secret beginning, secret ending
Sooooo… I can’t spoil this story’s ending.
… or its beginning, for that matter…
As I build this crazy new world, I’m realizing knowledge (or the absence of knowledge) is going to be really important to the danger that threatens to finish all the destruction started right at the beginning of Įrē’s existence.
I mentioned on day 1 that something happened to this planet no one living person can recall. Giant, jagged, sulfuric rocks jut out of the planet’s core and stretch far into the sky - so high they protrude into the planet’s atmosphere. Like a first and last wonder of this world. A deadly yet crucial piece of the planet’s history that the present civilization has learned to live with, but has never known the truth about.
Kinda like Black Friday. Or McDonalds. Or drinking sodas.
Most of the modern world participates in rituals whose truth and history we usually know very little about. Rituals and traditions we simply accept, because everybody else already does.
I once heard the story of a woman cooking a delicious ham in the kitchen as her daughter was watching. The woman sliced off the front and back ends of the ham before placing it in her oven.
“Why?” Her daughter asked her. “Is that to help enhance the flavors in the ham?”
“I don’t really know”, the woman said, surprised she hadn’t inquired about it from her own mother when learning about the recipe. “Let’s ask Grandma.”
They both went to ask the grandmother the same question.
“Oh that’s part of our very own family recipe”, the grandmother said, “our Nana taught me that you should always slice off the end bits of the ham before placing it in the oven, and that’s why I taught it to you, dear.”
“Yes Grandma, but why…?”“Well Nana’s still got her wits about her, and it’s her recipe… why don’t we just ask her?”
All three generations of women went to their family matriarch, who was still quite a sharp woman in her old age, and asked why the family sliced off the ends of their ham before putting it in the oven.
“Oh.” Nana said, thinking back to the origin of her special recipe. “Back then the ovens were much too small for a ham that size, so I just cut off the ends to make sure it could fit. Yes… that’s why I did that. To make it fit.”
It could be disheartening to think about the number of precious family recipes just created from food which needed to fit in smaller sized ovens, but here we are. And the more our habits and traditions get passed down unquestioned (and unchallenged), the less it ends up mattering how they started anyway.
That’s why it is so important for this world to have secrets.
Lots of terrible, terrible secrets.
It’s human nature to adapt and eventually stop questioning things once we get used to them and accept them as the status quo. That, in my opinion, is the simplest (and quickest) way for any kind of decently entertaining evil to get a foothold, and perhaps even thrive.
Like the Neji killers. Or the ronin ‘land and sea’ dogs. Or the serpent demons of the pit.
These nefarious forces of destruction will get some basic explanation as the world-building story evolves, but how they are intrinsically linked to the wounded planet itself will have to remain a mystery… at least for now.
