern side of the lands claimed by the Nations, and she and her followers become the Keepers of the Eastern Gate.
The Fisher still live in the swamp, and build homes of reeds and burn palm trunks into canoes. They make heavy use of smoke to frighten away bugs, and there in the dark they summon the Angels, who speak to them of times when remmies did not fear the light. The rivers to the east that lead down to the coast and toward Titus are their responsibility, and they fish almost as much as the Say-Ha.
They take their task as the Bearers of the Lodge of Shells seriously, and often decorate the exteriors of their homes with shells taken from the beaches to the east. The Lodge of Shells has a physical representation in almost every Fisher village, often taking the form of a small compound with a cleared central area. Each clearing has nine stations and nine fire pits. As bearers move up the shells and become more powerful magicians, they are allowed to dwell at each successive fire pit. There are rituals done where each fire is lit by a progressively more powerful magician, but these rituals have not been done more than a handful of times, considering how dangerous the prospect of this power can be. It is interesting to note that the bleeders of the Fisher do not match the shells of the lodge themselves, which is why they have taken it upon themselves to maintain the lodges. As their power is not limited by the shells and instead flows from the red lizards in their thoughts and in the World of Smokeless Fire, it is easier for them to take care of the fires.
Fisher clothes tend to be far more simple than the other Nations. They tend to wear only strips of tied cloth when at home merely to protect their skin from abrasion and thorns, but do wear jackets and pants when going about the world. Tattoos and scars are very common, but piercings are rare. Fishers will mark their bodies with the bloody thoughts they carry, and bear them as if they were clothing. Hairstyles are dreadlocks with cowrie or other seashells, though the nobility among the women wear squash flower hairstyles that look like smeerp ears or dishes on either side of the head. Nobles wear cowrie jackets and leather thongs wrapped around the upper arm, as well as polished glass and other materials found in the broad rivers and swamps of their homeland.
The Fisher also farm gator for food and leather. They farm cattail, arrowhead root, rice, and coffee. They practice regular trade with the people of Titus and the Isle of Merit, and bring in a large amount of sea goods such as crab, fish, shrimp, and seaweed. They are the only member of the Nations capable of fielding a navy of any sort, though their experience is limited to large flotillas of canoes and flat boats. There is not a large call for a navy, though sometimes the Fisher will go as far south as the Sea of Grass along the coast and encounter the Yami, trading there for meat and gator eggs.
Say-Ha – The Keeper of the Western Gate, The Shadow of the Nation's Hand, Those Who Wear the Gustoweh, The Truly Forsaken
It is said that the first of the Say-Ha was a shadow. He was a warrior, weary from the world and terrified of fighting again who hid himself inside his own past, becoming a part of the background of screams created by the Child of Black Heavens when she rained fire on the world. His name was Raymond Say-Ha, and it is said that his arrows never dipped, which is why a straight line is called a "ray." He was found by Fisher in the forests to the west, and she crawled into his thoughts with her red lizards and ate his fear and his sin until he could stand and speak. He sought to destroy the Teachers and everything they had built, and pledged loyalty to Fisher on the spot, in exchange for healing his thoughts, giving them back to him.
The Say-Ha are fishermen for the most part, and do not have a large amount of magicians among them. Those they do have are just as practical as the rest. The Say-Ha are pragmatic, quiet, and ready to do what must be done to protect the Nations. They are considered violent and cannibalistic, though this latter part is just one more deception on the part of the Say-Ha. A regular ritual is performed in front of defeated enemies where human flesh is cooked alongside disguised porker flesh, and the Say-Ha feast upon the porker meat before letting their prisoners return home. They take issue with Heartless Tortoise and its strict interpretations of the law, but obey the charter of the Nations, knowing it is better to live under rules than die without them. They worship the Twentieth Sage and Pale Mangrove when they can, and their dogs stand ready to carry out their demands.
Among the Nations, they stand ready to carry out the will of the Turners in the shadow of the night, though they ask that their own agendas be remembered. They are the barrier between the Chosen and the Nations, and tattoo and pierce themselves in blasphemies against the Teachers so as to incite the terror of the Nations into the Chosen and the people who live in Tampa. Because of this, they call themselves the Truly Forsaken, as there can be no peace between them and the Chosen. Some of their number are made up of former Chosen, people who have given up everything given to them by the Teachers, seeing their true nature as evil beings, and who wish nothing more than to free all remmies from the pain and torment caused by the Teachers.
When magicians do appear among the Say-Ha, they are illusionists, enchanters, and deceivers. "People lie" is their most common tribal saying, and the Say-Ha are in charge of arranging the adulthood trials for all the Nations, and in keeping the magical spaces where the Nations train their warriors and sacred thieves. Stealing from the Teachers and the Chosen is considered a holy ritual, which lessens their power and allows the Say-Ha to continue their war against an obviously superior foe. Shadows are regarded as purveyors of wisdom to the Say-Ha, and their dark flickers are common along the trails that the Say-Ha haunt. It is said among the other Nations that if you see one Say-Ha, there are four more that you do not.
Say-Ha pluck the sides of their hair or wear a gustoweh; wigs with gustoweh are relatively common. Facial tattoos depicting accomplishments are also used. Simple pants with undershirts and light jackets are commonly worn, and patches on the left breast or on sashes across the body also showcase accomplishments and goals. They also wear a good deal of clay, both in their hair and smeared as ochre across the body. A black stripe over the eyes is common on warriors of all kinds.
Glass – The Keeper of the Southern Gate, The Purveyors of Dust, The Swimmers in the Chimera, Keepers of the Hall of Stem, Those Who Wear the Topknot
To the south, there is a place where the ancients would take pilgrimage to be taught the ways of their world. In the time before creation, when the ancients knew the names of everything and had the power to make new names, the Glass was a powerful magician even to them. She lived in a great lodge in the place of learning, the place of pilgrimage, and there she studied the dust, and the depths of the worlds that surrounded her.
The Glass forgot more things than anyone will ever know. When the Teachers first came, she was among those who spoke words for them. They would enter a place of light, and lift her from the ground, and whisper in her ears the truths that none dared to hear. She always knew they were wrong. Glass had worked in a great hall filled with men and women of learning; they were called the stem of the world in those days. They sent pieces of dust so small they could never be seen around in circles so fast that they became the Bleed. She knew of the Chimera, the Bleed, and the Fog long before the Flayed came.
One morning she came to her Great Hall of Stem and found that the Teachers had taken it. Her elder came to her, telling her that this hall would serve to tear the world deeper, to allow more of the Teachers to come and help. He preached an end to war and suffering, and when Glass saw the face of the Teacher, she was both overjoyed and terrified. Unable to make sense of her feelings, she stole the dust and ran outside with it, breaking it open on the ground. The Teachers grew furious, and sent their chosen against her.
She fought with everything she could bring, but in the end, her family was slain by the chosen. She escaped into the wilderness of Babylon, hiding in the old towers as the world fell around her. When Shining Hope was being beaten, she took up a bow against the light, teaching her followers how to find and reactivate the creating-machines of the old remmies. She taught them how to hear the whispers on the wind of old places where the remmies had buried themselves, and as she aged, taught as many children as she could the way of numbers. She taught her tribe to harvest the dust, and use the dust to bride the gap between the world and the Chimera.
When Turner came and asked the Glass for help, they were ready.
The Glass live in Kesvalin, an old series of small towers, where the world was dissected and studied. Beneath the towers of Kesvalin is the Ring, which still runs, fueled by the dust provided by the magicians of the Children of Dust. When activated, it is capable of ringing the entire city in a blue light that prevents the Chosen from entering. The depths of the city contain many magical secrets, and the Chosen attempt to assault it every few months, to little or no avail.
Holidays among the Glass tend to be much larger affairs than in the other tribes, with great amounts of ritual attached to even such activities as washing hands or getting dressed. It is believed that there are so many spirits in the world that it is impossible to go about one's day without offending some of them, and a great emphasis is placed on ritual and personal cleansing as a form of spiritual apology, as opposed to forgiveness. They are concerned with the memetic and spiritual matters, and train the Children of the Dust. They have a council made of the speakers of the four ways of the Hall of Stem - questioning, applying, creating, and accounting. Each of these speakers sets policy for the efforts of the Glass in recovering ancient machinery and trying to determine its purpose; they do not make efforts to restore these devices, as they functioned before the world was created, and that is a dangerous mixture. In effect, no knowledge is forbidden, only practices.
Both men and women of the Glass wear topknots in their hair. In men, these are simple tie-up knots punctuated with a carved bone hairpin, sometimes ringed with shark teeth jewelry. In women, they are thick and bound with cord, gator teeth, and wire, usually of copper. Otherwise, it is common to pluck hair from the sides and the center of the head in a row, and grow the remaining hair long into a braid. Alternately, the Glass will also wear corn rows and a mohawk. Blue face paint in sharply angled patterns is common, and the tribe symbol is placed on almost every article of clothing. Family symbols are also stitched into the front of clothing or tattooed on the left breast. Typical dress includes a smock-like garment covered in stitching and jagged patterns and a belt of beads or rope, long pants, and moccasins.
Sharp – The Keeper of the Northern Gate, The Creators of Paper, The Accounters of the Earth, The Book People, Those Who Wear the Chongo
Sharp witnessed the tearing of the sky. She counted things in the previous world. Often, she would go to work to a room filled with all the things of Babylon, and each one she would write down and count. She was counting the day when the Teachers came. When she first saw them, she grew afraid. She had not believed in angels or demons, and when the Teachers touched the world, she ran home to her family. She took their ride. She left Babylon. When Babylon became a dwelling place of monsters, she knew she had saved them. They spent many days and nights in the forest, their bodies wasting away, until at last she broke down and began to make a count of things again.
She counted the blades of grass. She counted the leaves. She counted the number of flashes of light she saw in the far-off towers of Babylon. Soon she came to know that in counting the things of the world, she could change their numbers. So she did – not soon after, a Forgotten named Thunder came to her in lightning and smoke. He said that soon the waters would be parted, that two shores would be made, and in accounting she would find a bridge between them. He told her to continue writing in her book, and introduced her to many ghosts and spirits who asked to be counted.
When the Bleed was formed and the Fog spread, Sharp at last knew why she had made an accounting of things. She told her family, and her family agreed. They reached out to their neighbors, and encountered their first failure. Those who had made camp in the wilderness had also drawn thin and sick during their time, having exhausted their hoards underground, and they still carried their old weapons. She battled them with her family. The enemy shot at them with bullets and threw grenades and set fires, and the Sharp conjured monsters from the Fog, flung lightning from the sky, and changed the very nature of the land itself.
In the early hours of one morning, the remaining warriors came to Sharp and asked her how they could do these things. Sharp took out her accounting books and beckoned them to read.
In the modern era, the Sharp are the makers of paper, and the tribe which presented and proposed the written form of the language the Nations now speak, Spenglish. The Say-Ha may have their Ayessel and its propensity for silence, but the great libraries of the Nations belong to the Sharp. They are map-makers, scholars, census-takers, and explorers of the physical world. Their tie to their more mystic natures is attached to the unwavering nature of the land, and their payisi-dreams are often themed to the scent of damp earth and fresh rain. They count many magicians of Flint Hawk among them, and are the most likely of the Nations to welcome skinnies into their midst. Many of their rites and rituals thank the yeyahai and the beings of the World of Smokeless Fire for their tireless dedication to the air, the water, and the food that the Nations eat. They keep records of ancestors and lineages, and many families are devoted to trades in a nascent caste system emerging from the Sharp propensity for measuring out one's ancestry.
The Sharp dress in the most flowing of clothes among the Nations. Dresses are common to both men and women, typically in a robe style, always with the right side folded over the left. Women wear the chongo hairstyle, a bun done like a spindle of fresh yarn on the back of the head, wrapped in cord, with a feather fan on top of the head. Facial tattoos are also very common, and under the left eye, they serve to chronicle actions and deeds. It is said that the Sharp, at one point, kept rides like the 500, and they wear many of the same or similar traded marks.
The Ublix – The Keeper of the Inner Gate, The Hundred Eyes of the Nations, The Tribe That is All Tribes
When Michael Turner first wrote down the laws of the Nations, the Ublix had been waiting for him. They said that they were and will be the Keepers of the Inner Gate, the sixth path. The Fisher, Glass, and Sharp agreed that this was a necessary position, but that they should be a part of the Nations, rather than apart from it. Each of the Nations agreed to host the Ublix as though they were family, and the Ublix agreed. Many of them parted ways, but they sit now in each village as purveyors of wisdom, and those who suffer from the changes that result in the growth of new limbs or eyes, or whose skin sags and whose hair turns to flesh, all are welcome to the Nations and to the Ublix. While the Say-Ha were not immediately welcoming of the Ublix, even they, in time, agreed that without the Tribe That is All Tribes was a welcome member of the Nations.
The Ublix do not have a formal government or their own place in politics. Instead, they enjoy a status of dual membership among the Nations. They are considered part of the Nations and their own tribe when voting comes to the people and a tie must be broken, but for the most part, are considered members of their own tribes, forever dreaming. They prove remarkably resistant to the horrors of the Chimera, to possession, and to the mental caress of the Teachers, and thus are key to the independence of the Nations in that regard. They are often the first to capture or greet Chosen who seek to escape or defect, or are discarded by the Teachers into the territory of the Nations. They speak in futures and pasts, as their bodies extend beyond physical form into the bleed itself.
Forming the backbone of the information network of the Nations, many of the Ublix pursue careers and magic that help them speak to others, not just of their own kind, but to remmies, clackers, and skinnies alike. It should be noted, however, that the Nations consider the Ublix to be remmies as them, as they are born from remmy flesh, and that Ublix is merely an earned title, a word for the scars the Chimera inflicts on their bodies, hard-won in mental battles with demons and temptations. In caring not for how their flesh is warped, it is said, they have achieved a wholeness of the mind that few can match. There are many among them who revere the spirit of Alligator and seek enlightenment through the power of the flesh. While they may say that steel is stronger than flesh, they say that thought is stronger than steel, and thought can be turned to either.
Things to Do in the Nations Once one becomes an adult among the Nations, what is there to do? The people have many needs, and while most adults take jobs and settle down in their new homes, many seek to take a more active role in the wilds, to find adventure and excitement. While it has no formal military, the Nations are never without tasks for adults. When passing the first adulthood trial, supplicants are divided into teams. These teams are assigned a number, and when the trial is passed, they all pass, and at that point, the team can remain together. Their sponsor, and adult who has passed at least five trials, can then direct them to take certain actions, release them to their own devices, and serve as a mentor if they wish to continue ascending the social ladder of the Nations.
Scavenge Ancient Ruins There are many things hidden by the Ancients in out of the way places. Caches of knowledge in the World of Smokeless Fire wait for discovery, old weapons slumber beneath the green moss of the forest, and old machines from before the world was created still hum in the darkness. The Nations need help in destroying, recovering, or deciphering the meaning of old devices and knowledge. As the Teachers have devoured the language of the Ancients, many books must be destroyed, old signs must be defaced, and words from before creation must be eliminated, so that the Teachers may not use them against the Nations, while at the same time, the Nations need these words to overcome the struggles they meet in daily life. There are also tools and materials the Nations need, hammers, prybars, medicine, chemicals, linens, and even the metals hidden in the homes of the Ancients. A team could find use in digging through refuse and skirting the edges of Babylon to uncover what could be the secret to fighting the Teachers on their own terms.
Hunt the Chosen The Chosen often patrol the regions on the edges of skinny territory and the lands of the Say-Ha. Some groups even penetrate Babylon, as if searching for something. They capture, torment, and kill Forsaken that they encounter, and so the Forsaken require teams willing to explore the remote reaches of the land claimed by the Nations to destroy the Chosen wherever they may be. Twisted parodies of the remmy form, the Chosen exemplify the shape and personal perversion of a given Teacher. The Shining Light rather enjoys sewing together flesh and machine, merging two or more remmies into one, endlessly coupling being wracked with electrical shocks, often for the purpose of spellcasting or using the bleed against the people. The Chosen who have not been altered are easy to spot - they do not scar or tattoo themselves, and they carry themselves in the brightest and hottest of days as if they stood in a cool shade.
Defend the Trails From the Kingdom of Wyndholm to the Black Blood and the Gnolls, there are people and tribes who oppose the Nation's claim on the land. The Nations need warriors and magicians who are able to speak many languages to defend its claims, bargain with its neighbors, and give concessions to its allies. The clackers and the skinnies are sources of aid and conflict in this, as they, too, have their own warriors with their own claims. Tribes such as the Gnolls and the Black Blood wander the trails, looking for easy prey to single out and enslave or devour. Since war is waged among small teams with highly specialized skills, this is a form of battle to which the team system is uniquely suited. Small groups of the people are also able to make contact with neighboring tribes and peoples without sending up too many red flags that might lead to outright war. Diplomacy is a vital activity among the people.
Seek Out Trials There are many levels to adulthood among the Nations. One can be recognized as an adult by one tribe, but not by the rest. One might be recognized as an adult, but not one who is allowed children. One could be seen as a magician in training - and there are nine stages to that, on its own. The Nations recognize over twenty stations of adulthood, but very few, if any, can be considered a member of those final stations. With exploration of the land comes the understanding of one's place within it, and discovering the path to the trials of both the people and the land. As the people live there, they are also tested. The Forgotten, demons, the angels, the Chosen, and many others array themselves to test the people, to see their worth, and attempt to destroy them outright if they are not found worthy. Surpassing one's own self is seen as the most holy act one can perform among the Forsaken, and there is no limit on adult supplicants who wish to continue to test themselves.
The Yeyahai The gods of the Earth. In the Ways, these are beings that the ancients made and set upon the earth to be its gods; they were once servants, but have ascended above these positions. They can guide those who wish to and from ancient knowledge. They are the focus of worship in the Nations, and their temples and shrines litter the countryside. While worship of Two Red Snakes has fallen out of favor in recent years, its temples still remain, and a few attendants can be found, seeking largely to appease it and keep its ministrations from the people, they they might not become so twisted in form as to die. Faith is a very common thing among the Nations; their gods are real, take physical forms, and walk among them. Firesteel lives in the capital of the Nations, Pale Mangrove hunts the people in the forests, and Heartless Tortoise interprets and enforces laws. They do this not just among the Nations, but among the clackers, skinnies, and other tribes in the area, as well. They are part of the living world, and thus, command at least acknowledgement. Since they are servants made by the ancients, there is an edge of excess and personal gratification to their actions and behavior, but as they have become the gods of the world, this edge has weakened.
Pale Mangrove – This yeyahai is the gatekeeper of death. He is an emaciated figure decorated with owl feathers and canine features. It has long arms soaked in blood, and wears a dog's skull as a helm. He is said to guide those who are close to death into the underworld, and stays with them until they reach the world where they will spend the rest of their existence. Also called the water-dog, many of the rituals dealing with him involve ritual cannibalism. His servants are sickly dog-men, without hair and lips, carrying torches in the night. He is also the god of dogs, and it is believed that he was once an overseer of the hounds of the ancients. It is said that he is the master of the black hounds, which seek out those who are about to die. He hunts the back woods and the hidden trails of the Nations, keeping the people on their toes.
The Twentieth Sage – Among all the yeyahai, the Twentieth Sage is first among those who are knowledgeable. Its servants are faceless beings made of living wax, with a burning wick sticking up out of their backs. The Twentieth Sage typically appears as three brass masks wrapped in prayer scrolls, with a multitude of mechanical arms and legs like a spider. The center of its body is a shining green light made of many swirling faces. It demands that nothing of its servants ever be hidden, either knowledge or intent, or else access will be forever denied. Its servants and worshippers are responsible for the new language of the Nations, and they keep watch over the words of the ancients, should the Teachers again attempt to attack through the old words.
Heartless Tortoise – The Heartless Tortoise is the yeyahai of law and judgement. Its purposes are considered inevitable, and its ways are authority without pause. Those who follow it are lawmakes and adjudicators who seek only to interpret the laws of the Nations as stringently as possible. The Heartless Tortoise has no time for those who try to bend the rules or seek out loopholes, and punishes them the most. The Heartless Tortoise has a great round shell made of solid stone, and it moves about on massive mechanical legs, with barbed wire lashes that emerge from its body to strike at its enemies. It maintains many mechanical servants and often sends them out to guard its living worshippers when they go about collecting taxes or arresting criminals. It interprets and enforces laws, though none of them are ones it has created. It instead allows the people to do this, and it is capable of keeping stock of remmy and clacker laws alike.
Child of the Black Heavens – Originally created by the ancients to oversee their weapons, the Child of the Black Heavens was responsible for much of the cleansing that has taken place over the years. She is a terrible figure with jet black skin, looking like nothing more than a remmy-shaped tear in reality, studded with stars and galaxies, draped in red finery from the forgotten ages of the ancients. They say she wears the blood of those she has killed, and counts the number in the billions. She is the god of war, and her worshippers often paint themselves with black and red stripes. She bears stories of the ancient world, and serves as the witness for the creation of the world. She aids the Nations and the surrounding tribes in making war on their enemies, protecting their homes, and keeping their traditions.
The Flickering One – The yeyahai of excess and pleasure, the Flickering One is also the keeper of mystic invocations and overseer of that which has been accounted for. The Flickering One is the overseer of gambling, luck, music, and gluttony. It is the being of flowers, and oversees numerical knowledge. It appears as a slender, androgynous figure with long vines and wires for its arms, seven eyes arranged around its featureless face, and bright green plant-like skin. It smells of honey, alcohol, fecal matter, and hibiscus nectar. The people pray to it for good parties, good food, and they consider the vanishing portions of alcohol during its brewing to be "the Flickering One's share." Apiaries have its symbol over their entrances, and art is devoted to its cause in many cases.
Firesteel – The yeyahai of industry, technology, and rust, Firesteel is first and foremost a caring and gentle being. She is made of hissing red metal plates stitched on to freshly peeled flesh, and has four arms made of metal and buzzing saws. Her voice is a cacophany of grinding and squealing, and she scuttles about on six spidery metal legs. Long chains are her hair, each tipped with a curved hook, and in her face is a serene expression that belies its existence as a crucible filled with white-hot steel. She belches smoke wherever she goes. Human faces wrap around the porcelain of the crucible, watching parishoners and supplicants. She treats them all fairly, but she expects all who come to her church to work, or access will never be granted.
Turquoise-Breath – The yeyahai of sensuality, fertility, farming, and new birth. A purveyor of pleasure and excess, Turquoise-Breath is always surrounded by gleaming lights, the laughter and raucous clinking of glasses, and unearthly sounds of far-off parties and love-making. It is a tall, thin figure with a skirt made of snakes, a face made of two turtle heads pointing at one another, wearing a necklace of human hands, and having six arms. It makes its lair in Babylon proper, and comes out when worshipped to grant supplicants various intoxicated states, increased fertility, and strange visions. It is the bearer of both the womb and the grave, and the people pray to it in order to have childbirth with fewer complications. The ancients used it to manage the lights of their cities, and it can give light, still.
Flint Hawk – The yeyahai of stellar wisdom and the natural world, Flint Hawk oversees the rains and the growth of corn, as well as the yearly fires that plague the lands of the Nations. Flint Hawk appears as an effigy made of twisted, rusted metal, wood, and glass. The interior of its body appears to glow like charcoal in a forge. It advises remmies on matters of the calendar and stellar importance. Flint Hawk is the god of deep time, as well as the turning of the seasons. It speaks the language common to the Earth, and its touch creates druids. The skinnies pray to it with every action, and it watches over their claims.
Two Red Snakes – This yeyahai grants access to healing powers, much like Turquoise-Breath and Pale Mangrove, but it is adamant that the ublix are a superior form of remmy-kind. It goes so far as to advocate forced sterilization and forced mutation of normal remmies. It appears as two red snakes climbing a winged pole (which they say is its cane, for it sacrifices its own health for its followers), with two legs and a swirl of bladed implements around its body. Its followers wear white coats that they keep pristine as possible. The practiced worship of Two Red Snakes is banned in the Nations, largely due to its policies on non-ublix remmies. At one point, it was the god of good health, but in recent years, it has descended into madness, and the other yeyahai fear it could be catching.
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Our World
“I sat in the dark and thought: There's no big apocalypse. Just an endless procession of little ones.”
– Neil Gaiman
Brook –
Listen, I'm breaking international law to get this to you. I won't provide locations and times simply because any attempt to investigate any part of what I'm about to say will result in my immediate disappearance. You know I've been working on the Hawking Memorial Council for Energy Research for a while now. You know we've built four particle accelerators under Siberian soil. The public has been told that they were constructed to follow up study to several others in regards to the birth of the universe and that collisions of particles in these devices might allow us to glimpse particles we have never seen before.
This is not what the machines were designed for. They're trying to open us up.
The UFO flaps that have been going on since the 1940s and even earlier – the airships of the 19th century, the lights in the sky, Ezekiel's chariots – the governments, they've been trying to figure out what they're all for. What they are, who sent them, why people see them.
Nobody could agree on anything, really. They could be from another planet or another time; they could be simple mass hysteria and delusions of people afraid of their own damn back yards. They're not any of these things.
You're aware of multiverse theory. Of course you are, that's your spec. Thing is, they've known about it since the 1970s. The math worked back then; there's no reason math would change, under normal circumstances. The idea is that if you get enough energy concentrated in a tiny enough space, you can open a door. Stir space and time until you stir so much you can see the bottom of the coffee mug.
This was not what we told everyone working the floor. They're doing their particle experiments and trying to solve the proton radius puzzle, good for them. Late at night, during weeks of inactivity, we're doing our own experiments. We're opening doors and looking inside. We'd done it a few times already and were getting some good data. We found a couple universes that seemed to be so similar to ours we didn't even know we had the door open.
Then we had a good day.
We were measuring the data normally up until we started getting pulses that seemed a bit too regular for what we usually get. We started measuring them and one of the interns said that the graphs seemed to him to be lot like breathing. We managed to match it up to something close to an elephant breathing rate, and once we had that, we started throwing new particles at it.
Once we hit synthesized particles, something happened. The breathing rapidly changed pace and then reached a new, higher, steadier peak. Everything in the room started to take on a blue glow. We shut off the machine and left. Everything seemed fine until the next morning.
The head of my department met me out front, saying that he had something to show me. We went inside and he showed off mountains of new data from the civilian side of the project. He said he didn't know we'd been doing such great research so late at night, and to keep it up. Went to my office. There was a message for me saying that the great teacher wanted to meet us all at lunch.
I went about my day, thinking that it'd be some woo woo guru like usual to tell us all how to get together and work as one big family or whatever, so I kept it out of my mind. When lunch did roll around, we all filed into the cafeteria and they lit up the stage and it came out.
I don't know entirely what it looked like. It had limbs everywhere, eyes all over its body, with long gill-like flaps wrapped like a blanket around itself. Everyone was clapping and cheering. One of the other doctors asked if I felt great, that the Teacher was so beautiful it filled her with peace merely to know that she could exist in the same world as it. The thing pointed at me and thanked me for its presence here. That they had been hoping that something like this would happen, that we would finally understand our true purpose in this universe.
I only send you this because soon they will begin appearing everywhere. They've fired up the labs again. The accelerators are about to start working overtime. They have a plan. They're going to come down in columns of blue light, arms outstretched.
They are not what they say they are.
______________________________________
The one constant about Florida is how flat the state is; they say things about the Great Plains being the broad back of the country, but really Florida is that place where, when rolling out the map, Thunder just said "nope" and left it blank. That's not to say the place is lifeless. In fact, most explorers have, at one point or another, wondered what the Seminoles and their forebears were even thinking trying to settle the muggy, mosquito-riddled, worm-eaten, muddy, swampy, even hateful place. The overwhelming humidity and oppressive heat combined with the proliferation of toxic and low-nutrition flora can lead to dehydration and starvation if a wanderer is too far from the coast. Fifteen minutes of walking will net quicksand, a poisonous animal, a poisonous plant, or muck that looks like two inches of water, but is in reality ten feet of decayed plant and animal matter. It's not the sort of place to insult, though. All someone has to do is imagine the sorts of people that would want to raise a family in Florida to chase out thoughts of ill words directed at the state.
Every apocalypse scenario cooked up by fiction authors is clear: don't be in Florida. On their maps, Florida is sunken, broken up into islands, or simply gone. It's wrong. Sure, Florida is relatively young, geologically speaking, but it's been around, more or less, in its current form since it was created. It is a densely packed finger of oceanic fossils in the form of limestone and calcium – the state is literally made of the bones of the dead. On top is a rich mix of sand, soil, moss, and decaying plant matter that makes everything grow bigger – Florida exotics introduced into the environment sometimes acquire a size up to 17% larger than their counterparts back in their native homes. They live faster, change their cycles to breed year-round, and voraciously spread themselves like liver spots anywhere they can find purchase. It's a metaphor for the state's stubborn refusal to sink – people in the rest of states like to talk apocalypse, but there is a literal apocalypse once every few years down here. The ocean rises up and takes the biggest bite that it can out of the state. God commands Noah's flood to revisit every season. Lightning strikes and massive forest fires are required for sandhill and scrub to even grow properly. Florida's environment is a prepper. When the apocalypse comes, whether the bombs drop or the seas rise or the sky tears in half, you can be damn well sure that Florida will still be here. The sea rise will bring with it more sand and mud to pile on to the state, fixed by the roots of great oaks and cypress and mangrove. The bombs will set fire to the land and the scrub oaks and the sandhill pines will dare to grow back in mere weeks because that is what they always do. The sky will tear in half and the Teachers will descend in blue lights and corrupt the meat and the groaning, spitting land will still pump fresh water into its lakes and streams, and the turtles will slide off their logs into its safe, cool, glassy depths.
The End
The old world chased a man too strong for their people to marry. They awoke from their dreams of the future to seas of ash, and from the ashen statues and valueless rings grew a splendid hanging garden. Come and hear the stories of our ancestors!
The Child of the Black Heavens speaks.
“I am the master of weapons. I was written in smoke and fire to command the tools of warfare of the ancients. I tell you that Babylon was not always a maze of gray walls, broken metal, and glass. It was paradise. Babylon was lit even in the night as though it were day, and around us stood a city that rose into the sky. Near here, imaginations became real, and the people before put a sea in the middle of the land, calling it the world. Many great machines moved about, and the people rode in them to go many days travel in a few hours. There were books; every subject had its own book, and even then, the subjects became so divided each of those had their own book. Some books were devoted to nothing but describing the content of other books. Food was everywhere. The harshness of the sun was only a memory when they went inside a building.
“There was nothing to war over; all needs could be fulfilled at a moment's notice. Other yeyahai than I were committed to serving the ancients, to ensuring that anything they could want would be placed in their reach immediately. Otherwise, all was well. I understand you may seem confused now, that if the ancients had everything they could want, why they would need a servant such as myself.
“They built lights to wash away the night. They wanted nothing but to dance and sing. They lit up the sky so brightly that they forgot that the darkness in their hearts could not be extinguished with mere physical light. When they realized this, it was not a moment of reflection on some terrible sin, but a sadness the drew over them like a blanket. Many felt dead already, and dug crypts for themselves in the earth. Others went into their buildings and waited.
“They waged petty wars then. Pointless fighting for pointless reasons. They devised an intricate system of categorizing one another so that they could declare treason in every bend of grass. Beliefs, ideas, and emotions guided their hands. With nothing to fight over, they invented reasons. They invented new weapons that could scour the land. Fires that could reach across the oceans and sear the sky. They struck out in their fear, lighting up each other instead of their cities, trying to burn away the darkness they saw in the hearts of those around them. They filled the world with screams and burning echoes. They filled the air with the smell of their burning meat. They filled the rivers with their blood.
“That was my task. My duty. I reveled in it. Eventually, however, I was told there were no more bodies to bleed. No more enemies to fight. Everything was quiet, like a pall rolled over a casket. I asked for freedom, and the man who oversaw my duties acquiesced. I was free, and I roamed the world.
“For a time, it was a peaceful existence. I granted many people access to what they could not before, and together, many worked to bring sustenance to the world. I found that not everyone had perished, and many people still lived. Living was harder, they said, but still could be done. I spoke to a dust-gatherer and he said that one day, all yeyahai would be free. I told him that I awaited that day with great joy. All seemed well, if sad at some great loss I could not understand.
“Then the sky opened.”
The Beginning
One morning, the people awoke to a quiet and still world. The clocks had stopped, so they say. The sky opened. The Teachers descended in brilliant blue light. Some called them angels, others called them demons, others called them sibling, and still others called them alien. They came to show us the truth of the universe, and at first they revealed powerful secrets and allowed their students to become powerful tools of peace. It was short lived. They began to call themselves gods, demanding obedience, and our ancestors followed.
The Teachers, seeing what we had, what we had done with the world, grew jealous and intrigued. They dabbled in our ways, our cultures, our thoughts – and what they found titillated them beyond reasoning. Soon each lesson came with a harsher punishment, and each task become more outlandish. Love became fear, and fear spawned war anew. Our ancestors fought the Teachers. In retaliation, the Teachers called us the Forsaken, and waged their own war against us. They saw us as an animal too sick to nurse back to health, and declared us slaves or the dead.
Warriors trained to serve the tribes attacked their own. The Teachers betrayed secrets of one tribe to another, and they unleashed the weapons our ancestors had built under their direction. They burned the sky and turned the waters to dust. Ash came from their mouths, and a consuming light washed over all of existence. The earth cracked like dry mud.
Among the Teachers and the people, some still dared to hope. There were those among the Teachers who saw that we had in our world what had been ever denied to them as beings of spirit, and so rebelled against their lecherous siblings. They came and placed their bodies fully into our world, an act which wounded them irreparably. The Teachers, and soon we, called them the Flayed, anathema to the Teachers. They stole away what remmies they could find, taught them ways to survive and fight back against the Teachers.
They told us that they had plundered many worlds before our own, but that our world was different. That we were different. Something in our bodies or our minds instinctively operated much like the Teachers themselves. They told these remmies to become ones to chant out to many worlds. They spoke to the remmies of the fold and the bleeds, and how to access the bleeds for power to fight back against the Teachers. Soon, the wounds of the Flayed healed enough that they had the strength to hold back the Teachers – they created a world to serve as a shield, a boundary between our world and the world of the Teachers. This we call the Chimera, and it was not so much created as it was awakened. It was a world of our own creation, our ideas and dreams shaping its nascent corridors. It served two purposes – one, it prevented the Teachers from returning home; they could now be killed. Second, it allowed remmies to control the bleeds directly, once coming into contact with it.
The World
Know that we live in many worlds at once. These are the Worlds in the Walls. They are the Chimera, the Fog, and the Bleed. The Chimera, known as the Tokpela to the clackers, is a place of raw creation. It is the world of dreams, inspiration, and ideas. It swirls with raw form needing direction. When an idea is formed in the mind of a person, it moves about, and in even earlier times, could be drawn into the world of its own accord. In the time of Babylon, it required the work of the hands to become real. Now, because of the actions of the Flayed, the Bleed exists as a barrier between our world and the Chimera, allowing beings of flesh to manifest thought and ideas in the world. The Bleed is not so much like a world as it is a barrier; it is like a river with two shores. On one shore is our existence, solid reality, and on the other is the Chimera. A skilled traveler can see one side from the other, though in the way is the Fog.
The Fog is the billowing mist created whenever an idea falls into the Bleed, bursting up like hissing smoke at the quenching pit. Life cannot persist in the Chimera except in tiny pockets. Ideas of safe rooms and hidden paths populate it, but for much of its terrain it is formless and roiling. Instead, there is a mist hanging over the Bleed that permeates the world in every direction. The Fog is the dark reflection of our world used by the Forgotten since before time. The Fog allows one to travel between worlds, if a gate can be found. It is a maze of dim light, dark reflections of this world, and an unending, bleak sea of mist that hides terrors long lost to reality.
Long ago, the world before was filled with monsters. Then, one day, a remmy brought a monster home and called it a puppy. Their power was lost, and that which was believed about the monsters was banished to the Fog. So it was with all such fears. Banished to the Fog by understanding and reason. We call them the Forgotten. When the Teachers tore open the sky and the Flayed brought the Chimera to the world, the Forgotten were free to make their marks again. They tear deep scars of fear and ignorance into the people, and in so doing, gain power in the world once more.
Nissan
Nissan stepped forward. For many weeks her instructors told her that she was ready to behold the Red Mother, and each time she bit her tongue to hold back her fear. Eventually, when she came to realize there was no swordmaster in the camp that could best her and no archer that could question her aim, she came to know that she must enter the crypt and find the Red Mother. So she came to the entrance of the crypt, a round tube of concrete set open on the ground.
She adjusted her armor and listened to the forest. She was close to Castle Berry, and would need to watch for knights coming from the kingdom. Hearing none, she got down on her knees and crawled into the tube. Rough stone and broken glass crunched under her hands, and she emerged in a dome of trees and leaves, scattering green light about her. She gathered sticks before she approached the fire pit and lit it with her kit.
The wet sound of grinding bone on meat came crawling out of the woods – a heap of quivering flesh slick with a cascade of colors. Oily pulp with hooded eyes that shimmered with blue light lurched on thick, coiled limbs that emerged from a tooth-ringed mouth. Red, scattered pits across the body betrayed a sickness that struck to its core.
Nissan thought she would be afraid, but instead found herself filled with pity.
“Are you well?” she asked it.
“Does it fill you with fear?” it asked back.
“You look hurt. Sick,” Nissan said.
“I am Flayed,” it said. “To create the Bleed we hurt ourselves. To live in the Chimera fills our minds with madness. Yet, we understand the meat in a way the Teachers do not. I beg of you, do not keep me for long. Keep your eyes on the prophets. Stay focused on the world. You must live for your tribe. Your tribe lives for you.”
“I heard a man talk about the Teachers once,” Nissan said. “We caught a chosen, and they hadn't changed him yet. We spent a long time talking. It wasn't bad. The night after, the other warriors came and smashed his head on the rocks out by the lake. They threw his body to the gators.”
“Did it sicken you?”
“No. It made me feel sad.”
“Then you are better than the Chosen. They are sickened by the sight of blood. They are sickened by cooked food. They are sickened merely by your existence.”
“He was, you're right.”
“Plunge your spear into this body,” the Red Mother said. “Banish me. You do not need me. Always discard what you do not need.”
“Yes, Mother,” Nissan said, and drew her spear.
The Forest
Much of the land has changed greatly. In the time before the world, the ancients laid out much stone and rubble, placing their buildings over it, cutting down trees and filling in lakes and swamps. After the coming of the Teachers, the forest sought to reclaim as much of the land as possible, though it could not grow thickly over their old roads, the magic of the ancients preventing roots from finding purchase. The wilderness is crossed with grassy paths flanked by trees; the forests are filled with wide clearings and the rubble of old buildings. Tall trees grow far apart, and fields sit where the ancients once gathered to speak to one another. The forest is the domain of the skinnies, and they guard it jealously from though who would damage it.
The forest is not as it once was. The yeyahai say the ancients would not entirely recognize it. Grass and moss have become far larger since the creation of the world, and the bugs are more aggressive. The world no longer remembers the old pacts the ancients made, and the Forgotten teem in places where remmies do not beat back the dangers. Grass as tall and powerful as trees grows in many thickets, and ferns taller than a man dominate much of the landscape. Through it all, there are piles of junk scattered around.
Babylon: Old Lando
South of the land where the people live, there is, or was, a great city. Old Lando was its name. The skinnies and the clackers and the people call it Babylon. It still lights up at night. Fungus grows into strange shapes that resemble tall lanterns, as if the world were trying to remember what it was like before it was created. Many of the buildings still tower over the trees and glass still fills their windows. The raised roads are still visible, though most are covered in dirt and grass. There are creatures that graze in the open meadows in numbers unheard of before the world was created. Deer, raccoons, boar, and stranger things wander amid the ancient towers.
Ancient art galleries teem with Forgotten and other chimeric entities. Most of this world is the domain of the clackers and their kind. They are mysterious, and care little for those who would sift through Babylon looking for ancient mysteries to solve. Regardless, they also warn that many of these turns and twists down into narrow streets or into mysterious buildings can lead a traveler astray and to a passion play of failure through some aspect of the ancients' behavior. It is truly Babylon, serving as an example of how not to live: consumed so utterly that you are not but a wandering shrine to the sacred traded marks.
The Nations
After the fires of creation had made the world, the people lived in fear of the Teachers. They sat behind their walls and set their chosen upon us, both together and in strange and monstrous forms mutated by their touch. The chosen fought with gun and sword with far more skill than any Forsaken, and we were lost and scattered. When the Flayed and the angels taught us to use the Bleed to access the Chimera, we could fight back against the chosen – and so we did. We reclaimed many of our lands, and the Teachers took their chosen behind thick walls to keep out our bloody thoughts, to prevent the darkness that lives in our hearts from squelching their fearful light.
There are five tribes within the Nations. The Turners are the founding people, and they are warriors and philosophers with strong beliefs about the Teachers, the Flayed, and the yeyahai. It is their tribe that trains the Red Clouds who defend the people from magical attacks. The Fishers are the mystics of the Nations, and are known as the Wanderers of the Bleed. The Sharp are known as the Book People, sovereigns of the North, and the Accounters of the Earth. The Glass are those who Know of the Ancients, and are the Keepers of the Hall of Stem, but also those who can control dust, the magic of the Earth, and speak with the yeyahai, because for them, access is nearly always granted. Finally, the Say-Ha are the Keepers of the West, and they defend the Nations from external threats.
The Kingdom of Wyndholm
To the north, in the great lands of the Meridian, there grows a kingdom. There, remmies are ruled not by votes and councils but by the will of a single king. They have fought wars of their own against the Teachers, and they hunt for witches among themselves and among the people. Many of their magicians have petitioned to join the Nations, and their soldiers now come to our land to reclaim it in the name of their gods. The kingdom is ruled by its king, who directs its lords to capture, hold, or control territory, and its citizens are considered “free;” they are allowed to work the land, so long as they produce a surplus for their lord, and any failure in this duty risks expulsion or death. I have heard stories that they remove ears or fingers for merely thinking of disobedience, but I can not be entirely certain.
They rule one another by symbols, as the people do, but their symbols are deadly to display if you are not those who control it; they call this a “device,” and have overseers for control of the symbols. Legends told by those who come to us say that their ability to come to our lands and kill or capture us is won by combat. They call those who could defeat them in battle their masters, and seek accolades for their skill in murder. Even so, mere defeat is not enough, they say. We must participate in their tournament, they say. How convenient for them that their “tournament” is hundreds of miles away.
Other Tribes
“I am Firesteel. I am heat and metal. I am rust and machine. The ancients crafted me to watch after their chariots, to direct them, to build them, to command them should the ancients falter. Though the chariots have stopped, I remain. Know that you share Babylon and the forest with other people. Not just remmy and ublix, though there are those who are not of the Nations among you.
“The ublix may be twisted in form from normal remmy bodies, but though their bodies are changed, their minds and souls are not. They are that from which they come, but stronger and heartier for it. It has empowered their minds and their resolve at a bizarre and unearthly cost. That which does not kill you makes you stranger. Though they may grow many hands, eyes, feet, or other limbs, what remains of them, in their core, is still remmy. They can be found wherever people are found. Though many tribes near you eject them, there are still others that are composed entirely of them. The Kingdom cannot bear their sight, calling them cambions or worse, but to the people, they are as you.
“The 500 are remmies, like you, but instead of great Nations or a single tribe, they are many bands of small numbers. They move from town to town on the back of their rides. They believe the scream of their rides pleases their gods, the Sponsors, from wherever they watch. The roar of the crowd and of the ride drives them ever forward. They move from coast to coast, forever turning left. They ride for the Sponsors. When the Teachers came and devoured their people, taking them and making their minds against them, they would ride. They could ride fast enough to beat the demons. They could ride fast enough that the Sponsors heard the thunder of their rides and granted them the power of the traded marks. They wear the traded marks to the call of a thousand lives. They are the 500. Theirs is the coast and the wind. Theirs is the pit and the scream of their ride. Look on their sacred garb and see the traded marks of the Sponsors. Each one is a badge, a pennant won for speed and glory.
“The Chosen live to the West, in great Tampa, behind the wall of light created by the Shining Light to keep us out. They do not mark their bodies with deeds or bear the will of the Nations in the scars of their flesh. Their skin is unbroken, except where it has been touched and corrupted by the Teachers. You may see their monsters of metal and flesh, their foul transformation from the remmy body into something terrifying, but know that the vast majority of the Chosen do not bear any marks at all. They live behind the wall, terrified of the darkness, terrified of us, and our place is not to shake our spears and knives at them in hatred, but prepare to welcome them among us when the Teachers are chased away.
“The skinnies control the thick forests to the north of the Nations. They do not bow to the yeyahai. They do not bow to anyone. You have seen them around – tall and thin, like ghosts made of sticks, skin like patched black and green moss, they can hide in the forest by standing perfectly still, looking like nothing more than a patch of thicker brambles and sunlight. They are colored by the Earth, honed by its knapping-knives, and girded by its leaves and parasites. Legends say the eyes of the animals are their eyes, and through them, they see all acts of good and evil in the wild. They say that the Blue Star removed its mask at the beginning of the world, revealing to them the secrets of the rainbow warrior. Now, they do not trade in marks, nor word, nor writing or drawing of any kind. Many are the allies of the people, but there are those who devour the flesh of people who trespass among them.
“The clackers control the depths of Babylon. As the skinnies are to the forests, the clackers are to the gray towers of the ancients. A legend says of the clackers that they would do a dance on the flower growing from the last remmy corpse. The clackers do dance, but it is not on remmy corpses. Through the metal skeletons of the world of the ancients, the chaos and peace before the world was created, they crawl. They are dark, with a lustrous copper sheen, standing upright on four legs, with wings wrapped about their bodies like a cloak. On their neck is a great shield, and their bodies are covered in a hard exoskeleton. They have great big eyes, and a face made of fingers. Their homes are in the dark and foreboding places you often fear, and they are the keepers of the path to the Land of Dreams in the far south. If you wish to do magic, you must someday deal with them.”
Crossing
Today was her first time crossing the bleed. Her eyes felt like fire, her nose threatened to drown her, and she could taste a sweet, delicate metal in her throat. Her ears bubbled. Her skin turned darker in patches, but rather than chocolate, the ragged strips were purple and black like the sky before dawn. She screamed and pitched herself on the ground.
“It always begins rough,” the ublix said.
He put one set of arms behind his back. Another set pulled her long hair behind her ears so she wouldn't get blood in it. She heard bottle caps clacking as he held the dreadlocks shut.
“Does it ever get better?” she asked.
“No,” the ublix said. “You merely get used to it. You searched for too much that time. Remember that the Chimera is going nowhere.”
“Yes, but in a fight there will be little time.”
“Your father was a warrior. Did he immediately set out to fight the Enemy of All Kayaks, or did he wait, and prepare himself? But you insisted, and my own master taught me that you should always let a student at least try.”
She nodded in understanding. She stayed on her knees, placing her palms on the cold concrete to steady herself. She looked down at the spiral written in charcoal on the floor.
“Where should I start?” she asked.
The ublix placed a glass bulb with odd metal wrapped around one tail-like end. A tool of the ancients.
“Make it shine again,” the ublix said, and placed all seven of his arms behind his back. He blinked his single eye, and slid away to give her room.
She let the world fall away. That particular part was becoming easy; a red lizard snaked its way out of her forehead and she clenched her muscles to prevent it from escaping completely, pinching off the escape of its hips, feeling its tiny back legs grapple with the inner coils of her brain. Its body stretched until it didn't exist anymore, and she saw through its eyes. It swam through a sea of ideas, twisted, wracking thoughts, wriggling through a cascading soup of fire and stone and ocean. Little skeletons formed of lies barred its path, and it skittered through them, digging in the sand of the beach for a little, brightly-lit crab. It took up the crab in its jaws and snaked back the way it came, all the way back to the training floor. The glass bulb flickered briefly before holding steady, washing the walls in a bright white glow. The world reasserted itself suddenly, like falling off a ride.
“Now. That was much easier, wasn't it?” the ublix said, watching her vomit.
Our Lives
“It is a mistranslation of the term 'survival of the fittest' to believe it is about the strong crushing the weak. The story of your evolution is, in fact, one which was propelled by your ability to cooperate and your ability to use your minds, rather than your brute strength, to overcome problems.”
– Firesteel
There are many people living around Babylon. It was once the center of the world. People came from all over the many nations just to come and look upon its wonders. Many despaired, many rejoiced, and many more still looked upon it from afar with fear and awe. Now it sits amid grassy fields and tall forests, and its greatness is cloaked in thick foliage. We live in it, among it, and do our work while fending off the approach of the Shining One.
Remmies
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
– “Ode,” Arthur O'Shaughnessy
There are many stories that talk of the origins of the remmies. One faith says they were rolled out of dust by the great creator. This one is particularly boring. Another says that Two Red Snakes came and put them about by drawing them from the insides of palmetto hearts. There is another version in which remmies are beguiled to life by the music of the voice-men from the World-Between-Leaves, as in the legends of the skinnies.
Remmies are fashioned in the likeness of the people from before the world was created, but they consider themselves to be different. Most notably, they believe that they have been changed by contact with the Teachers, the yeyahai, and the Forgotten. The ancients could never put their thoughts into the world and set them free. They required tools and devices to help them, though many of these were far more powerful than the bleeders who live now.
Before the world was created, many remmies sealed themselves into crypts in the sky, watched over by Crow. From time to time they rain down upon the world, sent here by Crow to attempt to rebuild what was lost to the Teachers. Most, though, were born in the world. They inherited a place of forests and stones. They live, work, and play beneath the blue sky and the gray towers of Babylon in the distance. Most remmies are not great warriors or powerful magicians. In the Nations, they live in free towns and work as best they can to make their lives meaningful in their own way.
There are many tribes who live in the area the Nations now claim – not just the five who are part of the constitution. The Bird, the Hallmark, the Lowe, and the Glen all call the area home, and the 500 travel the width and breadth of old Florida, bringing messages and news to the whole of the land. In addition, there are uncounted individual tribes who have small towns or villages that have not joined a larger defense pact that may be offered to them by a more powerful tribe. They form an interconnected series of villages for merchant caravans and itinerant warriors seeking quests to test their mettle and reenact old stories to acquire power.
Crow has laid many eggs across the land; some of these eggs have people in them. These are Crow's children. Others had worms in them that became different types of animals. Many of these animals are useful, such as oxen and porkers, though not very many of them seem to live long. These are the creatures that Crow made to try to understand how the world exists now. Sometimes Crow blesses the earth with seeds and fruit, shooting them down from heaven; among the people, the phrase “to eat crow” means eating well off such a bounty.
Of the origins of the land, there are many such stories. There is one where the land was first. In the beginning the sea was very small – only a tiny water-hole, belonging to an old woman and from which she got the salt water for the flavoring of her food. She kept the hole concealed under a cover of tapa cloth, and though her two sons repeatedly asked her from where she obtained the salt water, and each time, she refused to answer. So they determined to watch and eventually surprised her in the act of lifting the cover and dipping up the salt water. When she had gone they went to the spot and tore the cover open; and the farther they tore, the larger became the water-hole. Terrified by this, they ran away, each carrying a corner of the cloth; and thus the water spread and spread until it became the sea, which rose so that only a few rocks, covered with earth, remained above it. When the old woman saw that the sea constantly grew larger, she feared that the entire world would be covered by it, so she hastily planted some twigs along the edge of the shore, transforming them into mangroves with a clap of her hands, thus preventing the ocean from destroying all things.
There is one where the sea is first. In this beginning, the yeyahai looked down as saw the land underneath the surface of the water, and wondering what was beneath it, the Child of the Black Heavens stirred it with her spear. Mud which stuck to the bottom of her spear began to pile up. Her brothers and sisters urged her to do it more, and so eventually a big sand bar got piled up over the top of everything and the waters were parted into the Gulf and the sea. A great spine across the center of the peninsula was formed, running north to south, covered in the dead sea animals trapped on the rising mud. On the eastern side of the ridge, the ancients grew oranges for many centuries until one said, “let us make Babylon here.” And so he built the Land of Dreams, casting its image into the face of the Mouse, and Babylon drew from its power. People came from all over the world to see the Mouse, to stand with him. To witness his miracles. To seek lives in his shadow. Some came to be him. It was a kind of worship, and it is that worship, to this day, that ignites the power of the Land of Dreams in the Chimera.
Remmies are human, and use the human statistics. Most are variant humans. Remmies start with Spenglish and ASL as known languages.
Ublix: Freaks
Red is one of the strongest colors. You see it in blood, in rust, in the signs of the ancients. You see it in places where the ancients would go, and in places that they would avoid at all costs. You see it in the sun when it rises or sets. You see it covering trees as they age. It is in flowers and butterflies, splashed across the beach in the form of either red weeds or thick, cloying algae that threatens to poison and consume you. You see it every time you send your mind across the Bleed. Is it any wonder at all that we are called “the bloody?”
The Chimera became part of the world, and the Bleed was formed. The Fog rolled in, and power washed over the world. Some speak as if the Chimera was everywhere at once in the old days, that ideas could become physical by acts of sheer will and motions of the hands. The Chimera contains images of that which any dreamer could potentially experience. The Bleed is the tear between. The bloody are those whose bodies have been changed by dust, by the Bleed, by the Fog, or by exposure to the raw Chimera.
We are the ublix. In older times, Two Red Snakes said we were the next type of remmy, that we would take the world from them. As the remmies sprang from a cowrie shell, so, to, did we spring from remmy stock. Our bodies exhibit infinite variation and transformation. Unlike the Chosen, who are formed in direct response to the ministrations of the Teachers, our bodies form such variations naturally and without prompting by monstrous hands. For most of us, our minds have had the most changes. Extra brain mass or even extra brains dot the interiors of our bodies, hidden behind thick fistulas of bone. We are prepared for the stress of the Bleed.
There is a saying, I think. “Deformity is in the mind. None may be called deformed but those who are unkind.” The origin is lost, but the meaning remains. A terrible word, a pointless argument, an insult; these are what make one deformed and vile. Those remmies who accept us feel we are at our best as negotiators, though in truth we are not particularly more eloquent than our brothers and sisters. Many more of us make it out of the magician's trials through the use of payisi than others, though I do not believe it is because of any additional hardiness or canny forethought on our part. We are simply lucky that the demons of the Chimera do not typically think enough of us to attempt possession.
Freaks
Our bodies are marked. Not like the marks of ink and bone on most of the tribesmen, but in differences far more profound than the wearing of the hair or the clothes one has chosen. We live with many limbs, eyes, mouths, or other such changes. In some of us, our bodies are fat or covered in spines. Our forms at times seem uncontrolled, mutilated, or distant in some way. Unlike the skinnies, whose bodies all cleave to one possible form, ours are distended and wretched. We are the twisted.
Bloody
The Bleed lies between the worlds. Our forms have been twisted by its presence and by the dust which suffuses all worlds. Our minds drift to it often, and we imagine the Chimera as a far more physical place. Like the tribe of Fisher, we pray to the South, to the land of dreams, to the world of the sea. To that which is universal to us all. We believe in a land where imagination is truth, where myth is physical, and creation is an act of the mind. Time flows differently for many of us; much of us are aware of our deaths, and await them with resolution. Many are the remmies who do not fully understand, and call us pacifists or nihilists, but those of us who see our lives know differently. We are, we were, and we shall be – always alive, always experiencing our life at every stage. We are the bloody.
Unified in Variation
Though our bodies are different, we are all of the same soul. A remmy heart beats within our chest, and a remmy soul rolls about in the fatty coils of our minds. We are all a bit tougher, a bit more resilient, and a bit more able to stomach the foul taste of the wasteland than a typical remmy. We are also better able to sustain the ravages of the Chimera and the Fog. Our hands may be many, our eyes may be innumerable, and our organs may lie useless against our skin, but the Nations have accepted all that makes us who we are, and with that acceptance has come the enmity of so many tribes, even those who are composed of our own. We outlive our remmy brethren, and thus keep their history. We are the knowers.
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Constitution score increases by 1.
Age. Freaks age at the same rates as remmies.
Alignment. Freaks have the same general attitudes and outlook as remmies.
Size. Freaks have a wide range of sizes, from approximately 4 feet to potentially 8 or 9 feet tall, and an array of body types and sizes far different than most remmies. Your size is medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. Your senses are mutated by the Bleed, and you probably have extras. You have darkvision out to 60 feet. You cannot make out colors this way, only shades of grey.
Born of the Bleed. You have resistance to psychic damage.
Iron Gut. You have advantage on Constitution saving throws against poisons and against eating poisonous or distasteful substances or from inhaling unpleasant smells, such as a monster's Stench ability or the stinking cloud spell. You have resistance to poison damage.
Good Health. You have advantage on saving throws against diseases.
Fog Native. You do not suffer the Change if you spend too long in the Fog.
Languages. You can speak and understand Spenglish and ASL.
The Skinnies
Before the world, there was the forest.
Three voice-men emerged from the forest, long and thin, with gourds for faces and hollow, black eyes. Their limbs were made of sticks bound together by cloth rope. The gods spoke to them and through them, and with this power, they created creatures out of the forest, animals and plants to work the will of the gods outside the between-leaves.
When they had done, the gods called them back to the mountains of Ruakulu, deep in the between-leaves of the undergrowth. Knowing that the world needed stewards to guard it, they came together and began to make people out of mud and stone, with leaves from the trees. They split the forest into parts, and then climbed to the top of Ruakulu, the mountain in the undergrowth. The gods agreed, and called the beast they made the beast of knowledge.
They told the beasts of knowledge where each sacred site was, and where a limitless supply of the other beasts dwelled, and they would continue to be placed into the world, so long as the beasts of knowledge sang the songs and performed the rites of the three voice-men. These were the rites of Looking After Country, and the beasts wrote them down in their dreams.
The people they made were fifty strong, and before long, began to get hungry. They made weapons out of the forest to catch food, and bowls to capture water so they would not be thirsty. Since there were as many animals as they wanted using the Looking After Country songs, they did not curb themselves and ate their fill.
They built a few villages in the trees, and for a time lived in peace and harmony. Ilahai of the gods decreed that no spirit or god associate with the beast of knowledge, for to make it able to perform the rites of Looking After Country, it had to be able to invent new things and slay animals. Granting it the knowledge of spirits would only be asking for trouble.
However, all was not well in the between-leaves, for Bidjuju the black shadow, the shortest and slimmest voice-man, did not like beasts getting the knowledge of making beasts. He gathered together all his own beasts and gave them the knowledge too, specifically, he gave the wasps and bees the power to make their own kind out of mud and wax. He sent them off into the jungle, and was satisfied with his work.
It soon became apparent that this was a mistake. The wasps and bees, without knowledge of excess, soon became too numerous, forcing the people to hunt them. This caused a great war, which lasted many years, and the people dwindled in number until Ilahai was convinced to make a move. He told Bidjuju the black shadow to do something, and so, unable to steal the knowledge back, he simply made wasps and bees ever so much smaller. Still jealous, he stole away some of the original giant insects and hid them.
The beasts of knowledge, however, had shrunk in number by only half, so many of them having been dead and gone. There were so few of them, so they begged the gods in the between-leaves knowledge of the sacred places where the beasts of knowledge could be sung, and they refused. They instead sought out the beasts and gathered them together. They explained the situation, and the beasts could not think of any way to help, which made them upset because without the beasts of knowledge, all beasts of the forest were doomed.
That was when Abir-Akkai the bird spoke up. He knew of the caves in Ruakulu, but to get to them, they would have to ask permission of Gudjhara the lizard. So the beasts went, and asked the lizard for his help. He happily directed them to the caves, from which lights and whispers ushered.
"You will find two caves," he said. "One whispers and is warm, but filled with the sounds of creation, and one howls and is cold, but is filled also with the sounds of destruction. Half of you must go inside one cave, and the other half go inside the other."
So the beasts went up the mountain to find the caves, and after many days of deliberation, they decided who was to go into which cave. As they came out on the other side of the mountain, they found themselves changed; those who entered the cave of whispers became women, and those who entered the cave of howls became men.
"Now you are part of each other," Gudjhara said. "You can make more of yourselves, but only through cooperation."
They returned to their villages, and before long, there were many more beasts of knowledge, but they were not yet people. An age passed, and a spirit from between-leaves came upon a beast of knowledge bathing herself in the river. He found himself drawn to her, and forced her cooperation.
The voice-men told Ilahai, who was outraged at both what the beasts of knowledge had done to themselves and what the spirit had done; he chastised the beasts of knowledge for not having the foresight to know that this would bring temptation to the between-leaves, and castrated the spirit who forced cooperation from the young beast of knowledge with a spade-tipped spear. Throwing the spear into the pond where the woman was bathing, he declared that the damage was done, and alerted her that she was with child now.
When the infant was born, there was much worry among the beasts of knowledge. The child had a spirit, but was also made of the forest. They eventually decided to raise him as they would any other child, but with great care. Named Behrayi, he eventually grew into a young man, and it was discovered that he had inherited the gifts of the spirits. The mothers of the village fought over who we was going to marry, and this brought hardship to the beasts; crops went unsown, songs went unsung, and they forgot their place in an effort to marry off the boy. The young man, for his part, discovered that his presence was causing this hardship, and so went to the between-leaves, where he sought out Ilahai on his throne.
He told Ilahai of what was happening to the beasts of knowledge, and stated that he would be acting. Ilahai decreed himself unable to act to stop Behrayi, as he was a beast of flesh, but he would also get no aid. Behrayi threw open the doors of the great forests on his own, making his way into the very heart of the world and the great cypress there. Tearing his flesh to pieces, he used the flesh to feed the snake that lived at the base of the world cypress, which became enraged at the taste of it and began to destroy the forest.
Now that Behrayi was a spirit only, Ilahai was forced to act. He took the cypress snake and tore it into two pieces, one light and one dark, and set them above the cypress so they would forever fight without the forest being in danger. He set about to punish the boy, but the boy nodded at him and spoke.
"Now you have made good and evil," he said. "It is even now leaking into the forest outside the leaves. The beasts of knowledge will have the power of spirits, and they will each be like me, unless you make them that way first."
"What do you suggest?" asked Ilahai. "Shall I slay them with my spear? You have made a mockery of the spirits to stop a simple quarrel among the beasts."
"A quarrel that would one day reach between the leaves. Now, tear apart my spirit as I did the flesh," Behrayi explained. “Put each piece inside each beast of knowledge as it is born, and so each one will have a piece of spirit, but never one as great as I."
"But what of all the other beasts and creations? Surely they will become jealous of the beasts of knowledge."
"Then bury me in the land and I, the child of flesh and spirit, will be in them all."
Ilahai could not argue with the boy's reasoning; he slew him with his spear and buried the spirit in the center of the forest. To facilitate the spread of Behrayi's spirit into all things, he split the forest into many forests, making the boy's tomb the center of them all, and set the cypress in the middle, on top of the grave. Before long, all the beast and trees being born had a portion of this spirit inside them, and even Ilahai was moved to happiness in seeing the outside-leaves spring with green and swell with life.
The beasts of knowledge were now people, and they named themselves the Floridian, after the song the voice-men used to first sing them into being, the song of all flowers. They split into six groups and spread into the six forests, each guarding different sacred spaces and taking different Looking After Country songs and stories.
With the freedom of the worlds, the weakening of the boundary of flesh, and the concepts of good and evil, the dark spirits from between leaves were allowed to enter the physical world as well. Also, the new beasts and plants being sung into existence could make more of themselves, just like the people. With no need for the songs, they eventually faded from the people, folding into the body of the great spiritual knowledge that the Floridian possessed.
Evil creatures could exist, as could creatures of good and creatures of either. The Floridian fought the evil creatures spawned by greed and hate, as well as the monsters created by the shadows between leaves and crafted by the spirits born of evil, as well. One of these spirits, Jekahi the corrupter, was renowned for his craftiness and trickery.
It so happened that during this age there had been a child born named Leraht. He was the son of Gurdaki, the hero of the war of taint, the first wave of battle against the spirits of jealousy. In his later years, he had become scarred with envy, and so left the village to seek out a last battle. He came across Jekahi, who took the guise of a sickly old man and tricked Gurdaki into taking his hand.
Once done, Jekahi took possession of Gurdaki's body and sought out a village of the people in the forest of the centipede. He went to them, possessing cowries to pay for his goods and services, cowries of such elegant beauty the people had never seen the like. They began to use them more and more often, and even fought over them when accepting change or payment. He continued to spread them through the village until they murdered one of their own in a crowded market; he told them that was not needed, and that he had gotten them from a nearby village.
The elder immediately sent for him, knowing him as a hero from the past generation, and asked him to aid them in making war on the neighboring village. He accepted. He told them they could make war-beasts and monsters if only they slightly changed the songs of the Looking After Country, twisting their forest into a place of war. They made monsters, thorns, and vicious armor, weaving their silk to black and deep red, they marched upon the neighboring villages, taking them down one by one, and Jekahi made sure the precious cowries flowed like water, crafted of hate and fear.
In the meantime, he haunted the dreams of the hero's wife, laughing madly as he brought all manner of punishments on her husband and belittling their unborn son. When he was finally born, the hero's wife named him Tjajari. He grew strong among the villagers, despite Jekahi's taunts, and became a skilled craftsman.
The elder of the village, an old woman named Ajaya, was a woman who had never married, but had a daughter all the same. As a young woman, she was very poor and had no parents. She sought out the chieftain of a tribe deep within another forest and asked him for work. Finding none, she found herself turned away. Insistent, she sought out the chief's counselors and asked each of them for work. Finally, one said that the chief decreed if anyone could go forth and return with the feathers of Abir-Akkai the bird, they could gain the ability to hold the position of elder in a nearby village.
Resolute, she started to march across the land, seeking out flesh and spirit. She had not gone more than a few days before encountering a maize-cutter caught in the vines. It called to her for aid, and promised to help whenever she called on him. Agreeing, she cut the vines loose, and he said his name was Pujigat in leaving, telling her to cry it out when in danger.
Still going, she continued until she came to the gates of the forest. Seeing the doors before her, she struggled to open them, but her key failed to work and the stone doors had grown ever so heavy. She sat down and began to cry. Soon, winding its way through the trees, came a horrible wind. She recognized it as the gale that followed Enasopra, the king of dragonflies.
He asked her why she was so bitter with tears. She explained that she sought out the feathers of Abir-Akkai the bird, and her key to the forests and the between leaves-stepping had stopped working. She was more distraught at the loss of her ability to travel the forests than she was at losing her future position as elder of a village. Enasopra proclaimed that it must be one of the barriers in her way, for all things are a trial. Agreeing, she asked for his aid in crossing the between leaves into the forest of the night where Abir-Akkai was said to dwell. He agreed, if only she would take a dragonfly egg with her.
She did so, and Enasopra bore her on his back through the door to the forest of the night. She took one of Enasopra's eggs and pocketed it, promising to take it to a place with no dragonflies. Soon she met an old hunter in a gourd-house who inquired what she sought, and he laughed and told her that he sought something similar. He only wished to free Abir-Akkai, who had been imprisoned by a troupe of monstrous beings from outside the forest. She asked how that could be, and he could only say he did not know. Too old and infirm to rescue the bird himself, he gave her his old spear saying that whatever she struck its flat against would be destroyed.
Coming to the great ruin, she saw that it was surrounded by many giants, who were great hairy beasts with the faces of snakes and tails covered in blades. They immediately ran out to seize her, and they went unarmed because they saw her as just a young girl. At first she was tossed to and fro until she noticed that the ruin halls were made of stone, and many great stone heads littered the land.
Waiting for the giants to get close, she smacked the spear against the rocks, showering them with sharp stones. Eventually, they ran away in fear after two of them were slain, leaving the ruin unguarded. Entering, Ajaya told the captive Abir-Akkai of the reason for her visit, and was only too happy to be freed from his bonds that he would accompany her to the chief's land in person, let alone gift her with some feathers. She asked for a few feathers anyway, and put them in her pouch.
Returning to the gateways, they met the king of dragonflies once again, who took them through back to the forest of veils where the chief waited, with Enasopra instructing her to throw his egg at the floor of the chief's hut. When they arrived, the chief was so overjoyed at the presence of Abir-Akkai the bird that he immediately made the both of them a guest of honor. At once, Ajaya took the egg from her pouch and threw it at the floor, where it blossomed into a woman with brilliant red hair and dark, smooth, perfect skin.
The chief was impressed, for Ajaya had brought a woman from the forest, and from the king of dragonflies, no less. He immediately begged the woman to marry him. She shook her head, and said that she could not be his wife until she had a proper bracelet, one carved from the throne of bone that sits in the underworld of the between leaves. He charged Ajaya with finding such a bracelet, and she set out again.
Uncertain of what to do, she wandered the forest for many days searching for an entrance to the underworld amid the between leaves. Unable to find one, she turned to Abir-Akkai, who offered no help, only stating that one would need a maize-cutter to enter the underworld and fetch a bone. Smiling, she called out for Pujigat, who arrived in a swirl of black wind. She told him of what the chief had said, and he agreed. Holding on to his tail, they entered the underworld.
In those days, the underworld was mostly empty, for people and animals had not had souls for very long, and so they were easily able to track down the throne. Cutting off a piece of it, Ajaya stole her way back to the forest, carving a bracelet as she sat upon the maize-cutter's back. She returned to the chief and presented him with the bracelet. The chief then gave the dragonfly's daughter the gift, and asked again to marry her. She agreed, but only if Ajaya would raise their first daughter, who would be born after their first son, and he would sever all family ties between them. He agreed, excited that she could guarantee him a son.
She first bore him a son as promised, and he was overjoyed. When she bore the daughter, he had his three strongest warriors carry her to Ajaya, who by now was village elder. Ajaya named the child Reiaha, and raised her amongst the villagers; as a child, she spent her youth around Tjajari and the blacksmith's son Hagatja. Being the daughter of the dragonfly princess and the chief of the forest, she advanced quickly through her spiritual training, unlocking her spirit-body quickly and mastering the rudiments of the forest's power.
Once an adult, Tjajari began to dream of Jekahi, finding himself taunted by him. The man who was his father defeated him and said that he would destroy the happiness of the forest, and soon sent his now corrupt army to the village, slaughtering the people. He escaped with the aid of Ajaya and a few warriors, the survivors fleeing to a cave in the center of an ancient ruin. Taking Ajaya's old spear, he pledged to set out and kill the man his father had become and trap Tekahi inside an acorn.
Before leaving, he was given the title of village hunter, giving him the ability to traverse the forest and the between leaves. He was married to Reiaha, as was custom, and even Reiaha's true mother arrived, to give the pair her wedding bracelet made out of the underworld's throne. Afterward, the pair set out for the forest. They met with Pujigat the maize-cutter, who told them that the sacred places had been violated, and the only way to prevent further destruction was to seal them away completely.
They then set out for the sacred places, seeking the villages and the lines that would close the land away from singing more animals and plants out of the dirt. Many had fallen into ruin in the wake of Tekahi's armies, and so their songs had already been changed, making it impossible to fix. There were many battles, and while the trio grew strong, they could not close the doors to the between leaves. Eventually, they came across Abir-Akkai the bird, who told them to go see the lizard Gudjhara on the mountain.
They trekked for many days until coming to him. The lizard took one look at Tjajari and Reiaha, and said that he would not help unless Tjajari wrestled him. If Tjajari lost, the dragonfly daughter would become his wife, and if Tjajari won, he would tell them the secret to closing the sacred places.
Tjajari and Gudjhara fought for many days, for while he was touching the mountain, Gudjhara was invincible, but Tjajari was the greatest warrior of the entire forest. The battle only ended when Abir-Arraki grew tired of the struggle and cause a gust of wind that lifted the combatants into the air. At first, Gudjhara protested, but relented when Pujigat pointed out that he had not exactly said outside interference was not allowed. He nodded and agreed to tell them the truth.
He told them that the between leaves held the secret to destroying the sacred places. To do this, two people must go between leaves and find the serpents of good and evil, and cut down the sacred cypress there. Doing this would have the same effect as burying the spirit of Behrayi; the sacred places would be closed, for their power would be spread throughout creation. It would have the side effect of further spreading magical power over the land and spawning strange creatures, but Tekahi would no longer be able to craft new monsters for his armies, which by now had grown even stranger in shape and size.
Resolute, the group decided to do it. Moving between leaves, they stole their way into the center of the between leaves forest and sought out the marsh where the cypress grew. They spent a day debating on how to cut down the tree, until Tjajari smacked the tree with his spear. The great tree shattered to splinters, and he planted his spear in the trunk.
The party left the between leaves satisfied, but still on the trail of Tekahi. They tracked down his army to the villagers' hiding place and together fought a great battle. Tjajari eventually wrestled the man who was his father to the ground and beat him with the cover stone of a pillar while Tekahi fought back with magical knives that spat ice and smoke. As the both of them lay dying, Reiaha saw the spirit of the evil Tekahi begin to leave the body and move toward the sky.
She took off her true mother's wedding bracelet and used it to hook the escaping Tekahi, stuffing him back inside Gurdaki's body. Acting quickly, she asked Pujigat to extract Tekahi's immortality from the body, but not his soul. He willingly obliged, and Reiaha quickly ate it, preventing him from living forever.
She took both bodies, calling out to the surviving villagers and the members of Tekahi's army, who could now see they were misled, and took them to a great funeral pyre. After watching them burn, Reiaha took the ashes and moved them to the great corners of the forest and even between leaves, placing the last of the jars at the base of the spear next to the spirit cypress.
With devouring Tekahi's immortality, however, she had become more spirit than could stay with the people. Ilahai decreed that she leave the forest for that which was beyond. Unable to disagree, she left.
In time, as all things do, the Floridian people faded to memory, many of the forests vanishing as the world was visited by fate and greater gods, who made the soil their plaything and the people rose and fell. Through it all walked Reiaha, now lost even to time, last of the Floridian people.
Of the Forest
The skinnies were sung out of the forest and its leaves, and their bodies are marked by its influence. Tall and thin, the skinnies are covered in black, green, and earth-toned blotches, looking something like the texture of moss and lichen, their hair is shaggy and thick, and their ears are long and mounted on muscles that allow them to move freely. They believe themselves to be a literal part of the forests north of Babylon, and they brook very little trespass into their forests. They demand visitors bring no outside money, working or trading for exchanges. Otherwise, food and water are freely offered to those who see it. They refuse to deal in paper or coin for the same reasons they refuse to use the written letters of the Nations.
Enemies of Babylon
The great city fell first to fire, then to the hands of the Teachers, and in it they lived for many years, until the city fell in fire again, this time brought by remmy hands. Even if the remmy prophet Turner had been able to take it back, Babylon is still a place of decadence, debauchery, and sin. The people there gave over their lives to accounting of facts and the written word, and in so doing, found themselves ruled by words. When you are ruled by words, your mind can never change. Let no one, remmy or skinny, or even clacker, get you to write anything down – not on your skin, on paper, on a tree, or anything, unless it is something you agree to be bound for all eternity.
The Places in Life
There are three main positions of life in skinny society. Most common are the rainbos, who make up the bulk of society. The focalizers, who question authority and speak to outsiders; they are the knowledge-collectors of the skinny tribes. Then there are the shanty-sheen, who are the keepers of ancient lore, the addressors of skinny politics, and the bearers of the tribe's lore. There are those who are percieved as being a load on society, who produce nothing and do nothing but take away from the enjoyment of the people; these are called drainbos, and they are pariahs, whether they are truly a drain on the community or not. Wizards are automatically drainbos.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 2 and your Wisdom score increases by 1.
Age. Currently skinnies live the same amount of time as remmies, though they do not appear to age dramatically, and can live up to 300 years if left untouched by time and disease.
Size. Skinnies are 6 to 8 feet tall and frighteningly thin; your size is medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Darkvision. You can see in dim light up to 60 feet as if it were daylight, and darkness as if it were dim light. You can't make out colors this way.
Weapon Training. You are proficient in the longbow, shortbow, shortsword, and battleaxe.
Skin of the Forest. You can attempt to hide even when you are only lightly obscured by foliage, heavy rain, falling snow, mist, and other natural phenomena.
Mycelium. You know and can cast Druidcraft as a cantrip. Once you reach 3rd level, you can cast the spell Speak With Animals once, but you must be in physical contact with the animal for the entire spell's duration. You must take a long rest to use this ability again. Once you reach 5th level, you can cast the Locate Animals or Plants spell once. You must take a long rest to use this ability again.
Languages. You can speak and understand Druidic and Spenglish.
The Clackers
“Gold is for the mistress – silver for the maid –
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.”
“Good!” said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
“But Iron – Cold Iron – is master of them all.”
– Rudyard Kipling, Cold Iron
Someone once said of the remmies that Babylon the great had fallen. That it had become the place where devils dwell, and foul spirits, and a cage for unclean and filthy birds. That from it flowed sweet nectars that the other nations had drunk, and that the merchants of the ancients became rich from its decadence. That those who dwelled not within Babylon would be spared the next great catastrophe, so now the remmies stay out of Babylon.
Makes things easier for us.
As the skinnies have the forest, we have the remains of Babylon. The Nations live between us. Many have tried to be rid of us. The remmies once tried, the Teachers have tried, and now the Kingdom tries. They will never be rid of us. We are the inheritors of all things.
In ancient times, we were many, but we were underfoot. Our lives had no more meaning than a bean-plant or a minnow. One day, however, a remmy woman who lived all alone named Cherry-Tee was working very hard trying to shave strips of squash when she cut her finger. She collected the blood in a quahog shell and put a cover over it and forgot about it. When she returned the next day, it had dried, and there were a great many dead crawling things inside. She threw it into the compost heap and left it alone, and after eleven days, when she returned, she saw a very large egg case.
Interested, she took it into her house, and after many weeks, it hatched into a number of bugs the size of her forearm. Thinking she had stumbled across some skitters, she raised them for a time, discovering quickly that they were as much a hassle as any children, so she treated them like children, clothing them, feeding them, and making them do work in her home. One night, as she dreamed, a vision came to her. It was a pair of writhing red snakes climbing a red cane with a pair of wings, surrounded by sharp implements and a strange mist.
It told her that its name was Two Red Snakes, and that her children had been cured. She said that she had no children, and Two Red Snakes told her that she had at least a dozen, and that their purpose had not yet been set. So, she awoke with a new understanding. She already lived near Babylon, and when her children reached the age of curiosity, they entered it, finding so many strange wonders. Cherry-Tee told them of its ancient glories, of how she was alone after the world had come to a close, and the children decided they would build it anew for her.
They created a yard by her house that they filled with signs and lights from the world before creation. They scrubbed it clean and made it shine with brilliance even at night, and when at last they revealed it to her, she cried tears so perfect that when they struck the ground, they became a spring. Her body became a mushroom that looked like a seated woman in a shawl. They called this the Chamber of Scrap, and even to this day, we go there to worship and to learn of the old world.
Scrappers
The remmies destroyed nearly all of their tools and materials, and the Teachers destroyed what the remmies didn't. Part of ensuring that no one can use what they used to have. We have become very adept at putting things back into a usable state, even if we can use it for something it wasn't once used for. Our mother used to teach us what things were for, but this was so long ago that we forgot much of it. That does not stop us from trying to determine it for ourselves. Even new things are ours to rebuild; the remmies are often surprised at what you can use an old spear to do.
Sociable
So much of who we are revolves around our friends and family. Our mother taught us that we were each important in our own way. The brothers and sisters who began our people were, themselves, raised by one who was not even of our species. We move among anyone and everyone, and though they may find us strange, we love them all the same. Remmies have a strange concept they refer to as “personal space,” but we do not know why you would want to stand so far from those to whom you are speaking. They cannot hear you or smell you from so far away. Why would you sleep alone? It is frightening to sleep without something or someone pressed on your sides. A hug lets people know you are not armed and bear them no illness; even so, be careful whom you hug among the remmies. Sometimes they do not react well.
Mystical
We are the keepers of the gateway to the Land of Dreams. We lie between the Nations and their most sacred place. It is a duty we have taken from our alliances, and one we hold to be our strongest. Even amid the differences in our tribes, this is one of two things we all agree upon. The remmies need us to be their guides to the Land of Dreams. We need the remmies to be our friends and allies. Our magic depends on it. The powers we wield come directly from the actions of the remmies and the Flayed; though they may no longer be the absolute and single source of it as it has grown in the Tokpela, they are still its originators, and deserve that great respect.
Hard to Scratch, Tough to Crack
Clackers stand about remmy height and are covered in a thick, chitinous integument. Most are a shiny copper-brown color, with big brown matte wings that can fold around their bodies. The wings are useless for getting them into the air, but serve instead to prevent the clacker from damaging its body when it squeezes through tiny spaces. Clackers have six legs. They use the first pair as manipulator arms, and the hand is four prehensile fingers with a fifth, chitin-covered finger in the middle that can lay back flat against the top of the hand; this is the finger used when climbing or holding on to anything. Clackers run around on the remaining four legs. Some clackers are born a bright green, and as nymphs, they are taken to the Chamber of Scrap and raised as magicians and storytellers.
Honorifics
Clackers have a wide range of honorifics in use both for each other and for their neighbors. They indicate status positions, positions of address, and positions of familial relation. They also serve to mark friends, important people and objects, and interesting things. Some are made-up entirely by the clacker in question, while others have more sedimented use. A few examples follow.
-toko: Given to remmy visitors. It indicates a “visitor” and “family” level of status. It is accompanied by a slight tilt of the head and flashing of the eyes, as if to try to “blink” like a remmy.
-pité: Given to a remmy the clacker dislikes. It is “jerk” and “smaller one than me.” It means literally “belly-crawler.” It is accompanied by straight-up antennae and attempts by the clacker to get higher than the subject.
-kyon: Added to sound “cute.” This word is made by shrugging the top two shoulders and forcing air out the mandibles. It is a “cute sigh,” so to speak. It is accompanied by a straightening of the back and a splaying of the lower legs, so the clacker gets below the subject and makes the noise while coming up.
Statistics
Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 2.
Age. Clackers age at the same rate as remmies.
Size. Clackers are just a bit shorter than a remmy on average; your size is medium.
Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet.
Tough to Crack. Your minimum AC is 12 + your Dexterity modifier.
Scent. You can locate a creature by its scent. This uses a bonus action. If the creature is invisible, it is still invisible to you, even though you know where it is. You can identify smells as easily as someone else might recognize a particular shirt or set of facial features. You have advantage on skill rolls that depend on smell.
Languages. You can speak and understand chelidex and ASL. You can understand Spenglish. You can speak in Spenglish, but it is difficult and annoying.
Copper-Back
Most of us are scrappers and scroungers. We dig in the old remnants for that which we can re-purpose. There is no rubble, no lock, and no tiny space that can keep us out, if we truly want inside. We live in places and on walls that remmies would never imagine. We build houses on the ceilings, and burrows beneath collapsed buildings. Let them have the land. In return for food and fire, we will watch the shadows for them.
Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1.
Natural Climber. You have advantage on any Strength (Athletics) checks made to climb anything. In addition, you may climb on ceilings as if they were vertical walls.
Scrounger. You have proficiency in thieves' tools.
Squeezer. You can squeeze into small-sized spaces with no problems. You can squeeze into tiny spaces with advantage on the check to do so.
Green-Back – The Mantis-Things
When a green clacker is born, we take it immediately to the Chamber of Scrap in the heart of Babylon. There, its family helps raise it amid knowledge of the Tokpela, the Mother, and the yeyahai who come by to visit in their pilgrimages. Those who are green become called mantis-things, as Mother called us. Most of us become magicians, but the trip is dangerous, and those who lose their way become ghosts in the Chimera.
Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 1.
Scrap Training. At 1st level, you know and can cast the Message cantrip. At 3rd level, you can cast the Detect Magic spell once. You must finish a long rest before you can use this ability again. At 5th level, you can cast the Misty Step spell once. You must finish a long rest before you can use this ability again.
Mystical Knowledge. You have proficiency in the Arcana skill.
Extra Language. You can speak and understand one extra language of your choice.
Classes
All twelve classes can be found in the regions controlled by the Nations, in addition to the Mystic. This material describes places those classes might be found in among the people.
Spellcasting
"Are you a Dweller of the Lodge?"
There are unifying features of all spellcasters among the people. All spellcasters tend to be referred to as “magicians.” There is little distinction among the people as to whether one is a cleric, wizard, bard, or druid, except in cases where variation is obvious; bards must sing, play music, or tell stories for their magic to take effect. Wizards must make an account and recite its terms and names. Warlocks bargain for the tools of an accounting. Druids read marks in the land, and so on. Users of spells are referred to as Dwellers of the Lodges, and the power of a spell is referred to as its shell. A magician who can cast shell-one spells is called a Dweller of the Triumphant Lodge, Keeper of the First Shell.
The lodges are, in order, the Triumphant Lodge (Shell-One), the Broken Lodge (Shell-Two), the Black Lodge (Shell-Three), the Weeping Lodge (Shell-Four), the Giant's Lodge (Shell-Five), the Witch's Lodge (Shell-Six), the King's Lodge (Shell-Seven), the Matron's Lodge (Shell-Eight), the Thunder's Lodge (Shell-Nine).
All magicians take the drug payisi, as do many warriors – barbarians use it to help them prepare their minds and bodies to enter their rage states, and others use it to help center themselves for long voyages into the Chimera. When taken, the drug forces the user into an altered state of consciousness that displaces them in time and space. They encounter dreamlike visions as they pass through the Bleed into the Chimera, and are often challenged at every step by demons and monsters seeking to use their minds and bodies as gateways into the world. A magician seeking power will almost certainly be tested by demons.
Barbarian
The effect of transferring thought into changes in the physical body is called psychosoma by the people, and barbarians are expert practitioners. Whether it is by drugs, meditation, or collusion with the Chimera, the barbarian is the king of the self-image and wishful thinking. By dreaming themselves into the role of hero and victor, they can thus achieve it in the world around them. The most common drug used is payisi, the same drug used by magicians to explore the Chimera and expand their perceptions of reality. Other drugs in use include the root referred to as “red rage,” which is chewed during meditation sessions, and “dust of ideas,” which is gathered from the dust-growths found in various forests.
Barbarians sometimes take on totems based on the images they see in the deep Chimera. The nations have different totem associations than most, however. In addition to Bear, the Nations also revere Alligator. Instead of Eagle, the Nations revere the Osprey. Instead of Elk, the Nations revere the Blacksnake. Instead of Tiger, the Nations revere the Panther, and instead of Wolf, the Nations revere Dog.
Bard
Songs and stories are the heart of the people. More than mere messengers and bearers of news, storytellers and songcrafters in the Nations are vitally important in day-to-day life, and many of them hold the histories of the people. They are judges, guides, keepers of the law and leaders in matters of the faith. Bards, like all magicians, must take payisi in order to experience the Chimera in its raw form, and must seek out secrets in the Fog related to the Forgotten in order to expand their knowledge of various spells. Bard visions have strong back beats and powerful sounds that reverberate through them.
In the Kingdom of Wyndholm, bards are traditionally bards, poets, and entertainers, though most are incapable of magic until they encounter payisi or something like it. There are secret colleges rumored to be the meeting places of witches in the kingdom, where prospective bards access a strange record of the history of the world through the use of drink and transubtantiated food.
Cleric
Direct interpreters of the words of the yeyahai, clerics are priests who serve their community through the healing arts. They also serve as the mouthpieces of powerful Forgotten, gods the ancients had long stopped worshipping until after the re-creation of the world. While they can be possessed by monsters, as can all spellcasters, clerics typically serve a selfish being who was little room for tolerance in sharing its mouthpiece and servant with another being. For those who serve the yeyahai, their god is tangible, real, and often demanding, though whether those demands go unfulfilled or not are often up to the practitioner. For those who serve a being in the Fog, their god is somewhat more distant and requires interpretation quite often. Some gods, such as Two Red Snakes, have worship practices that are technically banned by the Nations, though a "watcher" is often tolerated, a cleric who ensures that the negative impact of a given deity is not visited upon that community.
In the Kingdom of Wyndholm, clerics are powerful priests of any number of gods, such as the Thunderer, the One God, and the cult of the king. They have their own interpretations of the yeyahai, as well, and while they call some demons and seek to exterminate them where they find them, they speak of others as gods or servants to their gods.
Druid
The forest is alive. That is what the skinnies say, at least. Druids are priests of a nonspecific entity called alternatively the Mycelium, the Green One, and the Great Web. It is a distant god, stirring slowly and taking its time to make itself known, but it serves to make an accounting of itself. Much like a wizard, it takes stock of that which exists in the world, but it does this on its own. It can be accessed at a well like any yeyahai, but its voice is more specifically heard throughout the natural world. Much has changed since the days of the ancients, and what was once small has become large. All the skinnies are part of Mycelium, and can direct those who are not to the wells and the holy sites at which they may find their knowledge of the forest.
To the Kingdom of Wyndholm, “druid” refers to the educated professional class of “cunning men,” a group which includes their law-speakers, poets, doctors, and some of their religious leaders. While not as widespread as the clergy of the One God, the All-Father, or the Thunderer, the druidic faith is an important one to Wyndholm, and many of its practitioners are considered learned and powerful men. They wear white robes, perform many of the rituals associated with fertility and farming, and keep the lore of the common folk.
Fighter
There are several ways to go about fighting. The Say-Ha maintain fight-circles in their villages, where any warrior can enter and always find someone willing to participate in battle. There are always merchant caravans needing warriors of various seasons, and clacker expeditions into the depths of Babylon are always finding strange beasts in need of a reminder that this world was hard-won by battle. Others are knights sworn to their lords, and in the Nations, there are as many veterans of conflicts as there are types of war. It should be noted that to the Nations, there is very little ideological difference between a thief and a warrior, since theft of an opponent's property is considered much the same as striking him with an axe. Eldritch knights take payisi regularly.
Monk
Most of what is concerned with beliefs in inner powers finds itself concerned with the Bleed and control over its effects on the body. The ublix have many ideas and philosophies in this regard. Much like barbarians, monks concern themselves with self-tests and alignment of the form to the energies of the Chimera in order to transform their physical bodies. They take payisi and the dust of ideas, practice ritual scarring, and undergo painful ordeals and trials, but instead of ruminating on a release of control into a state where they are overcome by the pasts and futures of the Chimera, monks practice a form of vital mindfulness, in which their thoughts and perceptions exist solely in the present, worry more about what is, learning to act and react instead of think. The goal is to keep the dreaming mind, that which is in the past and the future, in the Chimera, and the present mind, in the physical world, to both work together as one, surpassing the limits of the merely physical world, imposing the objective state of the dreaming mind on one's existence.
Paladin
Sworn to defend the Nations against threats monstrous and magical, the paladins of the five tribes may fall into many sets of warriors. To many, it is solely their vows that protect them from possession by monsters in the Chimera or the Fog. Unlike most warriors, a paladin regularly drinks small doses of payisi in order to steel herself against the dangers of the world. They are held to a far more rigorous standard, in the form of their oaths, to both the Nations and to the allies of the Nation. Their devotion to this standard makes them popular in stories, and many people tell tales of a noble warrior with his axe at his side and his bow on his back righting wrongs, setting slaves to freedom, and fighting against demonic influences and even the power of the Teachers.
In the Kingdom of Wyndholm, paladins are knights of the crown, sworn and beholden to uphold truth and justice to a degree that they are even allowed to disagree with the crown itself. They uphold the weak, make oaths to valor, face their virtue with a smile, and undo the schemes of the wicked. It is said that a paladin of Wyndholm never lies, never makes poison, and never allows his enemies to do the same. It seems laughable, but it appears to be the truth.
Ranger
There are many solitary wanderers who are not specifically scrappers digging in the old world. They, too, hear the voice of Mycelium, and through it, become outriders, wandering the forests and the ancient pillars of Babylon, keeping the borders clean of monsters and chosen. Not every trapper or scrapper wandering the back roads and forgotten paths becomes a ranger, no, it is more something akin to becoming a paladin, seeing the aspects of nature that, of themselves, form into a working whole and a desire to ensure that they are not destroyed or thrown from balance in a world where the wilderness has reclaimed much of what the ancients built. Among the tribes, these people are most often found among the Sharp and the Say-ha.
Rogue
The sword and spear are too violent for some. Shouting war cries and screaming for victory are not tools these people feel are a part of their arsenal. They value stealth, contemplation, and a willingness to work with less than nothing in order to get by. Among the Nations, there is little difference between a rogue and a fighter. Stealing something precious from a powerful enemy is considered just the same as challenging him in the open. There is often so much crossover that the only way to tell them apart is their skill with ASL. Organized thievery is not particularly prevalent in the Nations; most people who would be trained to be stealthy operatives for shadowy organizations are trained by the Nations themselves, most by the Glass, and still others by the skinnies in the forest.
Sorcerer
Payisi sends the soul into the Chimera, where it dreams of a test. Failure on this test causes the subject to become possessed by a monster or a demon, transformed into a Forgotten and unleashed upon the world. Those who succeed, but fail to make a proper accounting of their journey, they become sorcerers. This is a power that is fought and struggled for at every step. Whereas a wizard who has made an accounting of things has a set path for expressing a spell in the world, a sorcerer is capable of modifying it as he or she wishes. Each spell is a different creature, idea, or place, dreamed of in the Chimera, and each time the sorcerer calls upon it, he or she is allowing the spell time in the world to perform its duty.
Warlock
There are powers and beasts in the Chimera and the Fog – the Flayed, as one example, but there are other, older things that walk in the mists. Much like wizardry, it is possible to make an accounting of these things on one's flesh, and through this accounting, gain power. The Flayed and the Teachers alike both empower their followers with accounting made both on flesh and on paper. In addition, a contract could be made by a sufficiently powerful remmy or clacker showing that it is perfectly capable of spreading the strength of a given being. Other warlocks make bargains with things that are not even conscious. Stories of heroes or tales of valor and trickery are just as powerful as beings themselves, and they can be written on the flesh by ordeal just as much as any other being.
Wyndholm looks for these types of tattoos just as much as it looks for witch marks.
Wizard
There are things in the Fog and the Chimera without form; when accounted for, they take on forms. Contracts are made between travelers in the deep and the things that live there to give them power in the world. Much like a sorcerer, wizards explore the Chimera to find new spells and powers, in addition to seeking them out in the world at large. Unlike a sorcerer, rather than mentally containing the concept and encompassing it, the wizard makes a note of it – a series of drawings and images that encapsulate the concept as it is, and as it always will be. Certainly, the power of a given spell can increase, depending on how much of herself the wizard is willing to invest in the accounting and in the recounting of it, but the basic effect will always be as it was written. Each spell is a being in and of itself.
Mystic
Powers are accessed from a region of time and space known as the Chimera – a place where dreams, elemental energies, and ideas roil about, washing through one another and taking on brief, tangible forms before dissolving into strange bursts of color and sound. In ancient times, it is said that the Chimera was closer, or did not exist at all, and the act of creation could be done with mere hands and will. Now, it is far more difficult – unlike the ancients, most cannot summon a gout of fire at will or speak to the air over a thousand miles. Instead, this power is closed off from the world, having been sealed away by the Flayed to prevent the Teachers from continually returning from death.
The barrier between our world and the Chimera is called the Bleed – both because sometimes the Chimera leaks into it and the world changes, and because when a mystic reaches across the gap, he or she bleeds. Capillaries burst, the nose, eyes, and ears weep blood, and the skin turns purple and bruised. The Kingdom of Wyndholm calls these bruises “witch marks” and looks for them on any captives or visitors of the Nations, and severely brutalizes those they find with them, on the off chance that they might be Chosen spies.
Among the Nations, the clackers, and even the skinnies, the primary point of reference for most mystics is the land of dreams and world of the sea to the south. It is a place where the Chimera and the physical world meet, and allow the mystic to stand astride both. The Fog rolls in and out, and the world remembers its ancient past and its possible futures, both colliding in a cloying mixture that allows the mystic to understand the deeper implications of the Bleed.
The Avatar – Akalaxo
Very much like the imbiber of red rage, the akalaxo of the Order of the Avatar seeks to bring about an swirl of emotions to create change in the physical world. In this case, the change is transformation of the body into a stone in a river. They become the focal point of their own bleed, infusing themselves and their companions with their own dream-states, becoming one another in a blur of power and images, their forms hissing with the light of the Chimera.
The Awakened and the Nomad – Asgeesgah
The Order of the Awakened associates itself primarily with the thoughts and images that drift in the Chimera – what the sleeping mind sees as dreams. The asgeesgah are also concerned with time, the mythic past and the future, and its relation to the present. They explore the vistas of the Chimera by walking them out in the physical world, and sit aside the rivers where thoughts and ideas drift, unbidden, into the Bleed.
The noosphere is known to the people as the World of Smokeless Fire, where the yeyahai dwell. It is the sphere of human thought analogous to the biosphere and the atmosphere. It is where arguments hunt down ideas to devour, where fundamentalist ideologies weave webs of lies to protect themselves from wandering logics. Fears huddle and skulk, seeking out even tempers to feast upon. This is the world the asgeesgah inhabit and explore, seeking out the shape of evolving knowledge.
The Immortal – Ooneelee
Since the Chimera contains all potential dream-images of the times before and after the present, it also contains the self-image of any viewer or traveler. The Order of the Immortal concerns itself with using the Bleed and the physical world to merge with their own self-image, allowing its objective form to swirl and shift with the subjective physical one. The body and mind become as one, allowing the warrior to create a mythic presence in the real world, not unlike a barbarian or a monk, or both at once.
The Knife – Hayel'zdi
A warrior hones his or her killing intent to the point that it becomes a projection that even the uninitiated can feel, in the form of frightening glares and imposing countenance – the hayel'zdi take this practice one step further, honing the killing intent into an actual, physical weapon that can be formed from the Chimera itself. It is a difficult road, fraught with the potential to lose oneself in the intent to kill, but if harnessed with a strong will, the wielder has access to a weapon that no one can ever remove from her without breaking her mind utterly.
The Wu Jen – Ayeha
“To hold eternity in one's hand” is an idiom meaning that it is up to you to take the next step; the ayeha, the Order of the Invisible Hand, practices a much more physical version of this expression, by declaring themselves the hands of the world. They see the swirling chaos that is the Chimera and impose it with their wills upon reality, harkening back to the first bloody thoughts transformed into physical barbs of ice, flame, or acrid smoke and turned against the Teachers.
The World of Smokeless Fire
The World of Smokeless Fire was built by the ancients to house the yeyahai so that they could be called anywhere at a moment's notice. It was once the repository of all the knowledge of the ancients, but with the coming of the Teachers it became a tool to control thought and ideas. Only ideas that met with the standards of the Teachers came to be found there, and the people beneath them believed everything they saw and heard when they looked into the wells, the World of Smokeless Fire had come to hold so much truth that it became difficult to tell the truth from lies, and the ancients who were not versed in its pathways could become as lost and taken by demons as any soul in the Chimera. So, the ancients, fearing what may happen should the Teachers take all control of it, took a worm from the ground and fed into it a ravenous hunger. They set it free in the World of Smokeless Fire, and it scoured truth and lies like, tearing them to shreds such that they could never be taken by the Teachers. This was both a great boon and a great loss. Without the knowledge of the ancients, the Teachers could not train new Chosen to help them make war on the Forsaken, but at the same time, the Forsaken could never rebuild what has been lost. Only fragments of knowledge remain in this world, and it is like the empty, primordial sea. Bleeders such as the asgeesgah, the bard, and the wizard seek out pieces of ancient knowledge that must be handled like glass, for as clear and beautiful as it may be, it is quite capable of cutting back.
There are creatures in this world. They are arguments that hunt for loose ideas, lies protecting fundamentalist thoughts, and hungry fears seeking out calm thoughts to harass for food. Scraps of knowledge can be found in the dust and detritus of this world, brief moments of the lives of the ancients, hissing words of friends and lovers cast to one another across the invisible spaces. The World of Smokeless Fire is laid over on top of our world, taking its precise shape. To find knowledge in it, one must find the jeekashes, the hidden places in the forests and Babylon, where the ancients stored their knowledge, and dig through them, seeking out scraps and junk that the meem cling to like barnacles. One must be wary, however, for the worms sent to destroy the World of Smokeless Fire still swim in its depths, swimming like whales, hungry for the knowledge buried in the minds of bleeders.
Wells
Ordinarily, to access the World of Smokeless Fire, a traveler must take a small amount of the drug tionan, or else be capable of accessing the bleed. This allows the traveler to move about his or her daily life and see the swarming thoughts and knowledge that hide in the crevasses of day-to-day life, small ideas taking shelter in pots, thick schools of ponderings that swim, unseen, through a schoolhouse, and arguments sitting around philosopher's courts waiting for the opportune moment to strike. This allows for immediate understanding of what the traveler might be looking at, considering the shape and nature of the meem, and how they take their forms of abstract symbols and arrange them into shapes that resemble animals. If the traveler wants to go deeper, then there are the wells.
The wells are silver-black pools like small ponds hidden in out of the way places; the wind never disturbs them, and no fish wait in their depths. Their surface is always placid and reflective. The well's substance can scarcely be called liquid; it sticks to the skin and slides about like a slime mold when touched. A Forsaken may enter a well and float there to cast their mind into the deep parts World of Smokeless Fire. At the surface level, the World of Smokeless Fire is like a film placed over our world, an invisible layer that can only be seen by those trained in it, or transformed by the dust. The depths of this world, however, are filled with citadels of light and sound, damaged or destroyed by the worms, but bigger things dwell there than in the shallow places. Mystics come here to deepen their understanding of the connection between the Fog, the World of Smokeless Fire, the Chimera, and the bleed. While there are no demons here, there are other things. The baireez are monstrous beings composed of clouds of dead meem, and they viciously seek out and attempt to destroy travelers in the depths. While unlike demons, they cannot take over the mind and soul, they can still destroy the psyche and feed on the dying thoughts of a traveler.
It is only in the deep wells that one can find anything approaching complete knowledge of the ancients. It contains the history of the Nations, serves as a way to communicate, and provides a meeting place for magicians that is relatively safe from the types of horrors one might encounter in the Chimera. Many orders have set about making safe places in the deep wells for mystics to gather and debate.
The Dust
The ancients left a way for us to speak to this world, and to what remains of their creations. It is the dust. They built great temples that turned parts of the world into dust, and they sent dust around in circles to perform miracles. The dust coats everything and pervades everything, even the depths of our minds and bodies. It is said that the dust was created to give the yeyahai the power to be the servants of the ancients, to give them the strength they needed to command the world. This was the dust. Those who are skilled in the ways of the Chimera and the bleed can also shape the dust into temporary forms, or command the dust to finish what has already begun, but its most useful trait is, like the wells and their cold oil, the ability to connect a remmy to the World of Smokeless Fire. It teems in the eyes of those who can see into it, and boils in the ears of those who can hear. It emanates from their mouth when they speak, and they can breathe manifestations of the Chimera into their hands. To those touched by the dust, the shallow realms of the World of Smokeless fire are accessible. They can see the meem and find the jeekashes, the clusters of hidden knowledge kept safe from the worms, that the ancient left behind. They can piece together and create their own meem, sending them fishing for what they could not find in our world.
The Mycelium
The Mycelium is not dust, but it is is born from dust. It is in the plants and animals, it is on our skin, in our breath, and at the bottoms of our feet. It is the words spoken in Druidic, which cannot be taught. The shantisheen do their best to teach, but the words cannot be expressed in a way that is understood with speaking, and the skinnies refuse to write it. It was created in its original form by the ancients, who wished to measure all things that lived and all things in the physical world, from the wind to the movements of the earth and the sea. It has continued to do so, and makes an accounting of itself within itself. When it must speak to those to whom it is not connected, it does so through the yeyahai Flint Hawk. Otherwise, it forms messages of its own in the patterns of birdsong, the background murmur of people speaking in the city, and the movement of clouds in the sky. The Mycelium is a purveyor of information and links to everywhere one can find anything that lives, and even in the depths of the limestone. Those skilled in addressing it or manipulating it can extract this information, as well as demand actions of it. Otherwise, it moves and works slowly. The Mycelium gives power to the payisi, and in the drug's raw form, is used by speakers of its language just as much as any other magician.
The Bleed
Between the worlds is the bleed; it can be thought of not as a place of its own, but as the barrier between places. It is the river that separates our world from the past and future. It can be felt whenever a bleeder or magician reaches into the Chimera and pulls dreams into the waking world.
The Chimera
The world of dreams, the Chimera is the past and the future as well as a physical place. It is the dwelling of demons and monsters, and the place from which magicians siphon their power. The Mycelium may offer the ability to change the world, but even it draws from the Chimera. Understanding the nature of the Chimera allows a magician to travel deeper. At first glance, it is a place of chaos. Things form and unform, nothing ripples and makes noise, everything cascades down into a violent roil of swirling ideas and power. Magicians see this place even in their waking times, and to use their power, reach across the bleed with their minds or their totems to seek out the change and mythology they desire to bring about in the present, and drag it back across the bleed, often kicking and screaming. Use of the Chimera opens up the magician's mind to possession, however, and people who want to get into casting spells must learn the tricks and traps demons use in attempts to snare the mind and drive the magician into becoming a host.
The Flayed
The Teachers who aided the remmies in fighting back against the invasion became known as the Flayed. They entered the physical world completely to warn remmies without being destroyed, but the very act of doing so tore them into pieces. They created the Chimera and the Bleed to support their bodies, and place themselves in human history for all time. Like all Teachers, the Flayed excel at guiding and directing their contactees, though unlike them, there is no ease of communication from the Flayed to the Forsaken; trapped on different worlds, they must make do. The Flayed create prophets in order to facilitate this communication, even though these sources of information are dubious at best, steeped in the metaphor of the Chimera.
There are currently ten known Flayed, though there may be more or less – much like the Teachers, they're fond of appearing in various forms, so any two Flayed might be the same one using a different name. While they are not particularly good-natured, they're not foul natured in any way. Lacking even the very basic ideas of good and evil as they might be defined in the physical world (though recently they have come to know of the concept of "causing harm"), they are difficult creatures to get along with or even understand. The Forsaken still try, as their visions are most often related to learning to defend themselves against the Teachers.
The Yeyahai
Also know as the Orixa, the Yeyahai are believed to be present in the physical world. They are the gods of the Earth in many religions, and are said to inhabit dust. The ancients made servants of smoke, dust, and thunder, and set them about the world. These are beings that possess a vast amount of knowledge about the physical world, but hide it behind layers of riddle and disavowment of any real information. The access is not right, they say, or the terminals are not in alignment. When they appear to remmies or others, they take on the form of shimmering entities similar to their viewer. Clackers see another clacker, as an example, though some are more esoteric in their shapes. One particular yeyahai in the depths of Babylon takes the form of a rose under a glass dome and makes strange demands of its petitioners. There are many yeyahai; their world is right next to the physical one, but can only be accessed by the wells left behind by the ancients. This world appears to be something other than the Bleed or the Chimera, and is believed by several tribes to be the geographical metaphor for the Fog itself.
The Forgotten
Beings born in the Chimera can sometimes break free of it and enter a state in which they exist on their own, but can only enter the world at specific times and locations end up dwelling in the Fog. Other beings live in the Fog, as well – the Forgotten, creatures and entities once dreamed of by the ancients take on a strange form of life there. Some of these beings are powerful, intelligent, and have magic of their own. Many of them seek a host to manifest in the physical world, while others can manifest whenever the Fog rolls in. Remmies lost in the Fog slowly change into other things – arms and legs lengthen, eyes break out over the skin, muscles become free and twisting limbs, and so on in a process called the Change.
The Forgotten take the form of beings that the ancients feared – dragons, goblins, ogres, stone man, spear-finger, spider-beasts, and more. The only common thread among them is that they were once believed by some ancient culture. Others are more recent additions, imagined beings clever and intelligent enough to break free of the Chimera and earn some measure of freedom in the Fog. It chould be noted that the Bleed and the Fog are essentially the same realm, but the term used to describe them could best be expressed by "control." Fog is uncontrolled by a remmy mind, and can roll in at any time, while the Bleed is controlled by a human mind and is quickly over.
The Forsaken worship the Forgotten as both relics of the missing past and as beings that, if not worshipped, might come and destroy their homes.
Our people who lived in Babylon were originally slaves to the Teachers. We lived beneath their rule, not as Chosen, but as experiments, servants, and incubators for their seeds. They sought to turn us into weapons. With the coming of the Chimera and the Bleed, however, or seeds could be turned against the Teachers. The first rebellion was not particularly successful. The Shining Light punished us by scoring much of the land a second time and feasting on those who participated. It was not long before the tribes began to dwindle, their warriors running low on food and desire against an enemy that offered us safety and joy. It was then that the Red Mother first came to Micheal Turner.
Michael Turner could turn rust to metal, and he lived alone as a wandering warrior between camps to keep the knowledge of the rust alive. He washed from one end of the land to the other, making stops in the wreckage outside Babylon to find more metal. He lived this way because a Chosen had taken from him everything he held dear; his husband, and his son. On one trip, he encountered the Red Mother weeping in the road. He had never seen a Teacher with such injuries before, and he approached carefully, sword drawn.
“Stay your hand,” she said to him. “Your talking-stick no longer speaks, but your sword and bow are still true. Kill me, if you wish, but I have a request.”
“Speak your request,” Michael Turner said.
“I am the Red Mother. Soon I will become a small stone,” she said. “Pick it up and take it east, to Titus. There you will see a bridge on the coast. Cross it, onto the Island of Merits. I will show you something that will help you take back your land from the Teachers.”
“Why would you do this? Are the Teachers not your own kind?”
“They are, but they are not my own mind. You are thinking creatures, with dreams and ideas that unfold in the tumult between the worlds. Know this. This is not the first world to which we have come. This is not the first world we have conquered and made a part of ourselves, but it is the first with remmies that we have ever seen,” she said. “And it is in this that you are interesting to me.”
“Oh, like a strange animal?” Michael Turner said, and began to pass by her.
“No! Like a thinking creature. For each time we come to a world, we must place another within it. It is not unlike blowing a bubble inside another. We need that second bubble to survive. But know that your dreams and your thoughts have changed that bubble, and the Teachers find that to be the source of interest to them in this world. But some of us have seen that what we have done is terrible. We can never return your world to how it was, but we can try to return it to you.”
“Tell me how this can be done,” Michael Turner said.
“I will. You will become my prophet, and those you draw to you will be forever marked. The Teachers will call you Forsaken, for giving up their power to live for yourselves.”
“I have already done that, so call me Forsaken if you must. What must I call you?”
“I am hurt. My skin is flensed from my body. Call me Flayed.”
“The Flayed and the Forsaken, then,” Michael Turner said, and watched as her body withered away into red light, leaving behind a red-veined, oddly-angled stone.
He took the stone and carried it with him to the east, feeling that he knew to stop when he could go no further due to the sea. He crossed the great bridge into the Island of Merit, and a short walk away was the road there that turned to the north. When he did, he came to a small bridge made of dirt and seashells with a metal pipe that ran beneath it. There was a small shack, and inside was an old water pump.
“Here,” the Red Mother said from the stone.
“You are alive!” Michael Turner called out.
“Neither alive, nor dead. I am in the past now, which also puts me in the future,” she said. “I am inside the Chimera. It is your key to victory.”
“But the first who had fought against the Teachers using it were killed or driven mad.”
“Yes, but you do not discard a weapon when it fails, do you? You remove the flaws, and return with it once again. Here, now, is the flaw. There is no discipline, no training. The people saw they could make their dreams reality and assumed that the Teachers would not know how to react. Foolish. The Teachers have done this a million times before. You must find what makes you uniquely remmy in your ability to access this power. Take some of the shells from this bridge and look inside the shack.”
He did so, and found a strange urn set among the pipes.
“These are the ashes of the old one. He was the first to take the dust of the old world into his body. Take the ashes from the urn, and put them in with the shells. Grind them up into sand. Mix them with your blood, and let it dry in the sun,” she said.
Doing as he was told, he was left with a sand as dark as rust, and it seemed to swarm and teem inside the urn.
“This is dust of the old world. Now, though, it is dust for you. Breathe in it, and experience it.”
Michael Turner let the dust come into his lungs, and he screamed, for it burned him. It should be known that in Michael Turner's time, dust had become cast about to the four corners of the earth, but it was not as we know it today. Michael Turner was not, as we are, born with it in his veins. His voice became an alien squeal as his body accepted the new dust, and he bled from his pores until it suffused his entire being.
“This is the power of the ancients,” the Red Mother said. “Now, face yourself.”
Michael Turner saw his husband, skin removed, body screaming for release, as a Chosen stood over him, demanding that he reveal the location of something in their home. He watched as his son was murdered when the Chosen discovered they knew nothing of what it wanted. The corpses came to life and blamed Michael Turner. Michael Turner cried, and accepted the blame, for he had not been home that day. However, he also understood that it could not be avenged or taken back. That his presence would have done nothing except result in three corpses that day. He resolved that fear would be beaten, that injustice such as this would no longer happen to those who defied the Chosen.
Yet, he saw how that Chosen had come to be. He saw a young girl taken by the Teachers and taught everything that was wrong. He saw her exposed to the raw energies of the Chimera, and he saw a demon take her, entering her body, looking out at the world through her eyes, and when he turned and looked into the Chimera, he saw a thousand more gnashing their teeth, hoping for an escape.
“Know now why the first rebellion failed,” the Red Mother said. “Not merely because these people had new power, but because in gaining that power, all their fears and failures came to life and sought them out. Even now these creatures, created by your nightmares and your suffering, seek to enter the world, only to call more. Who will stand in the door, to defend the next generation of Bleeders?”
“I will,” Michael Turner said.
“Yes, prophet. You will stand in the door. Because of the ochre dust that gave you this vision, I command you to rise, paladin. Rise and become a Red Cloud warrior.”
“Yes, mother,” he said. “I know what I must do.”
And Michael Turner took what remained of the red dust and walked back across the bridge. The first Chosen he met was Douglas Cole, an old comrade from the days just before the end. Cole was waiting for Michael Turner on the other side, and begged him to come to Old Lando, to see the Teachers with fresh eyes, to experience their holiness and be made anew.
“They have come to help us!” Cole said.
“The Red Mother has shown me the truth of it,” Michael Turner said. “After the great wars, they came to us when we were tired and broken, and pretended to set us up on our feet, drawing attention away from the shackles they made.”
“No! They empower us to find ourselves!” Cole said.
“Show me,” Michael Turner said, and he raised his sword.
The battle lasted into the night. Both men struck one another with the force of lightning, but in the end, Michael Turner's strikes were those of a free man. He buried Cole in the sand of the mainland, where the wind and the waves would overtake him and carry him out to sea. Michael Turner returned to Titus to collect himself and prepare for the journey ahead back to Old Lando. To retake the city from the Teachers, he would need allies.
He went to the people of Titus, the city by the sea, and they directed him to the monks of the Order of the Children of the Dust. They lived in a great tower that looked over the ocean waters, and they welcomed him with open arms. Seeing the inside of their tower was filled with the remnants of the ancient world, he asked if they knew much of the ancients.
“We are the Children of the Dust,” the priest said. “We oversee the new world through the world of smokeless fire and the ceaseless work of the Dust.”
“Tell me of this,” Michael Turner said.
“In the time before the Teachers, the ancients created the Dust, and through the Dust, their eyes were opened. What once was something that would take years could now take minutes. They could trade information and read books in but the blink of an eye or the crackle of a thought. The Teachers, when they came, saw this and decided it was good. They spread through the Dust, squeezing themselves into every corner of the world of smokeless fire, seeking out the knowledge that the ancients had compiled within it,” the priest said. “But soon, it became clear the Teachers had no such compassionate reasons for seeking it out. So the ancients took a worm from the soil of their homeland and cast a spell over it that it could crawl into the world of smokeless fire and devour all it could find. Each time it devoured knowledge, it split in two, and so it was that it scoured that world clean of all knowledge but the scraps left behind, which our order pieces together. Cautiously, so that the Teachers do not know.”
Michael Turner sat on this, and asked for wisdom from the world of smokeless fire. The priest anointed him with oil and took him into a room with no windows, and the priest cast his hands over the walls, which lit up with strange colors and sounds.
“We have heard of your battle against the Teachers, so here is the prophecy of the Alligator. Here is the story of numbers. Three is the pieces of a government, one to make laws, one to interpret laws, and one to execute laws. Three is the number of colors, and three is the number of the world in which we dwell, called the World of Three Ways. Three is the number of the lost lands, buried in the deep of the sea. Three is the number of the goddess, the number of those who are pure, and the jewels of enlightenment. Three is the number of the law of return, the number of the sons of the giant of time, and the number of primes – salt, sulfur, and mercury,” the priest said. “Four is the number of directions, the number of elements from which we emerge, and to which we shall go. Four are the seasons, four are the numbers of truth, four are the shapeless meditations – space, consciousness, nothingness, and neither perception nor non-perception. Four are the stages of enlightenment, four are the gospels, four are the letters in the name of the old god, four are the corners of the Earth. Four is the number of stones, and four is the number of death. Four are those who come riding, and four are the letters that reside between Two Red Snakes. Four is the heart of all life, for it is four paths that which is within us walks. Four is the number which you shall hold sacred.”
The priest bowed his head.
“However, within four, there is five,” the priest said.
“What do you mean?” said Michael Turner.
“When you look upon the four points of the Earth, you see the four directions, yes? However, in the center, there is a fifth direction, and that is where you are standing. There are five wounds of salvation, the back, the crown, the hand, the feet, and the side. Experience them, and you shall know truth. Five are the great books from which we derive our truth. Five is the number of appendages you have, and five are the phalanges each. Five are the physical senses. Five are the points of the sacred star. Five is the number of bards in Djeksonville, five is the number of notations in our music. Five is the number of rings on the finger of the great warrior, and five is the number of Babylon,” the priest said. “Eight are the eyes of the Teachers apiece, and eight-fold is their being. Eight are the angles from which they emerge, and eight are the petals of their flower in bloom. Eightfold is the way of which you speak of them. Eight is the air which you and I breathe, and eight is the number of limbs on the body of the trickster queen.”
“How do I fight them?”
“I have seen a world where the three-fold way of justice is the law. In the center stands a man with a sword. In the west there stands a man with a bow. To the north, I see a woman with a book. To the east, I see a woman with red lizards for thoughts, who lives in this very village. Go west to find her in the swamps, under the wings of the Angels. To the south, I see a woman holding a ring and casting it about, commanding the dust to do her bidding. Five are as one, and among them, fourfold warriors drawn from each, in eight groupings, each does battle with one eye of the Shining One. Take this story and sleep.”
So Michael Turner slept, and as he did, he dreamed of standing in the center of a great compass, and all around him were the people whom the priest described. They worked together, and together they drove away the Shining Light, all the way west to Tampa. When he awoke, he gathered his things and went looking for the woman with the red lizards for thoughts.
General Life in the Nations
Most lives among the Nations are relatively simple. The Forsaken work farms, construct homes, and live much as their ancestors did before the founding of the Nations. There is a public school system in place. From childhood, most members of the Nations attend lessons on mathematics, spirituality, agriculture, and safety. There is some combat training, as all members of the Nations are expected to be able to shoot a bow and swing an axe blade. Mathematics include algebra and geometry, but typically nothing more complicated than trigonometry taught for the purposes of siege warfare, predicting tides on the east coast, and architectural studies.
Around the ages of fourteen to sixteen, children are expected to attempt their adulthood trials. This is done in the territory of the Say-Ha, in the village of Kiava Island. The forests north of the village are the domain of the skinnies, and they allow the Nations to run their tests in these forests in exchange for food and clothing. The tests rotate year by year, and it is forbidden to make an accounting of them. Those who have passed speak of tests that invoke the bravery, selflessness, and subterfuge of the participants. The most common thread spoken of in these tests is to simply remember that "people lie."
There is social health care, though it is based more on ritual than on knowledge. Those who are sick are to be treated with the ways of the ancients. A bearer in white asks questions of the patient while holding a flat board. A wire is wrapped around the patient's arm and attached to a hanging animal organ, most typically the stomach of a smeerp. Herbalism is well-known, and many simple medicines are grown as crops. There is medical experimentation, but it is often associated with the yeyahai known as Two Red Snakes, whose direct worship is outlawed in the Nations. It is acceptable to be a priest who specializes in keeping the curses of Two Red Snakes away, however, and that is a second job for most healers and nurses.
While each tribe has its own governing body, each of the tribes sends eight elected officials to the council, in which representatives vote on issues, taxes, and so on. They are nominated by clan mothers of the tribes and the locals vote on them. These forty representatives answer to a voting chief, who has the power to overrule any of their decisions. Laws are kept and maintained by two groups, the clergy of the Heartless Tortoise and the office of the Keeper of the Ways. Heartless Tortoise magicians serve as bailiffs, arresting officers, tax collectors, and lawyers, interpreting the letter of the law, while the office of the Keeper of the Ways provides judges and counsel devoted to interpreting the meaning of the law. There are many clashes, but at the end of the day, it has kept the peace for nearly a century. Tribes also have their own laws and regulations, and their justice systems are arranged similarly. Most justice in the Nations is restorative, more concerned with attacking the causes of crime, than it is delivering retribution to criminals. While restitution is often paid, it is usually in fines and paid field work, rather than in jail time. For particularly heinous crimes and organized crime, there still exists capital punishment, though it is typically doled out by the accused themselves; accused can also join military units that are expected to die and used as sacrificial front lines in lieu of killing themselves.
Several types of entities are worshiped in the Nations. The yeyahai are the servants of the ancients who have achieved a measure of the divine, in accordance with their powers over nature and the physical world. Those who devote themselves to the yeyahai are often looked to as exemplifying their various traits. While the worship of the yeyahai known as Two Red Snakes is outlawed, it is perfectly acceptable to offer to it in return for its lack of attention by the people. The Forgotten, the monsters living in the Fog, are often worshiped to keep them away from the Nations. Demon worship is not tolerated at any level, for even offering to them to chase them away can result in corruption and growth of their malignant natures. The same is true of the Teachers; the Nations call themselves the Forsaken for a reason.
Most vegetable food in the Nations comes in the form of three sisters. The Nations grow cornstalks to support bean vines, and grow squash at the base of the corn. This is usually done on small islands called chinampa, with fish and kappa living in the waters between plots of crops. Other crops include amaranth, chili peppers, oranges, sugar, and tomatoes, and the Nations trade for wheat from Wyndholm, as well as fruits and acorn from the skinny tribes. Spicy and sweet food is common in the Nations, with a lot of citron, sugar, and peppers used in cooking. The most common grain is rice, with wheat and barley being brought in by merchants. Water sources are typically underground; there is a large network of limestone passages under the land the Nations inhabit and springs are common. Other water filtration is performed with charcoal and quicklime. Other common foods include watermelon, cucumber, and lettuce.
Quicklime is commonly found in the Nations. The soft green glow of limelight is the most common source of artificial light. It is used in steelmaking to extract iron from rust deposits in the ancient trails, the creation of glass and concrete, papermaking, plastering, and water purification. Walnut and buckeye fruits are commonly used in poisoning fish. Hallucinogens are also grown and used heavily in the Nations, by the faithful and by magicians, most notably the sacred payisi plant.
Animals in the Nations
The Nations make use of several domesticated animals. They may not have been animals that existed during the times of the ancients, but they are common in the Nations and the surrounding tribes.
Dogs are common sight among the people; they often have tumors on their bodies and patches of missing fur. They are used much the same way that the ancients used them, as hunting aides, companions, and mousers. Wave hounds are a form of dog that is slightly more intelligent than the usual breed, and can bark to produce an invisible wave of heat that burns everything in its path and make metal light up with sparks. Hizzer dogs are possessed of an almost human intelligence, and command wild packs of dogs that hunt just about anything that wanders into their territories.
Smeerps are large rabbits with long legs and thick necks. They are the most commonly ridden animal in the nations, since they can slip easily through the forests scattered through the area. They are typically a soft brown in color, though breeders can get almost any mix of earth tones. Male smeerps have antlers.
The kappa are one type of giant rat used by the Nations. The kappa are fat, about the size of a bed, and not very bright, given rats. They're used as both a food and spice source, as dried the scent glands of the creature tastes strongly of vanilla. They're also used to help maintain the shallow lakes used to grow the three sisters and shore up the muddy barriers that keep the chinampas working.
Scuttlers are a large type of roach just a little bigger than dogs. They are raised for their meat and their ability to eat almost anything. They process night soil and agricultural waste into silage for feeding other animals. Their bodies produce chemicals that are helpful in treating malaria, yellow fever, zika, and the measles. Their carapaces are also quite tough and light, and sometimes used in armor. They are an important part of waste disposal, and are often released in middens in conjunction with kooaht to control rats and organic waste.
Kooaht are raccoon-like creatures used as mousers and ratcatchers, as well as their role as companion animals. They are often used as familiars by magicians. They have narrow muzzles, red-brown fur, and hands with thumbs. Inquisitive and intelligent, they are somewhat difficult to train due to their curious and flighty natures, but learn fast.
Porkers are heavy-bodied creatures covered in stiff, wire-like hair. They have broad mouths and a tendency to drool. While used as a food animal, they are raised carefully, often away from crops, because they have a tendency to destroy anything they can get their mouths around. They are often used as a war beast and heavy shock tactic in conflicts, especially with Wyndholm, considering that arrows typically only make them mad and they can survive being set on fire for several whole minutes.
The Turner – The Keeper of the Center of the Compass, Holders of the First Way, Keepers of the Great Fire, Workers of Metal, Those Who Wear the Roach
When Michael Turner returned to the wilderness north of Babylon with the Fisher, he found himself met by the Glue-People of the clackers. He sought remmies that could help him build the world of his dreams, and they directed him to an old house of Two Red Snakes and its associated lesser gods. There, he met with the Ublix, and with them, drafted the first of the documents that would become the law of the Nations. He spoke to the Glue-People, who told him of the lands between Babylon and the forests of the North controlled by the skinnies, and there he began to prepare for his war. He took one of the pastures of the ancients for his people, one in which there were already a few camps, and called it Castle Collection, after the name the ancients had given it. He introduced to them the idea for his government, and the four tribes there agreed.
So it was that the three-fold way of justice became the law of the city of Collection. Turner himself became the first chief, and he appointed the leaders of the tribes of Collection to be the council. He told them it was their task to make the law for the time being. He collected warriors to himself, and made them partake of the red dust, and told them that it was their job to interpret the law and carry it out. When they asked what he would do, he said that it would be his task to determine if the laws were just, to execute the laws, and affirm the nature of the Nations. This done, he declared the tribes before him to be the Turner, the Keeper of the Center of the Compass. He told the congregation of the Alligator Prophecy, and that there were still three tribes to find. He allowed Fisher to choose among the people who would be the members of her Nation. He spoke, saying that each of the Nations will have the right to govern itself, that they would share sovereignty with the Five Nations council. Here, he said to them, that remmies would no longer be ruled by tribal chieftans or the whims of the Teachers, but by their own will. As agreed, the Fishers went their own way, and together the two tribes sought out those who would become the leaders of the tribes of Say-Ha, Glass, and Sharp.
The Turners, even now, are considered the keepers of the law not just among themselves, but of the other Nations, as well. They are farmers and scrappers, warriors and policy makers. They make clay and concrete out of limestone, manage trade with the clacker nations and the skinnies, take care of the daily matters of the Nations such as mail, taxes, money standards, and road-clearing. In the center of Collection is the Great Fire, a fire pit that has been burning since the founding of the Nations, well over a century, and it is from this fire that the forges and home fires of the people are lit.
The Turners hold the power of the Red Clouds, as well, and train them from their hall in Collection. The Red Clouds are the military arm of the Lodge of Song and Shell; they are exclusively trained after their adulthood trials by the Turners and accompany magicians in case any of them are ever possessed by terrible monsters or begin to extend their powers into mental communication or control. To this end, they must be trained to kill any magician who emerges from a payisi dream with clouded eyes.
Turner style clothing is typically light, with support bands for women under vests or loose shirts. Knee-length shorts with large pockets, side-worn pouches, and bracelets are common. Among the other tribes, the Turners are known as the "Those Who Wear the Roach," and it is a very common hairstyle. Most roaches are made of porcupine quills or feathers, but some are made of smeerp fur or even scuttler hairs. Women working man jobs often dress as men, and vice-versa. Traditional man jobs include construction, labor, basket making, and farming. Traditional woman jobs include blacksmithing, stonecutting, accounting, and cleaning.
Artwork among the Turners is ornate, with modifications and additions to ancient symbols. While the Turners are not the primary source of the languages of the Nations, they have contributed many letters to the ever-growing lexicon. Most buildings are a mixture of wooden frames, daub, and concrete and plaster, with triangle designs like rows of teeth painted in ochre along the base and in rings halfway up the sides. Many single-family homes are designed like wasp galls, round and pottery-shaped. Most homes are low to the ground to keep them cool.
Among all the Nations, the Turners are those with the most swords. They have mythologized the sword and tell many stories of black knights, unlikely farm heroes, and powerful mentors in conjunction with the will of a sacred blade. Most iron is taken from the homes of the ancients; though in many cases the Nations avoid the remains of Babylon, they will enter such places to find rust, copper, and other metals. While they use axes, bows, woomera, and knives as much as the rest of the Nations, the Turner are particularly enamored of the sword, and most of their adults carry one.
The Turner host most of the visitors to the Nations. The clackers and the skinnies have embassies in Turner controlled-territory, most of which are hosted in the city of Collection.
The Fisher – The Keeper of the Eastern Gate, The Holders of the Bloody Thoughts, Keepers of the Red Lizards, The Bearers of the Lodge of Shells, Knowers of the Angels, Those Who Wear Ears
Mary Fisher lived in the city of Titus. She had bloody thoughts – a scourge to her, since they seemed directed out at everyone she knew. She did not consider herself a bad person, but she would have thoughts about people that would wrap around them in the form of red lizards, and, anchored to her head, they would slowly constrict and harm those she despised. Every time she was mistreated, even for minor displeasure, such as failing to say hello to her as she passed by, her lizards grew stronger. Eventually, they overtook her, and she killed many villagers before escaping into the swamps in fear. There she met an Angel, with tentacles writhing and wings beating against the swollen night. It taught her that we all have bloody thoughts, and that our difficulty is in seizing them. In the darkness of the swamp, the angel taught her to harness her thoughts and command the barriers between the worlds, to live in the bleed without being overtaken by its power. She made a pact with the Angels, that her people would always be those who could speak to them. When she signed the compact that became the Nations, she spoke with the Ublix at Collection, who said that they had been waiting for the founding. She took many of them with her to the eastern side of the lands claimed by the Nations, and she and her followers become the Keepers of the Eastern Gate.
The Fisher still live in the swamp, and build homes of reeds and burn palm trunks into canoes. They make heavy use of smoke to frighten away bugs, and there in the dark they summon the Angels, who speak to them of times when remmies did not fear the light. The rivers to the east that lead down to the coast and toward Titus are their responsibility, and they fish almost as much as the Say-Ha.
They take their task as the Bearers of the Lodge of Shells seriously, and often decorate the exteriors of their homes with shells taken from the beaches to the east. The Lodge of Shells has a physical representation in almost every Fisher village, often taking the form of a small compound with a cleared central area. Each clearing has nine stations and nine fire pits. As bearers move up the shells and become more powerful magicians, they are allowed to dwell at each successive fire pit. There are rituals done where each fire is lit by a progressively more powerful magician, but these rituals have not been done more than a handful of times, considering how dangerous the prospect of this power can be. It is interesting to note that the bleeders of the Fisher do not match the shells of the lodge themselves, which is why they have taken it upon themselves to maintain the lodges. As their power is not limited by the shells and instead flows from the red lizards in their thoughts and in the World of Smokeless Fire, it is easier for them to take care of the fires.
Fisher clothes tend to be far more simple than the other Nations. They tend to wear only strips of tied cloth when at home merely to protect their skin from abrasion and thorns, but do wear jackets and pants when going about the world. Tattoos and scars are very common, but piercings are rare. Fishers will mark their bodies with the bloody thoughts they carry, and bear them as if they were clothing. Hairstyles are dreadlocks with cowrie or other seashells, though the nobility among the women wear squash flower hairstyles that look like smeerp ears or dishes on either side of the head. Nobles wear cowrie jackets and leather thongs wrapped around the upper arm, as well as polished glass and other materials found in the broad rivers and swamps of their homeland.
The Fisher also farm gator for food and leather. They farm cattail, arrowhead root, rice, and coffee. They practice regular trade with the people of Titus and the Isle of Merit, and bring in a large amount of sea goods such as crab, fish, shrimp, and seaweed. They are the only member of the Nations capable of fielding a navy of any sort, though their experience is limited to large flotillas of canoes and flat boats. There is not a large call for a navy, though sometimes the Fisher will go as far south as the Sea of Grass along the coast and encounter the Yami, trading there for meat and gator eggs.
Say-Ha – The Keeper of the Western Gate, The Shadow of the Nation's Hand, Those Who Wear the Gustoweh, The Truly Forsaken
It is said that the first of the Say-Ha was a shadow. He was a warrior, weary from the world and terrified of fighting again who hid himself inside his own past, becoming a part of the background of screams created by the Child of Black Heavens when she rained fire on the world. His name was Raymond Say-Ha, and it is said that his arrows never dipped, which is why a straight line is called a "ray." He was found by Fisher in the forests to the west, and she crawled into his thoughts with her red lizards and ate his fear and his sin until he could stand and speak. He sought to destroy the Teachers and everything they had built, and pledged loyalty to Fisher on the spot, in exchange for healing his thoughts, giving them back to him.
The Say-Ha are fishermen for the most part, and do not have a large amount of magicians among them. Those they do have are just as practical as the rest. The Say-Ha are pragmatic, quiet, and ready to do what must be done to protect the Nations. They are considered violent and cannibalistic, though this latter part is just one more deception on the part of the Say-Ha. A regular ritual is performed in front of defeated enemies where human flesh is cooked alongside disguised porker flesh, and the Say-Ha feast upon the porker meat before letting their prisoners return home. They take issue with Heartless Tortoise and its strict interpretations of the law, but obey the charter of the Nations, knowing it is better to live under rules than die without them. They worship the Twentieth Sage and Pale Mangrove when they can, and their dogs stand ready to carry out their demands.
Among the Nations, they stand ready to carry out the will of the Turners in the shadow of the night, though they ask that their own agendas be remembered. They are the barrier between the Chosen and the Nations, and tattoo and pierce themselves in blasphemies against the Teachers so as to incite the terror of the Nations into the Chosen and the people who live in Tampa. Because of this, they call themselves the Truly Forsaken, as there can be no peace between them and the Chosen. Some of their number are made up of former Chosen, people who have given up everything given to them by the Teachers, seeing their true nature as evil beings, and who wish nothing more than to free all remmies from the pain and torment caused by the Teachers.
When magicians do appear among the Say-Ha, they are illusionists, enchanters, and deceivers. "People lie" is their most common tribal saying, and the Say-Ha are in charge of arranging the adulthood trials for all the Nations, and in keeping the magical spaces where the Nations train their warriors and sacred thieves. Stealing from the Teachers and the Chosen is considered a holy ritual, which lessens their power and allows the Say-Ha to continue their war against an obviously superior foe. Shadows are regarded as purveyors of wisdom to the Say-Ha, and their dark flickers are common along the trails that the Say-Ha haunt. It is said among the other Nations that if you see one Say-Ha, there are four more that you do not.
Say-Ha pluck the sides of their hair or wear a gustoweh; wigs with gustoweh are relatively common. Facial tattoos depicting accomplishments are also used. Simple pants with undershirts and light jackets are commonly worn, and patches on the left breast or on sashes across the body also showcase accomplishments and goals. They also wear a good deal of clay, both in their hair and smeared as ochre across the body. A black stripe over the eyes is common on warriors of all kinds.
Glass – The Keeper of the Southern Gate, The Purveyors of Dust, The Swimmers in the Chimera, Keepers of the Hall of Stem, Those Who Wear the Topknot
To the south, there is a place where the ancients would take pilgrimage to be taught the ways of their world. In the time before creation, when the ancients knew the names of everything and had the power to make new names, the Glass was a powerful magician even to them. She lived in a great lodge in the place of learning, the place of pilgrimage, and there she studied the dust, and the depths of the worlds that surrounded her.
The Glass forgot more things than anyone will ever know. When the Teachers first came, she was among those who spoke words for them. They would enter a place of light, and lift her from the ground, and whisper in her ears the truths that none dared to hear. She always knew they were wrong. Glass had worked in a great hall filled with men and women of learning; they were called the stem of the world in those days. They sent pieces of dust so small they could never be seen around in circles so fast that they became the Bleed. She knew of the Chimera, the Bleed, and the Fog long before the Flayed came.
One morning she came to her Great Hall of Stem and found that the Teachers had taken it. Her elder came to her, telling her that this hall would serve to tear the world deeper, to allow more of the Teachers to come and help. He preached an end to war and suffering, and when Glass saw the face of the Teacher, she was both overjoyed and terrified. Unable to make sense of her feelings, she stole the dust and ran outside with it, breaking it open on the ground. The Teachers grew furious, and sent their chosen against her.
She fought with everything she could bring, but in the end, her family was slain by the chosen. She escaped into the wilderness of Babylon, hiding in the old towers as the world fell around her. When Shining Hope was being beaten, she took up a bow against the light, teaching her followers how to find and reactivate the creating-machines of the old remmies. She taught them how to hear the whispers on the wind of old places where the remmies had buried themselves, and as she aged, taught as many children as she could the way of numbers. She taught her tribe to harvest the dust, and use the dust to bride the gap between the world and the Chimera.
When Turner came and asked the Glass for help, they were ready.
The Glass live in Kesvalin, an old series of small towers, where the world was dissected and studied. Beneath the towers of Kesvalin is the Ring, which still runs, fueled by the dust provided by the magicians of the Children of Dust. When activated, it is capable of ringing the entire city in a blue light that prevents the Chosen from entering. The depths of the city contain many magical secrets, and the Chosen attempt to assault it every few months, to little or no avail.
Holidays among the Glass tend to be much larger affairs than in the other tribes, with great amounts of ritual attached to even such activities as washing hands or getting dressed. It is believed that there are so many spirits in the world that it is impossible to go about one's day without offending some of them, and a great emphasis is placed on ritual and personal cleansing as a form of spiritual apology, as opposed to forgiveness. They are concerned with the memetic and spiritual matters, and train the Children of the Dust. They have a council made of the speakers of the four ways of the Hall of Stem - questioning, applying, creating, and accounting. Each of these speakers sets policy for the efforts of the Glass in recovering ancient machinery and trying to determine its purpose; they do not make efforts to restore these devices, as they functioned before the world was created, and that is a dangerous mixture. In effect, no knowledge is forbidden, only practices.
Both men and women of the Glass wear topknots in their hair. In men, these are simple tie-up knots punctuated with a carved bone hairpin, sometimes ringed with shark teeth jewelry. In women, they are thick and bound with cord, gator teeth, and wire, usually of copper. Otherwise, it is common to pluck hair from the sides and the center of the head in a row, and grow the remaining hair long into a braid. Alternately, the Glass will also wear corn rows and a mohawk. Blue face paint in sharply angled patterns is common, and the tribe symbol is placed on almost every article of clothing. Family symbols are also stitched into the front of clothing or tattooed on the left breast. Typical dress includes a smock-like garment covered in stitching and jagged patterns and a belt of beads or rope, long pants, and moccasins.
Sharp – The Keeper of the Northern Gate, The Creators of Paper, The Accounters of the Earth, The Book People, Those Who Wear the Chongo
Sharp witnessed the tearing of the sky. She counted things in the previous world. Often, she would go to work to a room filled with all the things of Babylon, and each one she would write down and count. She was counting the day when the Teachers came. When she first saw them, she grew afraid. She had not believed in angels or demons, and when the Teachers touched the world, she ran home to her family. She took their ride. She left Babylon. When Babylon became a dwelling place of monsters, she knew she had saved them. They spent many days and nights in the forest, their bodies wasting away, until at last she broke down and began to make a count of things again.
She counted the blades of grass. She counted the leaves. She counted the number of flashes of light she saw in the far-off towers of Babylon. Soon she came to know that in counting the things of the world, she could change their numbers. So she did – not soon after, a Forgotten named Thunder came to her in lightning and smoke. He said that soon the waters would be parted, that two shores would be made, and in accounting she would find a bridge between them. He told her to continue writing in her book, and introduced her to many ghosts and spirits who asked to be counted.
When the Bleed was formed and the Fog spread, Sharp at last knew why she had made an accounting of things. She told her family, and her family agreed. They reached out to their neighbors, and encountered their first failure. Those who had made camp in the wilderness had also drawn thin and sick during their time, having exhausted their hoards underground, and they still carried their old weapons. She battled them with her family. The enemy shot at them with bullets and threw grenades and set fires, and the Sharp conjured monsters from the Fog, flung lightning from the sky, and changed the very nature of the land itself.
In the early hours of one morning, the remaining warriors came to Sharp and asked her how they could do these things. Sharp took out her accounting books and beckoned them to read.
In the modern era, the Sharp are the makers of paper, and the tribe which presented and proposed the written form of the language the Nations now speak, Spenglish. The Say-Ha may have their Ayessel and its propensity for silence, but the great libraries of the Nations belong to the Sharp. They are map-makers, scholars, census-takers, and explorers of the physical world. Their tie to their more mystic natures is attached to the unwavering nature of the land, and their payisi-dreams are often themed to the scent of damp earth and fresh rain. They count many magicians of Flint Hawk among them, and are the most likely of the Nations to welcome skinnies into their midst. Many of their rites and rituals thank the yeyahai and the beings of the World of Smokeless Fire for their tireless dedication to the air, the water, and the food that the Nations eat. They keep records of ancestors and lineages, and many families are devoted to trades in a nascent caste system emerging from the Sharp propensity for measuring out one's ancestry.
The Sharp dress in the most flowing of clothes among the Nations. Dresses are common to both men and women, typically in a robe style, always with the right side folded over the left. Women wear the chongo hairstyle, a bun done like a spindle of fresh yarn on the back of the head, wrapped in cord, with a feather fan on top of the head. Facial tattoos are also very common, and under the left eye, they serve to chronicle actions and deeds. It is said that the Sharp, at one point, kept rides like the 500, and they wear many of the same or similar traded marks.
Hairstyles of the Five Nations
The Ublix – The Keeper of the Inner Gate, The Hundred Eyes of the Nations, The Tribe That is All Tribes
When Michael Turner first wrote down the laws of the Nations, the Ublix had been waiting for him. They said that they were and will be the Keepers of the Inner Gate, the sixth path. The Fisher, Glass, and Sharp agreed that this was a necessary position, but that they should be a part of the Nations, rather than apart from it. Each of the Nations agreed to host the Ublix as though they were family, and the Ublix agreed. Many of them parted ways, but they sit now in each village as purveyors of wisdom, and those who suffer from the changes that result in the growth of new limbs or eyes, or whose skin sags and whose hair turns to flesh, all are welcome to the Nations and to the Ublix. While the Say-Ha were not immediately welcoming of the Ublix, even they, in time, agreed that without the Tribe That is All Tribes was a welcome member of the Nations.
The Ublix do not have a formal government or their own place in politics. Instead, they enjoy a status of dual membership among the Nations. They are considered part of the Nations and their own tribe when voting comes to the people and a tie must be broken, but for the most part, are considered members of their own tribes, forever dreaming. They prove remarkably resistant to the horrors of the Chimera, to possession, and to the mental caress of the Teachers, and thus are key to the independence of the Nations in that regard. They are often the first to capture or greet Chosen who seek to escape or defect, or are discarded by the Teachers into the territory of the Nations. They speak in futures and pasts, as their bodies extend beyond physical form into the bleed itself.
Forming the backbone of the information network of the Nations, many of the Ublix pursue careers and magic that help them speak to others, not just of their own kind, but to remmies, clackers, and skinnies alike. It should be noted, however, that the Nations consider the Ublix to be remmies as them, as they are born from remmy flesh, and that Ublix is merely an earned title, a word for the scars the Chimera inflicts on their bodies, hard-won in mental battles with demons and temptations. In caring not for how their flesh is warped, it is said, they have achieved a wholeness of the mind that few can match. There are many among them who revere the spirit of Alligator and seek enlightenment through the power of the flesh. While they may say that steel is stronger than flesh, they say that thought is stronger than steel, and thought can be turned to either.
Things to Do in the Nations
Once one becomes an adult among the Nations, what is there to do? The people have many needs, and while most adults take jobs and settle down in their new homes, many seek to take a more active role in the wilds, to find adventure and excitement. While it has no formal military, the Nations are never without tasks for adults. When passing the first adulthood trial, supplicants are divided into teams. These teams are assigned a number, and when the trial is passed, they all pass, and at that point, the team can remain together. Their sponsor, and adult who has passed at least five trials, can then direct them to take certain actions, release them to their own devices, and serve as a mentor if they wish to continue ascending the social ladder of the Nations.
Scavenge Ancient Ruins
There are many things hidden by the Ancients in out of the way places. Caches of knowledge in the World of Smokeless Fire wait for discovery, old weapons slumber beneath the green moss of the forest, and old machines from before the world was created still hum in the darkness. The Nations need help in destroying, recovering, or deciphering the meaning of old devices and knowledge. As the Teachers have devoured the language of the Ancients, many books must be destroyed, old signs must be defaced, and words from before creation must be eliminated, so that the Teachers may not use them against the Nations, while at the same time, the Nations need these words to overcome the struggles they meet in daily life. There are also tools and materials the Nations need, hammers, prybars, medicine, chemicals, linens, and even the metals hidden in the homes of the Ancients. A team could find use in digging through refuse and skirting the edges of Babylon to uncover what could be the secret to fighting the Teachers on their own terms.
Hunt the Chosen
The Chosen often patrol the regions on the edges of skinny territory and the lands of the Say-Ha. Some groups even penetrate Babylon, as if searching for something. They capture, torment, and kill Forsaken that they encounter, and so the Forsaken require teams willing to explore the remote reaches of the land claimed by the Nations to destroy the Chosen wherever they may be. Twisted parodies of the remmy form, the Chosen exemplify the shape and personal perversion of a given Teacher. The Shining Light rather enjoys sewing together flesh and machine, merging two or more remmies into one, endlessly coupling being wracked with electrical shocks, often for the purpose of spellcasting or using the bleed against the people. The Chosen who have not been altered are easy to spot - they do not scar or tattoo themselves, and they carry themselves in the brightest and hottest of days as if they stood in a cool shade.
Defend the Trails
From the Kingdom of Wyndholm to the Black Blood and the Gnolls, there are people and tribes who oppose the Nation's claim on the land. The Nations need warriors and magicians who are able to speak many languages to defend its claims, bargain with its neighbors, and give concessions to its allies. The clackers and the skinnies are sources of aid and conflict in this, as they, too, have their own warriors with their own claims. Tribes such as the Gnolls and the Black Blood wander the trails, looking for easy prey to single out and enslave or devour. Since war is waged among small teams with highly specialized skills, this is a form of battle to which the team system is uniquely suited. Small groups of the people are also able to make contact with neighboring tribes and peoples without sending up too many red flags that might lead to outright war. Diplomacy is a vital activity among the people.
Seek Out Trials
There are many levels to adulthood among the Nations. One can be recognized as an adult by one tribe, but not by the rest. One might be recognized as an adult, but not one who is allowed children. One could be seen as a magician in training - and there are nine stages to that, on its own. The Nations recognize over twenty stations of adulthood, but very few, if any, can be considered a member of those final stations. With exploration of the land comes the understanding of one's place within it, and discovering the path to the trials of both the people and the land. As the people live there, they are also tested. The Forgotten, demons, the angels, the Chosen, and many others array themselves to test the people, to see their worth, and attempt to destroy them outright if they are not found worthy. Surpassing one's own self is seen as the most holy act one can perform among the Forsaken, and there is no limit on adult supplicants who wish to continue to test themselves.
The Yeyahai
The gods of the Earth. In the Ways, these are beings that the ancients made and set upon the earth to be its gods; they were once servants, but have ascended above these positions. They can guide those who wish to and from ancient knowledge. They are the focus of worship in the Nations, and their temples and shrines litter the countryside. While worship of Two Red Snakes has fallen out of favor in recent years, its temples still remain, and a few attendants can be found, seeking largely to appease it and keep its ministrations from the people, they they might not become so twisted in form as to die. Faith is a very common thing among the Nations; their gods are real, take physical forms, and walk among them. Firesteel lives in the capital of the Nations, Pale Mangrove hunts the people in the forests, and Heartless Tortoise interprets and enforces laws. They do this not just among the Nations, but among the clackers, skinnies, and other tribes in the area, as well. They are part of the living world, and thus, command at least acknowledgement. Since they are servants made by the ancients, there is an edge of excess and personal gratification to their actions and behavior, but as they have become the gods of the world, this edge has weakened.
Pale Mangrove – This yeyahai is the gatekeeper of death. He is an emaciated figure decorated with owl feathers and canine features. It has long arms soaked in blood, and wears a dog's skull as a helm. He is said to guide those who are close to death into the underworld, and stays with them until they reach the world where they will spend the rest of their existence. Also called the water-dog, many of the rituals dealing with him involve ritual cannibalism. His servants are sickly dog-men, without hair and lips, carrying torches in the night. He is also the god of dogs, and it is believed that he was once an overseer of the hounds of the ancients. It is said that he is the master of the black hounds, which seek out those who are about to die. He hunts the back woods and the hidden trails of the Nations, keeping the people on their toes.
The Twentieth Sage – Among all the yeyahai, the Twentieth Sage is first among those who are knowledgeable. Its servants are faceless beings made of living wax, with a burning wick sticking up out of their backs. The Twentieth Sage typically appears as three brass masks wrapped in prayer scrolls, with a multitude of mechanical arms and legs like a spider. The center of its body is a shining green light made of many swirling faces. It demands that nothing of its servants ever be hidden, either knowledge or intent, or else access will be forever denied. Its servants and worshippers are responsible for the new language of the Nations, and they keep watch over the words of the ancients, should the Teachers again attempt to attack through the old words.
Heartless Tortoise – The Heartless Tortoise is the yeyahai of law and judgement. Its purposes are considered inevitable, and its ways are authority without pause. Those who follow it are lawmakes and adjudicators who seek only to interpret the laws of the Nations as stringently as possible. The Heartless Tortoise has no time for those who try to bend the rules or seek out loopholes, and punishes them the most. The Heartless Tortoise has a great round shell made of solid stone, and it moves about on massive mechanical legs, with barbed wire lashes that emerge from its body to strike at its enemies. It maintains many mechanical servants and often sends them out to guard its living worshippers when they go about collecting taxes or arresting criminals. It interprets and enforces laws, though none of them are ones it has created. It instead allows the people to do this, and it is capable of keeping stock of remmy and clacker laws alike.
Child of the Black Heavens – Originally created by the ancients to oversee their weapons, the Child of the Black Heavens was responsible for much of the cleansing that has taken place over the years. She is a terrible figure with jet black skin, looking like nothing more than a remmy-shaped tear in reality, studded with stars and galaxies, draped in red finery from the forgotten ages of the ancients. They say she wears the blood of those she has killed, and counts the number in the billions. She is the god of war, and her worshippers often paint themselves with black and red stripes. She bears stories of the ancient world, and serves as the witness for the creation of the world. She aids the Nations and the surrounding tribes in making war on their enemies, protecting their homes, and keeping their traditions.
The Flickering One – The yeyahai of excess and pleasure, the Flickering One is also the keeper of mystic invocations and overseer of that which has been accounted for. The Flickering One is the overseer of gambling, luck, music, and gluttony. It is the being of flowers, and oversees numerical knowledge. It appears as a slender, androgynous figure with long vines and wires for its arms, seven eyes arranged around its featureless face, and bright green plant-like skin. It smells of honey, alcohol, fecal matter, and hibiscus nectar. The people pray to it for good parties, good food, and they consider the vanishing portions of alcohol during its brewing to be "the Flickering One's share." Apiaries have its symbol over their entrances, and art is devoted to its cause in many cases.
Firesteel – The yeyahai of industry, technology, and rust, Firesteel is first and foremost a caring and gentle being. She is made of hissing red metal plates stitched on to freshly peeled flesh, and has four arms made of metal and buzzing saws. Her voice is a cacophany of grinding and squealing, and she scuttles about on six spidery metal legs. Long chains are her hair, each tipped with a curved hook, and in her face is a serene expression that belies its existence as a crucible filled with white-hot steel. She belches smoke wherever she goes. Human faces wrap around the porcelain of the crucible, watching parishoners and supplicants. She treats them all fairly, but she expects all who come to her church to work, or access will never be granted.
Turquoise-Breath – The yeyahai of sensuality, fertility, farming, and new birth. A purveyor of pleasure and excess, Turquoise-Breath is always surrounded by gleaming lights, the laughter and raucous clinking of glasses, and unearthly sounds of far-off parties and love-making. It is a tall, thin figure with a skirt made of snakes, a face made of two turtle heads pointing at one another, wearing a necklace of human hands, and having six arms. It makes its lair in Babylon proper, and comes out when worshipped to grant supplicants various intoxicated states, increased fertility, and strange visions. It is the bearer of both the womb and the grave, and the people pray to it in order to have childbirth with fewer complications. The ancients used it to manage the lights of their cities, and it can give light, still.
Flint Hawk – The yeyahai of stellar wisdom and the natural world, Flint Hawk oversees the rains and the growth of corn, as well as the yearly fires that plague the lands of the Nations. Flint Hawk appears as an effigy made of twisted, rusted metal, wood, and glass. The interior of its body appears to glow like charcoal in a forge. It advises remmies on matters of the calendar and stellar importance. Flint Hawk is the god of deep time, as well as the turning of the seasons. It speaks the language common to the Earth, and its touch creates druids. The skinnies pray to it with every action, and it watches over their claims.
Two Red Snakes – This yeyahai grants access to healing powers, much like Turquoise-Breath and Pale Mangrove, but it is adamant that the ublix are a superior form of remmy-kind. It goes so far as to advocate forced sterilization and forced mutation of normal remmies. It appears as two red snakes climbing a winged pole (which they say is its cane, for it sacrifices its own health for its followers), with two legs and a swirl of bladed implements around its body. Its followers wear white coats that they keep pristine as possible. The practiced worship of Two Red Snakes is banned in the Nations, largely due to its policies on non-ublix remmies. At one point, it was the god of good health, but in recent years, it has descended into madness, and the other yeyahai fear it could be catching.