Indi's Journal

So, I talked about the Conflux a little in my last post, and I guess that got Dad thinking I should share more. I’ve actually written a basic info post about it before, but that was a while ago, and there’s definitely more to say there. This week, Dad suggested that it might be good to talk about history.

It’s hard to point to a specific origin for the traditions and beliefs that go together under the word Conflux, since they really are that, a sort of grouping of ways of thinking and acting that have roots that are older than writing. It’s not the sort of religion that has a specific founder or central figure. Instead it came out of the habits and experiences of groups of people who spanned a pretty large part of the world. Specifically, there’s a lot of roots of it what we see of the pre-writing cultures who lived along the Whiteshell and Cottonwood rivers of Western Stonespine. This isn’t too surprising, since Confluence, the historical center of Conflux belief, is where those two rivers join together. It looks like there was lots of migration along the rivers, and the folk who gathered together at that big junction began practicing together.

This of course sounds a lot like the mythic origin story of the Conflux, where the Wanderers built that city as a place to live and provide shelter for other folks who, like them, were looking for a place to be accepted in the world. Most folks don’t hold that as literally true, and Confluence itself predates any stories or rituals that are recognizably Conflux, but the story certainly reflects the land it came from and has served as a template for how the city, and the religion, have developed.

The first written Conflux myths date back a little over three thousand years, found on clay tablets from right around the same time that writing itself arrived in that area of the world. However, archaeologists have found cave inscriptions and paintings which seem to relate to them that are centuries older, suggesting that they were using writing to record stories that already existed. These stories seemed to be passed around and collected in different ways throughout the centuries, in a really similar way to how people craft and share codexes today.

Starting about twenty five hundred years ago, we have a bit better records, starting with the temples constructed by the Braidtail clan, apparently after previous smaller temples were washed away in a flood. These were taller and sturdier, made of stone blocks and set on high ground overlooking the river junction. Those were a different construction than how we do temples now, with a large central area and alcoves for specific Wanderers. There were a lot more alcoves than the Wanderers we most commonly talk about now, so no one’s sure if they focused on a larger group of gods, had them divided up in different ways, or something else. As usually happens in the Conflux, the specifics of traditions are always being rethought and places being repurposed, so it’s hard to know specifics. But that temple still exists, preserved as both a historical site and a place of worship, now allowing people to temporarily set up whatever shrines they want in those alcoves.

Moving ahead nearly a couple thousand years, I can talk a little about how Conflux beliefs spread in the Modern Migration Period. This is when books (mostly hand-bound and hand-written) were really starting to spread across the three continents, and an inventor called Cayra Duskrain popularized the practice of printing small sets of pages (all from hand-carved printing plates) and then gathering them together into reconfigurable books. These were easy to distribute, collect, and create at home, leading to a lot of spread of Conflux ideas, and eventually the traditions that came with them. The themes of belonging and hope for the outcast, as well as the flexibility of how they meshed with other belief systems, helped the ideas catch on far and wide throughout the world, which is a big part of why the Conflux is so widespread today.

Those are the big things I can think of that count as “history” without getting into big boring lists of who wrote what when, so it seems like a good place to wrap up. But if there’s any more detail that anyone wants to know about, please tell me, because gathering this all up together is really helping me learn it better myself, and I’m finding this sort of historical context really helpful as I keep trying to figure out my own place in these traditions.

It’s been a while since I’ve talked much about my world so I was really excited this week when Dad suggested I write a bit about some of the particularly impressive structures that folks have bult throughout the history of Rheos. There’s a lot of ways to look at that sort of question. One is to think that we’ve built most of the most impressive things in the past century or so, which is true if you’re looking at some of the biggest and shiniest things, but it’s hard to say how long those things will endure. There were some even more outrageous constructions attempted during the early Industrial Shift, but those definitely didn’t stand the test of time, given all the wasteful resources it took to even start constructing them, much less maintaining them. So, for this assignment, I’ve been looking at the things that have endured the longest, either thanks to thoughtful construction, or continuing care, and I’ll talk about one thing from each of the three continents, to get a nice global view. ( Read more... )

I returned to this series a bit sooner than I expected to; I didn't have my steam deck for a while, and when I got it back, I wanted something simple and playful to dive deep into. There's not a lot to say about the basics of this game that I didn't already say about the previous one, it's a cute Zelda-like, packed with little things to do in its map, and told in a cute frame story of a grampa telling his grandkids a story while they're out camping.( Read more... )

This week, me and Dad agreed that a good thing to talk about is another topic that apparently can be pretty different on Rheos from how things are in other worlds: Clothing, specifically what we wear (or don’t) and why (or why not)

The thing to start with, that is apparently different from other places (as my dad explained it) is that a lot of the time, especially in hot months like now, a lot of people don’t wear clothes. Plenty of folks have thick-enough fur that adding clothes onto it can be pretty overwhelming in the summer. Not everyone lives in the places where their form was originally most adapted to, after all, and a polar bear in the tropics is gonna get heat stroke pretty quickly, to use an extreme example. On an average day in the summer in Whitewaters, for instance, probably only half of folks are going to be covering their body, and a lot of those who do will likely only be wearing something pretty light, that only covers for instance their top or bottom half. As it gets cold, people will cover up a lot more, but in pretty much any weather other than a heavy storm, it won’t be hard to find folks going out in nothing but fur.

This leads to the question then of why do people wear what they wear, when they wear it. Like I sorta said above, part of it is definitely weather. Not everyone’s body is suited to their environment, and not everyone likes every season. Personally, I don’t really mind getting wet (part-otter) so I’m not the sort who worries about covering up when it’s raining, but my dad does. On the other paw, I really don’t like the cold, but it doesn’t seem to bother Dad, so lots of times in the winter, I’ll be bundled up and he’ll be shirtless.

Another reason worth mentioning is privacy. Obviously, going naked shows off a lot more of someone’s body than wearing clothes, and not everyone feels the same way about that. This isn’t just about body image; lots of people don’t like how they look when they’re shedding or molting, but sometimes they have to interact with the world anyway. There’s also… what’s the right way to say this… certain attributes of certain folks that might be more or less obvious at certain times that they might not want to have on display for everyone. That one gets especially complicated in some areas that have different ideas about what is and isn’t “proper” for other people to see at all, though in most cases that’s not a big deal where we live.

I saved the fun answer for last: People wear clothes for decoration! Whether that’s a cool t-shirt or a super-elaborate designer suit, clothes are a way to help express yourself. Really, most folks who go out without much covering clothing on still often wear jewelry or other smaller adornments. A lot of this can be very personal, whether it’s a style someone put together for themself, or something that expresses something about their culture. It’s also a helpful way for people to recognize folks that they might have something in common with, everything from a geeky slogan to a scarf that’s traditional to a specific biome on the other side of the planet.

Getting a bit personal, I tend to not wear too much clothes, especially in the summer and especially especially when I’m not going out anywhere. If it’s warm and there’s no one else to see, it feels a lot more cozy and free for me to especially not have to worry about pants. Still, pretty often I will wear a colorful t-shirt, or just a bandana around my neck, because I figure I can never have too much color. Last week, me and my dad and a friend visited a waterpark, and I went without swim trunks (you can slide faster that way!) but with a cool rainbow bandana that I just got that week. I was in pretty good company too; this is one of those situations where way less than half of the folks were really wearing anything notable at all. Sometimes I felt a little overdressed just in my bandana, but I still really liked the style.

This week Dad gave me an assignment to write about a more recent shift in relationship between Rheos and the people on it, one that started kinda badly, could have gone worse, and yet still managed to end up with us ending up in the best harmony we've ever been in with our world.( Read more... )

Kraken Academy (The two exclamation points are in the name but I'm not gonna type them every time, sorry dad!) was an unexpected game in a few ways. Unexpected genre, unexpected vibe, unexpectedly short. None of these are a bad thing at all, I really enjoyed playing it, but talking about those unexpectednesses is probably the best way for me to talk about the game in general. ( Read more... )

After reading my last assignment, my dad pointed out that I mentioned something pretty significant from Rheos prehistory, but I didn't really explain it, and it might be pretty different in other worlds.

( What is the Sapient Shift? )

FixFox is a cute little game that's hard to describe. The word I keep coming back to is "adventure", but in the Zelda sense, instead of the Monkey Island sense. Except that there's no fighting, and a lot of inventory puzzles, so maybe there's more Monkey Island in it than I first thought. It's a game that's stuck with me a lot, and I'm really happy to have played it, even if I think there are some things it could've done better.

( Fun with foxes! )