Work Text:
“How can we prepare for the future if we won’t acknowledge the past? ”
- The Stone Sky, 216.
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
Alma, busy day in Sume again. People around here are way too excited about someone coming to check out their new water-pump. In their defense, it’s not a bad pump. Less in their defense, Penphen just came up with one.1
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
Alma — going to have to take a few extra days on my trip to Sume. Weird rumor going around about kids going missing underground.
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
Alma, I doubt you read all these, but I found those kids. One of them I even found alive, but I suppose that’s what they get for being stupid enough to fall into a rusting cave. Yes, you heard me, a cave. And here’s the bad news: You’re missing your favorite Innovator for at least a week. I know, I know, just a deadciv ruin, but hey, there might be valuables. Local legends about diamonds down here, but I doubt anyone could have found them without… oh, never mind.
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
Found something — valuables! Specifically, diamonds. I’m sending a couple samples but the jewelry down here wasn’t too bad. Shocked no one’s found this little trove before. Must’ve been some coastal recovery operation.
I’ve gotten my descent down to a trick now, because Alma, this cave is… well, it’s honestly beautiful. I know that’s bad form, but it is. They’ve done some kind of work with old seashells down here to make light reflect into the cave. The paths inside this place are all made of shells, actually. Total waste, but it is pretty. We’re far enough from the nodes at this point that this place shouldn’t have found any great coverage, but it’s stayed in pretty alright condition.
I’ve found some pottery that I think is from Jyamaria, and here’s the way, way better news — I think I may be able to figure out when Drowned Desert was.2 Hear me out. Jyamaria had its weird dating system, right? All counting down from the end of some unknown season-ish-thing that just so happened to end right as the leader was born, and he thinks it was his personal sign to go out and run some rusting Somidlats backwater. Anyway, Seventh always thinks that’s Season of Changed Wind, but the records at this city mention retroactively its founding being in 3 JM to, and this translation is really rough, “salt away the blot shadow.” Less than convinced about my Eturpic skills here, but that’s during an occlusion, all right. And this was all underground.
If this was built during a season, why one? I think there was another season between Wandering and Changed Wind, and Drowned Desert followed that and drowned them all.3 (I guess building underground isn’t great for floods. Who knew.)
Okay. I still don’t know when Drowned Desert was. But I did find records, some pretty ruined but a few intact, talking about how this comm was built when acid “pulled the body from the structure.” I think they mean flesh from the bones. So Season of Turning Soil as the root of Jyamaria. This comm’s using Jyamaria’s date system, and it ends with mention of the plains around “stream with beauty too much.” It’s telling us this happened in 624 JM. So 621 years passed between Turning Soil and Drowned Desert.4 Long time, too.
Jyamaria got lucky. This Comm got lucky. Or just did well, I guess. There are too many seasonal rumors; there could always be more.
Now to force the Seventh to consider doing another Archaomestric Conference. Two hundred years is a long time.5 You out there, Alma?
From: Alma Innovator Dibars
To: Aisha Innovator Dibars
Aisha, you know I hate to say it, but this is all great work. I suppose I fail to understand your strange fascination with deadcivs, but it could be worse than seasonal lore — I remember your Lower Ottey States period, don’t worry. Always something new, with you.
All I ask is be careful. We don’t want to ruffle too many feathers with a new seasonal conference. I suppose I can mention this to my boss, though. The chance to stick it to his great-great-great-grandfather.
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
Hey, at least I picked an entertaining one. That coup they pulled with the burning alive was really fun.
I know, I know, my silly deadciv ruin, but there’s something weird here, Alma. I think this comm lasted a while, even maybe after Drowned Desert. The records keep going from 624 for another fifteen years. Maybe the flooding was less widespread than we thought, but they clearly knew about it. Haven’t we found evidence of flooding close to here? Maybe worth checking out why.
I think you’re just jealous the deadcivs take me away from you.
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
Alma — This one’s just strange. Discovered a set of stone engravings inside the cave. The language is odd, some kind of Regwo from back when they were still around.6 Lucky for me that you insisted I actually pay attention in class, huh? It reads like an old lorist chant. The weird part is that they wrote it down. The lorists, you know my beef, they never write anything down. And it keeps referencing structures almost like a version of Tablet Three, but not one I’ve ever seen before.7 It’s giving some kind of odd history. I’ve copied one excerpt from what looks like verse 13 below.
In the time before the Shattering, the world was not a Stillness, but it was still. To the north, the farmland of Maecar, climbing north into a crown upon Father Earth’s head. To the south was Cilir, smallest of the lot, peopled by ones without eyes, made from nothing into nothing again.8 To the west, Kakhiarar, marshes spreading across its western coasts, but to its south and east, the ground firming until the great city of Syl Anagist.9 They say it was beautiful. The first structure you must distrust is beauty.
It is in the time before Shattering that Syl Anagist lost him his child. And what can one do, when they lose a child, but shatter? He ensured that we could never build a Syl Anagist again and cursed it desert just to make sure. The second structure you must distrust is the father.
Once, there was a time when the structure of a continent could be trusted. It is no more. The third structure you must distrust is constancy.
It interested me. I thought I’d send it around.
You didn’t reply to my last letter. I’m not upset. Just let me know you’re alive and just buried in some professorial talk you got roped into running.
From: Alma Innovator Dibars
To: Aisha Innovator Dibars
You’re always too interested by that deadciv lore, Aisha. You know how this works. If we pry too hard at the deadcivs we get some funding cut request. They want the Old Sanze lore. Why couldn’t you be fascinated by Shemshena, that’s all.
It might be worth coming back soon. Not because I need you.
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
Oh, I know you need me.
Besides, I wouldn’t go after Shemshena, I’d go after Erlsett. (The Fulcrum-creator, since I know you’ll ask. She was Anafumeth’s niece once removed or something, which definitely indicates she’s the one who killed him.)
Weird discovery today — combed through the erosions in the rock at the cave’s mouth. It looks almost like the water came up to the cave’s entrance and then stayed there. Maybe a makeshift wall situation. It’s something Sanze can keep in mind, for the future, right?
From: Alma Innovator Dibars
To: Aisha Innovator Dibars
Aisha, a guardian came to Dibars yesterday. You must tell us which child survived the cave. They may need some help from the Fulcrum.
From: Aisha Innovator Dibars
To: Alma Innovator Dibars
…They may need some help? No, Alma, she was just looking for her brother. He’d gone missing too. Was she meant simply to forget her family?
From: Alma Innovator Dibars
To: Aisha Innovator Dibars
How do you think this deadciv found its diamonds, Aisha, all the way down at the bottom of the ocean floor? How do you think these kids did?
How do you think you did?
From: Alma Innovator Dibars
To: Malamo Guardian Yumenes
Aisha and the child both gone in either a tragic accident or suicide pact of some kind. No evidence of orogeny on either’s part in the end, though we absolutely cannot be sure. Their bodies are in the cave for your review, if you have ways of telling these things. They’re both burned beyond recognition, but I’d like to know, if you can tell.
Malamo, I appreciate your offer to go ahead, but I’m glad I was able to see for myself.
From: Alma Innovator Sume
To: Dorian Innovator Dibars
Dorian — In light of recent events, I feel it best for me to tender my resignation from the department effective immediately. Sume still has need of a new Innovator and has offered to take me in.
From: Shaia Innovator Merz
To: Alma Innovator Sume
Thank you. My daughter and I send you our best regards.
1. Sume is a Somidlats city, located immediately south of Tirimo, destroyed in the opening chapters of The Obelisk Gate. Penphen is an Equatorial city referenced in The Fifth Season. (Merz, mentioned later, is a reference to the Merz Desert; no city mentioned in canon.) return
2. Jyamaria is an ancient city in the Somidlats, somewhere near Castrima, mentioned in The Fifth Season. A reference to its death ‘ten seasons ago’ during the Season of the Drowned Desert appears in The Obelisk Gate. return
3. Don’t worry, both of these are in fact real seasons. Drowned Desert is given no details besides a reference to the Western Coastals as a locale, so this locale near Eastern is a lot of conjecture; Turning Soil strips animal flesh from the bones according to The Stone Sky . return
4. Aisha is arguing that the 621-year period occurred between Season of Changed Wind in approximately 1900 Before Imperial, and Wandering Season in approximately 800 Before Imperial. This would indeed make the death of Jyamaria ten seasons old, and works well on the average timeline of seasonal occurrence. return
5. Reference to the Sanze Archaomestric Conference of 2532. return
6. The Regwo people are the original lorists (and thus potentially the most closely descended from early orogenes.) return
7. In The Stone Sky, it is confirmed that Tablet Three has been completely rewritten multiple times due to its mentions of Syl Anagist and the moon; As such, I played around with the idea of an older version of Tablet Three. I’ve used an entirely different writing style, so whether this is lorist or Tablet is up to the reader. return
8. The conquered Thniess (Niess) are referenced in The Stone Sky as short with icewhite eyes, ashblow hair, pale skin, broad faces, and small mouths. return
9. Locations named The Stone Sky (pg. 208) and described in prologue. The location of Syl Anagist is technically conjecture; I’m basing it around the theory that it would be on the exact opposite side of the world from Corepoint, which is “lightly East and above the equator” on the world’s other side. It is unclear in canon whether Old Man’s Pucker, the city visited by Nassun and Schaffa, is Syl Anagist or another city. return