Neither nor magicians, but we can tell you their stories. We are
Speaker 2welcome.
Speaker 3Welcome. You are listening to keepers. A lower building podcast where we talk about eons of history, heroes and villains, and the for a lot.
Speaker 2Ah,
Speaker 3Roman climb into your throat. Thank you. So that's good. Good to get that out of the way. Now
Speaker 2you got clap.
Speaker 3Stop laughing.
Speaker 4Okay. Let said water. Yup.
Speaker 3Okay.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 3Welcome to holiday. You are listening to lower keepers, a lower building podcast where we talk about aliens of history, heroes and villains, and the forces that world at all.
Speaker 4I'm Carter and I'm frank.
Speaker 3Whether you're interested in stories looking for inspiration in your own world building or perhaps you want to participate. We've got something for you this week we're talking about is the lithium and slash or conus. But first, how are you frank? Oh, well, Carter, I'm doing pretty good. I'm, uh, currently sweating it up and a closet
Speaker 4in my brand new apartment. Woo. Yeah, it's actually kind of cool. Um, because uh, we. So yeah, I like moved on Wednesday and um, one of the selling points of this new place is the fact that I have this like relatively small space where I did a deal with my roommate basically saying like, Hey, if you store all of your stuff above my head in this closet, then I get to use it as a recording space. So I finally have something that once I get some sound panels up his computer, like I think a really great space to record audio, but that's yet to come. Yeah. I don't know. Aside from that, just sore body, haven't gotten a lot of hours of sleep in the last few days. You ain't getting like four or five hours of sleep that big vegas road trip coming up. Oh Shit. Yeah. Uh, not exactly vegas. Um, we were thinking about going to monument valley, but that is, that is a long drive. Um, it's in Arizona. So now, uh, yeah, I'm going to be going to yellow stone, uh, gonna hit up boulder and then drive all the way back. It's going to be like almost six days. It's going to be pretty crazy. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to miss you. Yeah. I think, uh, I think I'm gonna miss you too. Carter, which is actually why we're going to be recording two podcasts today too. It's a double header, which is a kind of the reason why we chose our subject matter. But before we get into that dude, how have you been? Good. Good. After a long and arduous process of buying a lot of stuff, I now have my nice gaming rig back in action. You got it all fixed up. It was a lot of work for my friends who built it for it really for me. I helped them write and they helped me, but they did most of the heavy lifting and uh, nothing exploded. Nothing shorted out and it's good and you don't smell like burnt toast coming from your, from your pc pc, which is not a toaster, but I wish it was. That'd be cool. Uh, does not smell like burnt toast, but I am not having a stroke. He had to clean up the crumbs out of your pc because you keep on getting toast crumbs stuck in there. You know, I've actually never cleaned my toaster. I should probably do this. Oh, you should. Yeah, you should probably do that. Do it with a knife after you've popped it down. That's the best way to do it. I actually really love toast. Toast. Please don't. Please don't. Please don't do that. Is that would you could die. I mean I didn't play, but Bagel, bagels and toast. Oh Gosh. Dude. Vagal dude. Seriously though. Okay. I was that. Was that a bait? Are you baiting me? I'm not. I have not. I genuinely have a Bagel every day. Yes. I too. Like bagels. Yes. I put my bags and bags and I get them out of them and then I. and then I toast them. Didn't put a bit of cream cheese on there. Since you live in Florida, there's probably got to be a lot of bays for you to eat your bagels on. I do live near Bay. It's true. Yeah, I bet. I bet. That's really great. I do have a bay tree in front yard as well. Do you actually? Yup. Okay. Well that's great. Um, uh, Gosh. Okay. Well, so let's see what we're doing or oconus and Olivia today. Frank, what the hell are those things that I had never heard before? Well, before we get into that, Carter, I thought it'd be good to Kinda like, um, follow up on if you had any cool ideas for anything or any thoughts, any Danko Jones he came up with in the last week or so. I never have a cool ideas. I'm just here as a good photo for you. Okay. That's bullshit. No, I basically, I mean, here's, here's a, here's a little look at the, how the sausage is made around here. Everybody basically I get, I come up with an idea and then get stuck on it and keep on rolling it around in my head for about three or four weeks. And then Carter says one goddamn thing and all of a sudden it's like the world explodes again. And I feel like I can think so, yeah. Kind of an important part of the creative process to have another person to be like, oh, why don't you just x or y not this way or this thing, or what if it was this? And then all of a sudden I'm like, Oh yeah, see, this is, this is why this works. So lay it on me, man. You got any tank? Nugs? Yeah. Um, this one might become a full episode in a while, but it's one of those things. It's like, you know, when we start running out of ideas, we can cross this one off the list. Sure. Yeah. How do sex work? And Ah, that's a good question. I mean I've never really for, for the, for the listener, which is kind of my recording this episode, this podcast in general, um, psionics is just kind of like a mental powers. So like telepathy or telekinesis or other things that you could do with your mind potentially. Like. So there's actually a lot of like, similarity is a or like, you know, being able to change the speed of things or how quickly things move or behave that is considered oftentimes like a cyanic power or the ability to, I dunno, grow or shrink in size. There's kind of some interesting associations that d and d creates it. But yeah, no, I've never really thought about like, I mean I definitely have a couple of weeks in May and there is Sky Iris, which is a sort of not exactly like plane of reality, but sort of like a way of looking at reality where you can kind of see the uh, you know, the minds of all people's sort of laid out like, like points of light. But yeah, I guess I've never really looked at how it makes it different from other places. I feel like in most fantasy, or at least in d and d sanex has always felt really tacked on. Yeah. Like there's all these really complicated and cool systems that like for how maybe complicated is not the right word, but elegant, elegant systems of like what makes sense for how magic works in the forgotten realms are in like typical d and d settings when it comes to like sonic powers. They're just kinda there. They're just kind of. And like they're, they're, they're. Yep. I feel like it's a waste. Did you have any ideas?
Speaker 3Um, I'm not really sure how they would fit into, you know, the systems of how the May. So that was my question, right? I didn't really have a good way of, you know, stabbing it in there with, between the end of the Anima and the Solo bits.
Speaker 4Yeah. Well I think here's what I'll say is just like a very loose one, like not even one on one, like 100 primer on, you know, kind of how that stuff works. Is that in Hallam a, they're sort of the body, soul and spirit or body mind and spirit or you know, body, mind, soul. Basically. It's like you've got the spiritual self than the mental slash emotional self and physical self. Right. And they're all kind of all three circling the same drain of self, the mind when the mind when you go to sleep, like your mind kind of drifts away and it sort of acts like a cork to your soul, your consciousness. And um, so like, I dunno, maybe cyanic powers have something to do with that. Like they're actually, that kind of suggests that there wouldn't be an intrinsic association with the two because if the consciousness is the court that when it drifts away allows the body to sort of refill with magic, you know, or with like, you know, the, the essence of soul, the abstracts. Then that kind of suggests some sort of connection there. You know, like maybe psionics, I dunno. That's interesting.
Speaker 3Maybe it's like, you know, to use magic, you're kind of siphoning the energy out of your soul through the Cork, right? Yeah. Maybe somehow it's like, it's like maybe it's manipulating the cork. Yeah, like changing sort of the metaphysical
Speaker 4cool material, if you will like it instead of being a cork. It becomes a sieve or something. Yeah. These are all just mental models for entirely hypothetical things. No, that's, there's some interesting ideas there though. Like, I don't know, you should definitely hit that up.
Speaker 3There you go. That was my, my nugget there. So frank, what is your.
Speaker 4Yes. Um, so recently in the last few months I was inspired by the eighth or born of magic, the gathering. Uh, we might include a link in the barley included a link in the podcast notes, but basically I was, I was really inspired by them and thought they were an interesting creature because they're basically a creature of pure magic essence. So like peer ethereal, arcane energy. I'm given a personality and stuff and they, one of the things that's so cool about them, they have only like four years or so that they live like each person, each one of them is born sort of like fully quote unquote adult or whatever. Um, with like a adult level, like, like understanding of working mindset of, of, of the world. And they are aware of exactly how long before they start to disintegrate and become part of the, um, well, in the magic in magic, I think it's the eighth or they have their, it's just called like the eighth or so. I, um, I had recently been doing some world building with a friend who had come up with an idea for that as we were kind of setting up a campaign for him and uh, he came up with similar idea and so we decided to call them the ref Iraq and uh, but one of the things that I had recently, I don't know how I stumbled into this idea sometimes it just kind of have a notebook full of shit. Um, was this idea that like that there are potentially ways for[inaudible] to survive death, which oftentimes is in the same way that you can enchant a things like in shanked objects with magic. Like something like that. So you can get like perhaps a lot of swords and suits of armor and things that have some sort of sanctions are actually like dead ref Iraq that have found a way to like live on or maybe not even dead, but like this is sort of, they have like a therapist, you know, they're tied to this unfeeling body because they get like sucked back up. Right. So they were like afraid to like, you know, become one with the, with the nine flow again. So like, I just think it'd be like this really interesting idea of, you know, you had these suits of armor, like what if you had an entire nation that was all just like suits of armor of Ref Iraq that were sort of like refugees from magic. It'd be, it'd be a lot. Yeah. Very rare. Well it would kind of be like an animated armor, but the animated armor doesn't just do whatever the wizard tells it to do. And yeah, the ref Iraq are relatively rare. So it's probably, it probably be more like a tribe of them, but it's kind of more just playing with the idea. I think there's really something, something fun about that, not, not full episode or you think of this can a significantly powerful vizard create ref Iraq. Uh, yeah. I mean that's how I think most of them. So they were actually as a result of al chemical accidents, the gnomes. We're getting a little too tinkery and they created essentially sentient life. So do you think that there is a visit out there who employees Ref Enoch as servants and such? Yeah, I think probably I think that there's probably some sort of like a uprising rebellion. Yeah. That actually might be worth it episode of just talking about the Raytheon because them as a race, you know, in, you know, that the fact that they have the only really defining kind of connecting tissue between all of them is the fact that they're this bound up magic that nobody else can like understand that. And I think they do have relatively short lifespans too because it's just like a really engaging concept of like live fast, die hard. Does there need to be an addendum to the strata master records? That's wow. Bam. I don't know for, I don't know because. Okay, so I know for the listener stress back to accord, it's basically, it's the thing that was a document that was signed by all of the remaining races. I'm not including humans, but because it was about human saying humans can't be slaves anymore. They're recognized as part of the knowing, knowing, being like basically people with a soul who have working minds. Um, and so like all of a sudden slavery was outlawed for the humans. I think, uh, I probably like episode two or three when we talk about the Elvis a lot. Basically whenever we talk about the elves, slavery and variably comes up because it's a part of their history. Yeah, it's unfortunate. But, uh, yeah, no, I don't know. That's interesting though. We can definitely go places with that. I hadn't actually thought about it in that way. I was just more just playing with the idea of I like, I like that moment of having a living being be like, I fear death and I want to survive in some way. And so then they enchanted sword and then they become that consciousness that sore because you see that all the time in d and d and even just in fantasy in general, you know, swords that can talk or like, you know, um, uh, a crystal ball that has some sort of person trapped inside or whatever. Yeah. Okay. Well, um, I think onto the meat of the, uh, of this double header. Huh? She probably dive in before we do one more thing, whether it's just one more.
Speaker 3Yeah. Surely this wizard to put some in Golems, right? Oh, for sure. I mean that's basically what they're becoming. Like constructs. Yeah. But you put them in contracts in this so they don't go back a bind them to the magical crystals and stuff.
Speaker 4Oh, like against their will. Who would that? Sinister. Yeah, that'd be really, dude, I'd be really. It's like a mat. Oh this is kind of horrific. But imagine like, you know, being trapped in an unknown like plastic, the equivalent of like having a plastic mask and moving woodenly as somebody else. Puppet masters you. And inside your own mind, you can do nothing but scream as you watch your body react in ways you don't want to.
Speaker 3Oh, there you go. That's some good, some good fodder there. Just, uh, I'll be silently screaming over here. No, I think.
Speaker 4I think it is time to move into the meat though. So, uh, so here's what we're going to do. Listeners, we couldn't decide or perhaps more in traditional fashion for us, we decided that we would let the dice figure out what order we're going to do these in because as a short little preface or conus until movie him are sort of two sides of a coin, they are both sort of these, um, extra planar realms that are associated with. And our act is like these hyper saturated or dark mirrors to reality. So if you have a, a river in Halloumi, a incident are, if you look in that river might be, oh gosh, I don't know. It might travel in the opposite direction to have reverse waterfalls, but it might be significantly more fantastic than that. Like it's like a whirlpool of galaxies. And if you actually dive into it, you like encounter, you know, just like other worldly stuff instead of fish in there, it's like, you know, strange ethereal jellyfish or something, I don't know, fairies into water ferries and obviously probably water ferries or fish in the sky fish of course instead of a mountain you have like a giant crystal that's like, you know, hundreds of feet high or thousands of feet high or something like that. Or, and that same mountain in our conus could be like, you know, a massive pile of bodies or some sort of sentient monster watching and waiting. The main difference between the two. If aluminium is sort of like this hyper saturated mirror of life, you know, it's sort of this other worldly dream madness have, you know, the dance of the Fei and things was, were like fairies and whatnot come from or conus is the lifeless mirror. It's the dark grim version. There's no sun in the sky. Uh, it's a light list place that is full of sinister dealings like, uh, like, like an in kind of just like, you know, hopeless, whore empires were, will necromancy. And then also the watchers, which, uh, we'll get to when we get to our conus. So Carter, uh, why don't you roll a, some evens and odds and decide which one's which. And you can launch us. Do you want a cow or a d? Twenty. I'll let you choose.
Speaker 3Couch rapides.
Speaker 4Okay. Alright. It's a four. Did you decide what evens and odds were now. Okay. Well let's do evens aluminium. Odds are conus.
Speaker 3All right, roll again. Yeah, yeah. Alright, I wrote the 20 this time.
Speaker 4So is that our conus than it is? Yup. All right. Okay. Wow. Where should we begin?
Speaker 3Um, I think we begin with, you know, let's say I'm a very unlucky adventure, right? I've got my plus one magic sword and they got my leather straps and my massive amount of pouches around my belt. And you've pissed off a necromancer and I pissed off a necromancer and I find myself dumped into a big pile of ash and I look up at the sky. And what do I see frank on? Nothing.
Speaker 4You don't see anything gone blind? Um, no. Because as you start to look around the environment, you realize, first of all, you are clammy, cold, like it's the kind of cold that no matter what it is, you never feel warm enough. And second of all, you are a, you do see occasional lights off in the distance. Um, but you know, the, the thing about our bonuses is that, that I just, I was so engaged by was the idea this. I remember reading a book called the city of Ember back when I was a kid when I was a book. It's an amazing book. And, and, uh, the book, it was very inspiring for me because I think it was the first time that I started to kind of play with a or it allowed me to question things that we're so ingrained is just like, this is how the world is, you know. So this idea of, well, you know, the, the trick about the city of ember is that the premise is what if there is a city where there is no sun in the sky, it is just eternally dark. And every night, uh, the, the city which is lit by the, these sort of like orange lamps, strong everywhere, the lights just shut off. And so for hours you just have this darkness that is shared between all the people in the city and it's not a very big city and it's dying because the machine that is keeping it alive, the furnace that is keeping, you know, the, the electricity running and stuff is dying. And anybody who tries to leave the city a comes back cut up and their bodies like racked with scratches and strangeness and just seems to be completely mad. And they just rave about nonsensical things. And it's like, that was the first kind of foray into sort of pseudo eldritch horror, you know, this pseudo cosmic core things that have to do with hp lovecraft, um, and, or coldness is a very lovecraft in inspired place. Um, the second thing that was really like that I really drew from was a book by William Hope Hodgson, who is one of lovecraft's inspirations and it's called the night land. And it takes place in a time long after all of the stars. And the sun have died and all of humanity huddles in this, a single, like a city that's like layers on layers and layers called the last redoubt and out in the darkness, these things just kind of loom over the, like the remaining vestiges of humanity. Um, and so when you're in our conus, um, there is no sun in the sky and fire is pretty much the only source of light. So talents are marked by, for the few towns that have, have, like people who kind of cleaned to sanity are, um, lit by a massive central bonfire that never ends day or night. Um, there's the fire guard that, you know, basically, you know, tends to it every day. Um, and uh, they, I mean, and the thing that's kind of horrible about it is that there is really no day or night. People just kind of exist, you know. Um, so like trying to keep track of time is sort of maddening because nobody who lives there is, was built for this place. This place is not natural. And um, what are some big maybe landmarks I might see if I'm looking around? Yeah. Um, I think probably the, the main thing is if you're lucky enough to pop into the, uh, pop indoor conus around a place where you will actually survive, um, you would be lucky to find cost trek, which is this huge. It's the largest known city in or conus and it, it, it like, uh, like other towns has, it is like the only sort of like sit properly, can be considered a city. Um, and it has these massive, a bond fires all over the place. Oh, okay. Hold on. I just had an idea, you know how. Um. Alright, so, so we've, we've talked about like, like I'm just thinking for a second, where do you think cash back is located in association with Sundar? Do you think it's like in the same place as a capital city or do you think it's somewhere else? Um, well I feel like if it was, you know, there'd be reflections and the, of the five methods, that's what, they're the five methos yeah, five methods. So I feel like there'd be five of them, so maybe they shouldn't be a reflection. Well maybe. Okay. No, that's actually a good point because I think the way I'm kind of imagining that reflection thing happening is that there's sort of this, a person might feel almost like a suggestion or an influence to a sort of a desire to like a current, you know, a current of, of fate or destiny, drawing them to behave in a certain way and they could fight against that, but you know, it's kind of suggesting that certain things should be in certain places. So what if it was like in the same location as you ava, which is the first city. Yeah. You, that so in, in, in Hallam May, like the ruins of Eva are considered like a holy site, you know, because it's the considered the first city where humanity in the face lived. This idea of like our conus occupying that same space or Crosstrek. Oh, occupying that same space as. I think it makes sense too because where that city comes from is it was the place that people settled down when they came there in the first place. The, uh, the great folk. Yes. Carter, do you want to, do you want to talk a little bit about what the grateful car? Yeah, yeah. They're kind of like, I'm pasty Golem creatures except not as bad as going. Right, right. They're not very healthy looking there. They all kind of palette and shades of grey, um, they're not exactly skeletal, but they're definitely not, you know, like a big. There's no big grateful. They're all kind of thin and um, you know, a man can do and I think, what did we say with their slightly taller? Yeah, they're kind of, yeah, kind of a long gated, like closer to six or seven feet tall then then, um, you know, five feet. Yeah. Because they originally come from humans I think. Right. I think there is grateful for,
Speaker 3you know, all the different people like that, you know, I was thinking of the shed archive. Right. And the new D and d thing for the grails.
Speaker 4Oh, okay. So you're thinking the great folk is just kind of a catchall term that means the shadowed races have I kind of liked that more. Yeah. Like in our conus, you might have gray folk that are dwarves are gnomes or, or in statute and stature informed, but it might not actually change anything about the way that they behave, you know, it's kind of like, because they're already this, this, this gray mimic, this gray shadow of what a person is supposed to be. So maybe they're just kind of not really different than each other because they don't really have much personality to begin with. Much identity. They're not people, but they're just sort of won.
Speaker 3Yeah. I think that, for example, if you were to take a gray door, if a gray nomad, I gray half Lang and put them side by side, you'd be like, uh, not really sure which ones I can kinda tell.
Speaker 4Well and also like, I kinda like this idea of like there's forms seem to sort of bend and waver a little bit like spaces, not entirely a latticework of like clear lines, you know, it's almost like they're moving through like, like really, really low level funhouse mirrors at all times. You know, it just enough to fuck with your vision.
Speaker 3Here's something for you. You're the only thing, the only time you're going to see someone else is with firelight and fire dances.
Speaker 4Fire dances. Yeah. Fire dances as in fire moves, right? Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yes. Yeah. Oh definitely. Okay. Um, because dude. Yeah. No, this is actually interesting. I just, so. All right. Okay. Question, because this is something we've never really talked about in great extent. When we talk about the two of these as being sort of light and dark mirrors of, of Halloumi, does that mean, do you think that these are literally like associated with people's shadows? I don't know. I'm, I'm playing with this idea of what if for every person on Halloo May, there is a person in our conus. I don't know if I like the one to one. I feel like that's too restrictive, but I think there's an association there because I think there's far less people or oconus because what kind of system? Much more dangerous place. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Well wait, wait, wait. What if it's creatures? Like what if the, the, the association is that there are like you might have sort of a shade or something of your, you know, or it's more like a doppelganger I think than anything else. Sort of like a parallel evolution, you know, a parallel reality than it is like actually associated to you. But like they might be a werewolf or they might be, you know, a Zombie or something like that. Or a fan or a vampire. Yes. Like
Speaker 3I want to see the reflect who the reflection is of um, or what's our, what's our vampire boy? What's his name? Yeah. We had a vampire boy. Who Do you talk with? Her Lord? The one who was manipulating the wreck.
Speaker 4Oh Shit. What does he, what does he see called? I closed my brokenness. Ref here. Let me look up a chasm Thar are you talking about[inaudible]
Speaker 3and talking about cares like who is Caz authority? Reflection of, right? This powerful vampire Lord.
Speaker 4Yeah. That's a really interesting. Like I'd be curious to know, like what makes you, is it just sort of fate or chance that like decides who is born a gray folk and who is born, you know, quote Warren rises from the ground and uh, you know, is that because I think that the, I think our conus just births the undead, like they just kind of come out of the ground.
Speaker 3Oh, absolutely. Yeah. But I think it's, it's connected to the soul of the person in a strange, darker way. We'll kind of like how, you know, undead don't have souls. There you go. Spoiler. Yeah. Is it?
Speaker 4No, no, no. The spoiler, like the souls, the soul has departed the body. It's either burned up and kind of returned to the Animus, um, or the etherium or it's been captured in bottled and brought down to the, uh, the abstention to feed the demonic and, and like alien forces. But like wherever it is, it is not in the Zombie.
Speaker 3So you know, there's like splotch, like art, like the psychiatrist will show you and you'll be like, I think that looks like a potato. Think of that. And like the person's soul is like the one picture and then you look at it from the, like the negative version night, looking at the black side of the white and that's the vampire version of them or the Dakota's version. Yeah.
Speaker 4Interesting. So it's kind of like in everything. Their soul isn't. Yeah. Oh Dude. Okay. Okay. Uh, here's an idea. So this is just playing with some. So, so some, some myths or some sort of a, uh, so in Kabbalah they talk about sort of there being, oh, it's, I guess it's kind of Dallas too, but this idea that there's the uncreated and creating and there's the uncreated creating and then being like two different entities. So the god of Abrahamic tradition is the uncreated creating, but above them is the uncreated and creating that like has no association with our creation. You know what I mean? There are even beyond that, there would be, um, and I don't know, for me it's just like there's something interesting about this idea that in the immutable form, before you were actually born into the world, where does the soul come from? Is it drawn from, I would say probably, you know, in the mythology of Halloween, it's drawn from the energy of like the etherium like something happens there to sort of contain and you know, and fill this sort of, you know, this uh, this bottle if you will, that becomes the person's soul. So like imagine if you will like let's say there's a pool and you, you take out or you know, like a couple of glass of water and you take out half of that water to fill up the soul. And the other half of it then is, you know, the stuff that's leftovers then maybe becomes, you know, the vampire or whatever in our conus that's, there's something really interesting about that. But one thing that might kind of throw things into a, we're at least called this into question, is a consideration that the real strong association. What is the, what is the association between illumine our conus. Then because like the, the quick history lesson here or conus was created when, during the ash curse. Is this correct? Or did we change this? I can't remember. I'll tell you if it is. Well, so from what I remember, this is like my head Canon, but I feel like we had a conversation about this. We're, no, that might have actually been the obsession that was maybe different or conus was created when the aluminum was shorn away from, from where conus it basically that the aluminum had been created for Helen May as sort of a hyper saturated mirror because the gods basically treated as a way of saying let's let us make onto creation a, an enchanted mirrors that they can see themselves the way we see them. I eat like you are so beautiful. We want you to see you the way we see you. Right? And so it's sort of this dreamy, you know, hyper. Everything is gorgeous or just, you know, bizarre and other worldly and dramatic because it was such as, such as it to the guys, right? They look around, they see strangeness. Exactly. And they see beauty, they see beauty in like the, the alienness that, uh, uh, that, that fleshes to spirit or oconus was created from the shadows of Olivia[inaudible]. There are no shadows. People and things do not cast shadows. And Olivia, that's where oconus like it got shorn away, cut away and that separation was caused as a rent from the Oscars. So maybe the association is between the Fei and these creatures, like maybe the doppelgangers or having these, these things are primarily from the lithium and that maybe some, some creatures are especially are different because they are reflections like maybe the great folk are reflections of certain special people who have been touched by fate or chance or whatever in Helen May. So they are sort of the shadows of real beings. Whereas like the, uh, the, the zombies and vampires and whatnot are shadows of the Fei. Okay, I get that. So this, so here's something interesting for you. You know, how the ells, right, or some
Speaker 3kind of step between there have almost a foot in the fe in a foot and the, you know, pmv the star.
Speaker 4Well they were additionally, I'm created to be a specific framework, you know, like their bodies as a specific framework to be emissaries and ambassadors on behalf of both, on behalf of the gods and behalf of humanity. Like a stepping stone between the two. So that humanity could grow in it
Speaker 3destiny. So what is, what is this kind of given that we're, we're doing this kind of mirroring stuff. What is the mirror of the elves? Right. Well, I mean, what if that's just what vampires are? Dude, that would be interesting because of the relationship I have with vampirism.
Speaker 4Yeah. I mean they're the ones who created vampirism. What if it was somehow they got touched or something crossed over from our conus and gave them knowledge of vampirism at this like, you know, during vm Secunda like I wonder if there's something there
Speaker 3so I can tell you what the thing was. You can. What is it? So do you know how in the museum, and this is for the listeners, because we're going to talk about the aluminum soon. They were wild. God's. Yes. They are the wild gods. Well obviously[inaudible] has their reflections the darker more sinister or are you suggesting that the watchers are the dark reflection of the wild gods? Some of them, the watchers catch all term made by the grateful for the things they don't understand. That is so much better than what I had in my mind because my mission in my head of watcher was mountain of flesh. I like yours better. So
Speaker 4more evocative image too of like, you don't. There's no defined form for watcher watchers. Just anything that leads you in the darkness, consume you and take you away.
Speaker 3Yeah. But it's specifically to. We'll kind that. They don't understand, right. They understand where it was. They understand vampires to some extent. Right? Right. There codafide there sort of an understanding of the way that they behave that the society that they run. There's almost like a structure to their, to their percentage. Yes. And one type of Washer, which we discussed was the mad denison's, uh, that used to carve the valleys of Sadar. Right. These strange creators and destroyer. Oh, are you talking about renders and vitals? I am. Oh my God. I never really made that connection. Okay. So, so, so
Speaker 4yeah. In the, in the mythology of Helen May, it is said that before the gods saw the material, the material, the physical world for the first time it is said that own used these titanic creations of pure Florick, um, presence like, like a, you know, like trees and like the Avatar of, you know, all plant life and use these other massive one's called a renders which were like these sort of like, animated elemental titans that were, you know, colossally mountain sized creatures who just plowed over the world creating the oceans and the, and the planes and the mountains and things. And then the vitals came along and like gave it life. And so the two forces kind of clashed for, you know, a timeless time before the, uh, before the gods of the theory member looked on the place. So you're saying that the, some of the washers are like the results of those somehow being associated.
Speaker 3Uh, so you see, um, when the chaos of the ash, Chris came many vitals, uh, what happened to, you know, be slumbering in the movie.
Speaker 4Right. That's true. We do have, yes. We'll have to talk about that next week. Um, but yeah, that's uh, that's true.
Speaker 3And when this cataclysmic event happened and shook the very, you know, threads of creation for this moment, this moment of magical expansion. Right. And our has kind of created in a strange place. I think some of the vitals and some of the vendors were kind of torn from their slumber and kind of trapped in our conus and this, the, the vibe of us was not meshing with their stuff. So they kind of crazy
Speaker 4and I think that they like. Yes. Okay. That's so do. That's super cool. Um, also because dude, I never made this connection before, but I think that there's something between those two in the wild gods because all nine of the wild gods are sort of like the animistic animalistic manifestations of the personality of a specific flow. I've got it up. Oh, you do if you want me to text. So yeah, just like read off a couple of them. We have the eagle, the lioness, the twilight mayor does, uh, does it have numbers next to him? Yes. Okay. So like, what's the Eagle? Is it a, is it a three? Then he goes to one. Okay. So that's like. Yeah. So it's sort of like this, uh, well that one's not the best one. I think I might just cut like perfection. Yeah, that's perfection. Um, then like the lioness is, is a charity because you know, she represents both, um, you know, protective of the tribe. Um, but also like the hunters, you know, the one who will provide for her cubs, but also the one that goes out and fights to kill, to provide for them the twilight. Mary is sort of like the dark and creative mysterious one. You know, the one that uh, the, the, the beautiful horse of the night, the one you see an under moonlight. The owl is truth. Wisdom. I'll see exactly how. Yeah. So like each of those being sort of a manifestation of the. I bet there's an association there. I say that I don't actually know which. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3Mysterious realms of our imagination. There must be an association. We need to dig it up.
Speaker 4Yeah, I totally. Well, I just liked this idea of like the material and the, uh, the animal and the plant and like being sort of like, you know, the uh, sort of, uh, a trinity of the world we see around ourselves, you know, like culture recognizes sort of the three things as being these different things than each other even though, you know, when we know scientifically there's significantly more phylums or kingdoms than that, you know, we've got fun guy and with God, you know, prokaryotes, eukaryotes, all that stuff, you know, when it comes to sort of observational lore that we have told ourselves throughout history. That's what kind of makes sense scientifically were basically bananas. Are you saying these are DNA so closely relates to bananas? Yeah, I'm okay if it's already. We're already like quarter of an hour in and we haven't even really talked about so many things. Uh, okay. We should, let's talk about the watchers for a second. So there are, there are the watchers, like a kind of like lowercase w and then there's the watchers, uppercase w and it's sort of a difference between, you know, like I said, mountains of flesh. So I mean this is, I'm totally aping this from the night land and I do it unapologetically because it is such a cool idea. But in the night land it talks about how humanity has lived in this, you know, singular city called the last redoubt for millions of years at this point. And it tracks the movement of these monsters in the dark, these huge lumbering, a mountains of flesh like we used to track the stars as they moved through the sky. And that's just such a potent image of like they ever near. They ever draw closer to the, uh, to the last redoubt and they take millions of years. But one day they will cross the, this, the, the, the ring of light that protects the last readout from the world beyond, you know, the lesser creatures will, you know, our, our, our, our, you know, pushed away by the earth, current, um, you know, that causes this ring of light. The earth current will one day fail in these, uh, these monsters will, you know, take the city for their own. And like, that's just Kinda shivery in this sort of eternal, like the, the, the, the, the fear of infinity way. Um, that really draws something that's like, just sort of fascinating to me. And so when we set about kind of building out some of the things about the watchers and the way that they are in or conus, I think we talked about the fact that they actually draw or act almost like a, a, you know, like, uh, like, uh, something that seduces a lot of the monstrous creatures around them, which actually kind of almost creates a, uh, a sort of similitude of protection for the gray. Pho is an interesting thing that I'm, the watchers are so frightening that they frightened the vampires and werewolves or what, right. But at the same time, lesser creatures that have not the like the mind to know to fear it or they can be allured and drawn in by some sort of, you know, sort of. I think the image that we, we, we were kind of connecting to was this idea of like one day somebody disappears in the darkness and they got too close to the watch and they just never returned the thing just drew it to itself because it is, you know, it's mystery. It's, it's inspires curiosity because it's massive and it's unknowable, right? Entrench way. And there's just this allure that it has. Like maybe it's, you know, maybe it's like seducing the mind or it's in trapping the mind. It's, it's dominating people's minds. Maybe it's none of that. And there's just something about it's alien existence that makes a, you know, the people who are on the edge of madness, you know, dive fully in and throw themselves towards this creature and what happens in the darkness. Oh, nobody lives to find out, so there's nothing really to share there, but yeah, so cash back is like, is it right there? So it has all these bonfires and then the first watcher, you know, capital f, capitalw, uh, was one of the reasons why they able to make the city successful in the first place at all. And so, uh, because you know, it, it sort of acts like a, like as like a bug Zapper for a lot of this sort of strange monsters. So when the fire guard and other people who are out in the darkness kind of, you know, protecting the local area, it does a lot of duty for kind of drawing things to it. But I also think that it's not the only city nearby, like there's probably a couple of smaller towns that you know, that, you know, populate the darkness can't be more than like a day's travel away though because you need to be able to be awake and have a fueled fire in order to travel from one to the next. Yeah. Because the fire is really the only thing that keeps a lot of those strange like monsters away or their horses or their like giant Scorpion beast. They ride. I don't know. You know what, there probably is some sort of pack animal but I don't know. I don't know if there's a lot of ways to travel at a higher speed than you know, maybe covering like 20 to 30 miles in a well, whatever. Even as a day, you know? I mean yeah, they don't really record time and days, waking hours. The weakness like when you can actually stay conscious and focused. I mean I'm sure they have like a time when they lit the fire wane a bit or something and that's probably the day for them is when the fire goes down a little bit more and everyone's up and then they all piled on the fire at night when everyone's asleep. Right. To freight and everything away. Yeah. Okay. And like, okay, because I actually was like, I wonder if there's like fire roads, you know, is there a way that they can sort of get like an eternal fire, you know, kind of linking up different towns so that maybe there's just these heavily populated roots, you know, quote unquote heavily as, as, as heavily as anything can be populated in our bonus. But like, you know, where it's pretty common to how fires connecting a town like every so often or something like that. Maybe you have these sort of outposts every hour or so.
Speaker 3Yeah, some sort of loose organized force that tries to keep these outposts going, you know, Warren's people of danger that is nearby or has been spotted. Yeah. Hey Carter. Yes.
Speaker 4So it sounds kind of like, or conus is an awful place to live. Absolutely. Right. So, um, there's like a lot of planar travel, like there's a lot of people who move from plaintiff plane and like we even talked about like a wizard or a necromancer getting pissed at an adventure and sending them to her oconus. Why? Why don't the great folk just leave?
Speaker 3Well, one, you know, once you're there it's kind of hard to get back unless you're a super powerful wizard for one, I think they're naturally occurring portals to organist as much more naturally occurring hurdles to the Ilium, but I think they do exist for oconus and you don't want to be mean. But you know, I think these places are often. That's where the monsters kind of like hang out. I think.
Speaker 4Oh, so you're saying you're saying that like it might be that the only ways to escape, like all the exits are blocked?
Speaker 3Yeah, it's like there is, there are exits and you could try, but it's like, you know, this is where the monsters go because they can sometimes get out and go on a killing spree and then come back or something like this that. So they hang out with ads
Speaker 4like that because honestly I had an answer in my head, but I think yours makes it so much richer. So my answer was they can't. My answer was the gray folk. There's something about the way that they are and the way that our conus births things. Like I think people, I don't know if people have children, I wonder if they just kind of wake up in the ground and push their way out through the dirt.
Speaker 3Oh, I got something for you that is just icing on the cake for what you're selling. You're ready. What both of us are right? Yeah. And that's what I was thinking. Oh, they can't get out because they never have. And that's what I mean, I think
Speaker 4is, is I think there are maybe a couple of places in the world where like, the, the people who may fight hard, uh, may actually make their way out. Um, but I don't know if it would even be a very pleasant experience for a gray folk to actually make it into the real world. It might be like a shadow trying to live among, you know, the, the embodied, you know, just as much as the ribbon who are soulless creatures, uh, do not seek to live in the, in the burning light of the surface because it's, it's bathed in magic and magic to a soul that has a or a magic to a being that has no soul is like this tumultuous tempest. So it's like why would we ever want to climb to where you are? There's no, there's nothing there for us. Their pain and tingling. So I think that gray folk can make it and I would not be surprised if there are some adventures who are gray folk and have found a way to make it work, but the difference is they just never go back. Yeah. And I mean I think that there definitely repercussions to a gray folk being in Sedona or especially the illusion keys. I think it starts to upset fate. Like there's some sort of balance there or something where it's like this is the way that reality should be. And the more little things like that are there like bugs in a program, you know, it starts to fail. Yeah. Or like a body that's fighting out infection and you know, he, they, they, they things try to seek them out. Oh my God, okay. If we ever make a dude, if we ever make the gray folk as a playable race, they're straight up going to have a bad luck. Feet like that's going to be like, they might have some supernatural, like really powerful abilities or something like that to balance it out. But I love this idea that like, like um, you know, once per day at the dms discretion, they can force them to reroll dude, that'd be so fucking cool. Imagine like it's a feature that the DM takes care of. Yup. And says actually reroll that die. And then they mark it off for the day and that I. and I think those roles increase as you level up. Like he might level 10, you have to bad luck feats instead of one. Because as, as the universe see fights harder to like keep you back or push you away. You know, that's interesting. I'm glad we recorded that. Even if we cut it later so I can write this down because frank in the future write that down for sure. Do it frank. Okay. But. So, oh, one last thing about the idea of them being born from the ground. A dude. Um, I think, I don't think it's just dirt that's around them. I think there's some sort of weird film or webbing. It's like spider webs but maybe not so like, like, like in the ground itself, like laced through the dirt and these webs just kind of like form around, you know, what however they get there or wherever they're coming from the surround the body. And so like when the person awakes, they feel like their lungs are full of dirt and they have to like push and break through these webs and push up against like out of the dirt. They're not like regular spiderwebs and like viscous. They're almost like almost like a liquid. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yes. Like almost like a, like strings of stuff. Yeah. It's like super weird, stringy molasses. Yes. I think there's one more thing I wanted to talk about before we sort of finished up this first episode.
Speaker 3All right. What's that?
Speaker 4Well, I mean, we haven't talked at all about the Church of storms. I mean, it's, this, it's more of a feature of um, what's the word for it? It's more of a feature of cosh threat than it is a conus. That's true. I think. I think it'll, you know, if Patricia storms might actually have to be its own episode because there's so much there, like there is this really. Here's where it comes from. First of all, it's, it's, it's pretty much the only truly, um, broadly recognized religion in our conus of like people's, like a faith, um, after the ash curse and after things had been so cut off and distanced and people are, you know, huddling in these masses trying to like find a place to live and survive in this eternal darkness and they have the fires to keep them warm. There is one thing that is seen in this guy occasionally and when raging roiling storms of, of, of like sheets of water come down occasionally lightning can be seen in the sky and for a moment, for a dim moment, searing bright white light is shot through every erases, it looks up to the sky and the rolling thumper, thumper, remember the rolling thunder? It reverberates deep in people's being and as they look around, like all of a sudden they realized like there is light, there's light in the sky for a moment. And imagine like being next to the watcher and looking up and seeing in the light for just a dim moment, just a snap of the fingers. This, I don't even know what you'd see like just this, this, this looming creature that that towers over you. But so like, people come to worship storms. Um, and I think worship might actually be the right word because I don't think there's really much patronage. I don't think that God's really can reach our conus.
Speaker 3Oconus is a weird thing because it's like an absence of,
Speaker 4you know, magic. Yes, it's, it is, it is. The it is the awful of o, F, f a l of magic, like the things that magic doesn't use. It's the refuse.
Speaker 3Yeah. So it's not really, you know, touchable by the gods because you know, they're just beings of spirit and they can really touch the
Speaker 4right here. Yeah. If magic is electricity than the gods live in a wire, you know, they can only go where the electricity is. And so, so this idea of like, they have no knowledge of this sort of the um, oh, I forget what I called it a, it's written. I think I have it in, in a, in, on the world and, but it's the decree, the first, the first decree of own or something like that. And it's basically A. Oh no, nevermind, that's a different thing. But basically just saying like, don't worship gods because gods are not, not made to be worshiped. Uh, uh. Anyway, so like the storms is super interesting to me because, you know, it's the one time when you actually get light in the world and it's this terrifying like crackling of lightning. But they, you know, I think they simultaneously fear it and dfi it and say like, this must be God. And so for the occasional storms, people like weep with joy or men, not probably not joy, there's probably no joy, but we put the relief or something. Yeah. Fear. That's pretty much it. But yet you're afraid of the good thing, not a bad thing. Yes, exactly. You're like, yes, let it emulate and destroy our, you know, our foes, especially because lightning can strike plants or trees or whatever. And a man, let's, we're not, we don't even have time to get into how trees are different in our conus, but work, they are different. Um, I think we're just gonna have to leave the church was storms to be its own episode because uh, we have to have record another one of these and it's already 5:00. So just imagine
Speaker 3a lightening and like lightening dude's and rods and like crazy vampire dudes and flush trees and they'd go,
Speaker 4uh, yeah. Sounds good. Um, how do you want, how can I close this out? Yeah, feel free. All right, well in summary, uh, yeah, I guess we're talking, we've talked about our conus, we uh, do we want to do a quick, uh, like um, follow up on, on things that you would like we want to kind of see more of or things that were in ciliary but like interesting to us.
Speaker 3Okay. Um, I want a little bit more about the floor and fallen over Jonas because like we said, our flesh stories a thing. Are there weird like molasses pockets where people grow out of or they're giant spiders that people ride with fire on their backs,
Speaker 4right? Yeah. I think if I had to choose one thing I'd be, I really am. I want to see more of this sort of light and dark mirror of people's fleshed out. Like we definitely talked about it some, but like what are the implications of that in, you know, whenever you know that stuff gets brought up, especially in like science fiction, you know, it kind of calls into question destiny or fate or like, do I have a choice? If there's infinite number of parallel worlds where you in an infinite number of frank's are doing almost identical or identical things to me, you know, I, I'd be curious to see like, it'd be fun to do our spin on that, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this exploration to the lands of Sadar and the realms beyond. Loop him in our conus and this situation and perhaps found some good material to add to your own stories. You can reach us@thelowerkeepersontwitteroremailusattheemailsoremailuslowerkeeperspodcastatgmail.com. If you're not sure how to spell those, you can check the, a description in, in the podcast and we don't say this enough, but if you've got some, some Dank nugs do you think that would be worth talking about? And uh, in the Intro, I'm send us your ideas. We would love to incorporate your ideas into the world in your thoughts. I think probably the easiest way to do that would be on twitter, but you could also send us an email whatever way works best for you because we're curious and just as much as Carter contributes to my creative process, you would contribute to ours. And, uh, we will credit you because we want to invite other people into our endeavor.
Speaker 3You Bet Ya, you can follow us on itunes, stitcher, Google play, or wherever you listen to podcasts such as soundcloud and spotify. If you like us, please give us a five star rating. It helps us a lot. It lets you know that you like us and it lets other people know that we're great because we might be, I don't know, tell us a even better spread the word. Tell your mom, tell your dad, tell everyone who likes world building and d and D, tell your game master, tell yourself to watch the next episode a that if you are now,
Speaker 4thanks to Josh soaker for his composition of land of here as the Lord keepers theme and thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 3Until next time, don't forget, it's always more tales to tell.
Speaker 4Thanks everybody. Bye. Bye.