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A colorful continent within a magical world.
Welcome to Coursera work by week. This is where I'm putting each of my weekly posts.
The curriculum can be found at Coursera
This story is set in a world where color is the root of all magic. Most of it focuses on a river with plains on one side and menacing mountains on the other. The Great Circular Lake, with a diameter twice that of the Wide River’s width, lies to the east of the Triangular mountains. Each culture within the region is named after a shape. The terrain dictates the colors that are easy to obtain. This, in turn, dictates what resources this society has ready access to. Specific people, known as artists, can channel color magic to provide necessary resources. For example, being able to paint runes with green and yellow creates food, and red offers life and death. Knowing how to obtain or make more complex colors allows for more complex resources. Different religions have disparate stories about how humans understood color and how artists came to have power.
One religion pays homage to the water dragon in the river, who comes and bestows the concept of a new primary color to the worthiest artist. Another religion believes that their world is made up of a group of deities known as the “Art Collective” and that all Huetopia exists in somebody’s painting.
The following plot takes the reader on a tour of this world’s rich history and geography. An unlikely group of graduate students goes on a field trip to discover their history and their ancestor’s role in shaping the world today. Color is magic. When our characters are born, color magic is carefully tuned to create technology. This kind of magic has not always been readily available in a mostly peaceful society. Uncovering the past will help these students write their thesis and discover the unsavory circumstances that have allowed their world to move past war.
The first stop on the trip is an abandoned temple built into the side of some cliffs in the Triangle Mountains. As the group recedes from civilization and the woods get older, the group finds some runes painted on the trees. However, the runes seem to have much less saturation than the modern color magic on today’s tablets.
The group must overcome challenges to discover their past and get to the temple.
Enter a world full of bright colors and geometric geography, where the politics of the past inform the decisions of leaders who are oblivious to the ancient magic forces stirring.
Enter a world full of bright colors, geometric geography, and political leaders oblivious to the ancient magic forces stirring.
Will a group of graduate students complete a quest to understand their history and make an informed decision about continuing to live in their previously invisible utopia?
Right here, you will see a list of characters, and links to the content written already
72, but nobody truly knows
Professor at The Academy
Has a slight Italian accent. The reader would recognize this as a heavy New York City accent.
Grew up in the inner projects of the old T-Fort City. He was secretly a color-magic adept. Once he got through Euclidian school (the equivalent to K-12 in Huetopia), the TriVerment offered him a job scouting for other color-magic adepts1 in addition to doing product development.
The modern BrightLight2 technology. This is the lighting technology that allows for modern-day food production.
That being said, Atti stole the idea from some Scholars in the Ancient Artist Temple.
The widespread use of printing and stickers was previously the best method of using the color-magic. Atti saw the tablets in the Ancient Temple and knew that the [TriVerment] would want to have them.
Orchestral Symphonies
Atichaos Archibald has expensive taste. This makes sense, as he has spent 53 years on the cushy TriVerment payroll. Atti’s students do NOT know quite how wealthy he truly is, as he dresses like a frumpy professor.
Brown Tweed Jackets, sweater vests, khaki slacks, well-polished black wing-tipped oxford shoes. Yes, he is mismatched. He also wears purple argyle socks.
He has a mane of extremely curly brown hair. Think 3B hair. This extends to his beard and mustache.
He would order a concentrated black coffee with a shot of whiskey and a peanut butter sandwich. You would likely see him with a laptop, drawing out schematics.
He LOVEs peanut butter. When students answer a question correctly in class, he tosses them a package of peanut butter cracker sandwiches. This is also so that he can be sure that nobody in the course will explicitly go hungry. His syllabus for undergraduate History 101 and 102 states that students should come to him if anything goes wrong with their meal plan or finances. It has yet to be used because the typical clientele of The Academy is relatively wealthy children of TriVerment generals.
Occasionally, there are students on scholarship who need help with food. These are the students that Atichaos needs to watch out for, as they are most likely to be color magic Adepts.
Atichaos is narcissistic. He must be the best at all he attempts. While his motivation was initially aligned with Triangular supremacy, it slowly shifted to personal superiority. While he will continue to teach history and be the best of it, his motivation for being so kind is that his students continually respect him.
The real reason for Professor Arch’s teaching retirement is his lack of respect for authority and tendency to go rogue. He was kicked out of the Ancient Artist Temple due to cultural disrespect and plagiarism. However, they need to keep him on the payroll because he is good at his magic. The TriVerment budget is large enough to support Atichaos’s cushy retirement if he continues to teach revisionist history and prevent Adepts from joining the Ancient Artists.
He never fails to ensure everyone knows he was the modern Lite Brite tablet inventor. However, he always has an extra one for somebody who forgets theirs. Professor Arch pointedly ignores the existence of Songs of the Spirits. Most students are children of TriVerment officials so that they would be followers of the Great Artist Collective religion, so this omission is not apparent. The point is to lead people to believe there was no other religion. He teaches the Great Artist creation myths as religious myths of the region.
Atti (alias when younger) would bite his lip to woo others to divulge information. This made people believe he was curious, innocent, and trustworthy. This worked when visiting one of the old circle tribes (different than the protagonist’s). He also could see the Lite Brite technique because of his charm.
No, but he provides pizza to his lecture every sixth day.
When Professor Arch was Atti, he mainly ate pizza, which was inexpensive and easy to obtain. Eventually, he learned that pizza has some slight-color sensitivity repression when chronically eaten in large quantities. (This is in the cheese. Color repression is only seen in significant amounts in experiments on bats. However, bats are also most likely to lose their color sensitivity because they can only sense colors in the blue range. Humanoids do not know this, but they can see that they are not as good at color magic as their counterparts).
This tool keeps students fed and dependent on the BrightLight tablets instead of using paint to access their innate abilities.
Atichaos Archibald has two residences. One residence is a manor in the fields of Linaria. He spends off-seasons there, and this is where he will take meetings with TriVerment officials. He also has a flat in the classy part of downtown, a 10-minute stroll from his office and a 15-minute walk from the lecture hall he most often teaches in. On the way to work, he stops at a café each morning and gets a cup of hot black coffee and a croissant. (Of course, this is different than what he would typically get at a café in Linaria).
One of the ellipsoid tribes on the outskirts of the Great Circular Lake. This territory was taken over by the Triangle nation about one thousand years ago, so many of her nation’s cultural practices have been influenced by Triangle culture. Most people have never heard of the ellipsoid tribes. Their lakes, the Ellipses, have since been renamed by the Triangles as the Angular Rivlettes.
The largest religion is an extremely old religion, Curl3 A subset of this religion eventually evolved into Draconian
Character X knows the prayers, summoning the Dragon of the River, and many other spirits. She is skeptical, given that she has not seen any firsthand. She does not know that the visions come at a Color Magic Adept ceremony immediately after her Ph.D. graduation.
X is a student at The Academy. While her parents could pay the tuition, she also got a partial scholarship because of her unnaturally high color-magic powers.
X eventually graduates, and becomes a historian, to right the incorrect record that Arch provided. K-ler is the author of this tale, and therefore almost everything will be colored through K-ler’s her lens. The reader won’t know that she is a her. Or much of what this is about.
Her role as a narrator might come through when we read a book by Professor Arch, in the next volume.
Her peers thought she was super fun to be around and aspired to be like her. She schooled even the most athletic of her peers at sports and could be the life of the party. However, this extreme charisma never reached her eyes. She always thought she didn’t fit in. However, part of it was the weight of keeping her community’s secrets while at school. Acting like the perfectly trained Angular seemed fun but was exhausting.
It is tough to hide her Ellipsoid roots when accidentally cursing. Great grandparents came from a time when it wasn’t as essential to hide, so her grandparents and parents often used ellipsoid turns of phrases around the house.
As a child, K-ler rarely went to coffee shops, as she would have rather been found climbing trees in the woods.
When becoming an adult, and finding that she was meant to be a historian, she would go to coffee shops, and get the sweetest hot tea they had, usually orange, or lemon. She then would be seen with a stack of 3-5 well-worn books, a calligraphy pen, a pot of ink, and some paper. Even though most people would write with a [BrightLight], K-ler’s tendency to be a color magic adept causes her to have this peculiar love for the pen and paper. Canonically, she is approximately 6 generations younger than the cast of characters we will follow on this adventure, so much of the narrative is pieced together. (Apparently I as the “irl” Skylar am translation from Sinish)
Skylar is not much of a flirt, and cannot tell if anybody is flirting with her. She also has some serious problems with generic Triagonal society, with the typical 3-parent, 9-kid generic life. She somehow ended up with only one life partner (Wildly unusual in her society), and her life partner is another femme (long hair no facial hair5). That being said, she does dutifully record what primary sources tell her, so she will record relationships properly.
Even though she comes off as disheveled when dressing, she actually keeps her living space pristine. Her bedroom has a single bed tucked in the corner farthest from the door, on a metal bed frame, and no headboard. Her and her partner insist on keeping separate sleeping spaces, as to not annoy each other. At the head of her bead, at height about 2 feet above where her head rests, when sitting up in bed, there is a shelf. On the shelf, there is a collection of blue and grey painting supplies. Above the shelf, there is a rectangular patch that is constantly being painted. Right now, there is half of an oceanic scene, covering some partial runes that are part of a sleeping spell. Known only to her, and Ellipsoid people, this oceanic scene is also a more powerful sleeping spell.
In the other corner, adjacent to the head of the bed, there is a wire rack, with a set of hangars, with clothing neatly hung up. Beside the rack, there is a wooden drawer set. Between the drawers and the bed, there is a window, with bright yellow shears, to allow plenty of light through.
Across from the window, lies a writing desk with a tablet, a cup full of pens, and a pad of paper. In the righthand drawer of the writing desk, she keeps a set of empty pads, and below that lives a filing cabinet. To the right of the desk, lives an overflowing bookcase. Each shelf is stuffed completely, and stacked above the bookcase, there are three piles of neatly stacked books.
Wrapping around the whole room, skipping the painting, there are floating shelves, also all filled with books, however these books are held up using some metal bookends. At the bottom of each shelf (including the bookcase) there are neatly handwritten labels, describing the genre of book that lives here. If closely inspected, each of the books are organized by the author's middle name in each section. Upon closer inspection, one would notice that at the top of each book, just above the binding, there are some markers, there for possibly some organization purpose, unknown to anybody other that K-ler.
K-Ler is a narrative foil to Professor Arch. She will also foreshadow the big reveal that the TriVerment is a dystopian government rather than a generic, ignorable entity. She is the one student who knows that Sikland is not homogeneous and that the cultures of Sikland are not entirely dead. It is also essential that K–Ler is never a POV character, unless K-Ler is the author. However, if K-Ler is the narrator, then she would not actually exist within the narrative at all, but will show signs of being a biased narrator.
Note:Skylar has two different answers to these questions. The Genuine Answer give X’s honest response, and Record Answer gives the response that X would actually turn into Professor Arch. These Recorded Answers are approximately equivalent stereotypical answers a disgruntled Triangle would give. However, a future character will give genuine Triangle responses.
Genuine Response: K-ler is fine, I guess
Genuine Response: Uhhh, anchovy dip. Slicings6, I cannot say that. It is too elliptical.
Recorded Response: My favorite food is pizza.
Genuine Response: I utterly hate peanut butter. It is the most disgusting linear dish I’ve ever eaten, and I do not understand why it is a delicacy. But to each their own.
Recorded Response: Peanut butter is a delicacy that the Linarians developed to help the Triangle Tribes a stable food source, and therefore it is simply patriotic to enjoy it.
Genuine Response: I grew up in Sikland, near the Great Circular Lake, near the Ellipses. I grew up riding niads, and praying to the serpents. I mean I call it Sikland, because it is in all of the maps, but my ancestors actually call it Areneae.
Recorded Response: I grew up in the Siklandish region of Triangle.
Genuine Response: Blue7, duh. I pair blues with greens in a spiral pattern, to coax the fish out of the Ellipses. Doesn’t everybody know that?
Recorded Response: A yellow-green hue, so I can eat healthily.
Genuine Response: Well, at home we speak Sinish9. But when we are searching for spirits, our prayers are in Asym10. Something tells me I am not quite good enough at Asym pronunciation, because I haven’t yet seen anything. However, most people are not good enough at Asym, as there have been no apparitions in thousands of years. But I can hope that maybe I or one of my offspring might be good enough to meet a spirit.
Recorded Response: I’ve only ever spoken Sinish. During Euclidian School, I learned some Linarian, but I was never very good.
Genuine Response: Ughhh, I mean, I’m only taking this class so that I can become an Artist.
Recorded Response: It is my patriotic duty to understand those who came before me, so that I further the Great Triangular Nation.
Genuine Response: I love to paint. It clears my mind, and it allows me to access magic from my ancestors.
Additionally, I enjoy making fish stew with my grandmother.
Recorded Response: I enjoy playing frisbee, and eating Hamentashen11.
Genuine Response: I would slice-a-plane12 run away from this torus13, and find a place where I can paint, without having to deal with the ramifications.
Recorded Response: I would stay loyal to the remnants of Triangle society.
Lytia is a Linarian, from one of the Old Families14.
Lytea grew up surrounded by total luxury, but was the 15th child in a family with 16 kids. While the oldest few sent to the most prestigious Euclidean schools, and were doted on by all four parents, as more kids came, more parenting responsibilities fell to the housekeeping staff.
Chapter one will be broken into three sections. Each one will focus on the point of view of a character as they interact with a relatively dull life within their region. This will set up a status quo, a Chekov’s gun, and a way for the reader to become acclimated to the most familiar version of Huetopia.
It will start by showing two characters, Lytea and Sam, on the Quartano estate, arguing about a tree they used to play in as children. This tree grew in a swamp on the outskirts of the estate and has some old Linarian colors attached to it. Lytea and Sam aren’t entirely sure of the significance of the Wallowing Willow. However, they both have access to colors rarely seen since the Time of Story and think they are the only ones who know about the Willow. This argument came up because they each had some very similar points brought up to them in the feedback Professor Arch gave about their Ph.D. proposals. While both Lytea and Sam applied to study history, they did not expect to get into the focus area of color magic. Lytea thinks this isn’t a big deal and mentions that she talked about the tree in her proposal essay. Sam, colored by his Siklandish heritage, thinks that the Wallowing Willow might have had an effect and should have been kept a secret. This argument is supposed to foreshadow the fact that Professor Arch has dubious intentions, even though he is overtly being exceptionally kind and helpful in this book.
While Professor Arch does not appear in this chapter, he is a topic of dinner conversation when Lytea is eating dinner with her family. This is an opportunity to show the opulence of a high Linarian home. For the Quartanos, it is normal to have staff serve them in the homeliest dinner hall, which shows more wealth than Sam’s entire extended family could afford in 10 lifetimes. Sam works as a server in the Quartano Casual Kitchenette, so Sam is present for the conversation about Lytea’s upcoming studies under Professor Arch. Ceil Ling Para Quartano is the top-point15 of his branch of the Quartano family. Ceil also references that the Quartanos are sponsoring Sam’s education. Ceil would only ever do this if Sam were getting an excellent and potentially profitable education, and Professor Arch’s reputation fits these requirements.
The second section of the chapter will focus on the life of Agent Aster, an old friend of Professor Arch, from the days that they were Asym and Aster together. Right now, Aster is the head of Internal Affairs in the TriVerment. He is also taking on the project of auditing Professor Arch’s curriculum. As the head, he would usually delegate this sort of task to a Scalene16. This section of the chapter will show Agent Aster in a dinner conversation with his unionship partners17 and three children. Aster is as much a Checkov’s gun as he is a character. He is introduced in chapter one as an introduction to Triangle society and politics. He then will show up a couple times in Professor Arch’s class as a reminder that Triangle Society is inherently oppressive. As a Checkov’s gun, he will then be fired when Professor Arch’s intentions are revealed.
The third part of the chapter will focus on Thalia. She is from Beyond the Zig Zag Pass, living as an immigrant in Sikland. Thalia will work with Lytea and Sam on the color-magic Ph.D. project. She grew up on the outskirts of a small fishing town in eastern Sikland. When younger, she would sometimes hear secrets of the Siklish people because her mother owned a cafe. Draconians (a minority religious group) were comfortable speaking openly in the cafe because Thalia’s mother “couldn’t afford” BrightLight surveillance and had a back room for private conversations. Thalia relocated to the outskirts of The Academy’s Township, so she could wait tables to put herself through school. The part of the chapter will follow her during a typical day, waiting tables and stashing away tips so she can prepare to buy whatever supplies will be needed.
Lytea pulled up her acceptance letter from Professor Arch on her tablet and showed it to Sam.
“Accepted to focus research on color–magic and how to combine color from novel sources to create colors compatible with BrightLight technology for specific purposes,” she said with barely contained excitement, “We get to study under Professor Arch,” Lytea started skipping down the familiar wooded path, practically vibrating, “The Professor Arch.”
Sam was unsure of whether her vibration was just from the excitement, or from the fact that Lytea had upped the green saturation of her drink a little more than she should have. Sam took a sip from Lytea’s cup to investigate. Lytea’s competitive nature, and proclivity for impulsive decisions made her susceptible to keeping up with Sam in green saturation, but because she didn’t like the flavor that blue adds to the coffee-esque beverage she never used it, missing out on the calming and balancing benefits of blue gave.
Lytea was lucky that Sam was holding the hot beverage at the moment, as Lytea would have spilled it otherwise. With the direction that this conversation was goin, Sam was glad to have the ability to ration Lytea’s access to the stimulant.
“Why would he assume we would study new color-magic?” questioned Sam, with an edge of suspicion creeping into his voice. Sam did his best to limit aggression until he knew for certain that there wasn’t an alternative explanation for why he received an acceptance letter to study color-magic at a school he never applied to go to, and certainly could never afford.
“I talked about the tree,” Lytea said flippantly. She knew that she needed to tell Sam about this, but she often forgot how seriously he took colors and nature. She kept forgetting that there was a time before color resources were easily obtainable using the BrightLight. To her, obviously everybody needed color to live, but BrightLight and its various competitors provided tablets, making many colors available at the touch of a button, making dye, brushes and runes functionally irrelevant. Lytea’s drive to impress Ceil was overtook her loyalty to the Willow, in a moment of weakness, even though it was the most peaceful place she had ever experienced. Its not like she wanted to destroy her childhood sanctuary, but if she was going to move, it would be hard for to make the case to Ceil why it mattered. Lytea aslo balked at the fact that she would eventally have to ask her sibling, Puice, the youngest to receive land inheritance18, for the same favors if the tree survived Ceil.
“You told him what?” Sam asked in a measured tone. With his stomach lurching, Sam stopped walking along the path, and rooted himself to where he stood, with a well-practiced assertive calm, in direct contrast to Lytea’s ecstatic chitter. Despite having his theories about what happened, Sam did not want to believe the words Lytea were saying. He wanted to believe her tone even less. Sam displayed his shock and dissappointment by adopting a clenched jaw and steely stare. Sam was acutely aware that they were still a ten minue walk from the Willow, and that they had just passed Chair Rock two minutes back making sitting down poor option. Of course Lytea would wait until the worst possible moment to blasély drop a bombshell.
Sam’s lack of movement and subsequent stern expression grabbed Lytea’s attention. She had only seen it once, when a TriVerment official was testing Sam’s loyalty to the Artist Collective Religion, and Sam managed to pass with flying colors, despite his true loyalties.
“About the Willow,” Lytea paused, fully turning back to look Sam directly in the eye, using muscle memory to expertly land her feet on the two green-moss covered jet-stream rocks, straddling a dangerous burgandy mud-patch“We are headed there,” she said stating the obvious, “The only reason why Ceil didn’t have it taken down was becasue I was adamantly sentimental, and there was plenty of other raw land to rent. Plus, he listens Cos for some reason.”
Sam nodded slightly, indicating that he knew this. He didn’t divulge the reasons, as that was Cos’s story to tell, not Sam’s. In general, it was considered professional avoid faternizing with family members. It made it easier to fulfil weird demands, and to separate yourself from the drama that the wealthy folk always bring. Being standoffish also helped with keeping secrets, as a lot more commonly needed amongst those who choose to take service positions. Sam’s friendship with Lytea was risky and contraversial, but Cos uniquely understood Sam’s friendship with Lytea, as he had a similar one with Ceil. Lytea was sadly unaware of this despite her friendship with Sam.
Lytea continued, “The other week Ceil brought up another conversation about taking the tree down to organize a new farm for rentors, so I mentioned that it might be a good source of color, and that we could license mining rights out to BrightLight.
“Talking about how we played there as kids in the admittance essay was a personal touch for the administrators,” Lytea’s words were just falling out of her mouth. It was like she couldn’t stop her own foot from forcing its way into her mouth, “You >know how competitive it is to get into these types of programs,” Lytea said emphatically, “ I hope you got in too. I mentioned you in the application.”
Lytea was far too proud of that last statement. Not only had she mentioned Sam in her essay, but she had applied on his behalf, copying the essay he wrote on her tablet for a local history graduate program.
Sam grimaced, “So that’s how I got in. You know I don’t have the money to live near the Academy, let alone go to school there. Besides, I already got accepted to SquareService so that I can keep my job.”
Sam should not have been stunned that Lytea was so oblivious to the just how valuable the ancient colors within the Willow were. They were worth more than a mining license, and Sam would never divulge the existence of the Willow just to get to study more. Sam never would have fully believed in the Great Dragon had it not been for the tree, and her wisdom. Sam didn’t even divulge the existence of the tree to his parents, as they would have tried to create a worship post there. While unsure why, Sam got the sense that the power of the Willow was, at least in part, due to its relative isolation.
Sam was planning on crawling though a local graduate program at The Square Service School on his days off from working for the Quartanos. His boss, Cos, having seen him grow up, had told him that he would be lenient about time off, so long as he was attentive during his shifts. The Service School had a history graduate program because of how surprisingly helpful it is to know history when working for a family with a lineage.
Lytea dismissed Sam’s complaints with a punch in the arm,“Don’t worry about it. Ceil will sponsor you. He wouldn’t take an interest in most staff, but for study with Professor Arch,” Lytea squeaked at mentioning Professor Arch, despite the gravity of the situation, “You’d be able to make loads of money on some patent you discover, and pay my family back in no time.
“And as a bonus,” Lytea continued, blushing slightly, “I thougth it would be super fun for us to live together! It could be like when we were kids, except now I know what a skillet and red-runes are,” Lytea smirked slightly at the memory of the Junior Year Kitchen Fiasco. It was not lost on her that Sam had come to the rescue, and taught her how to make scrambled eggs. Lytea didn't fully realize how miniscule of an accomplishment eggs were in Linarian culture. Sam didn't know that she only ate eggs until the end of that semester.
“Didn’t you feel its sacred ancientness?” Sam wouldnt’ be distracted from the matter at hand. He did not want to have a hand in betraying one of the last untouched pockets of ancient colors.
“Didn’t you feel its sacred ancientness?” Sam wouldnt’ be distracted from the matter at hand. He did not want to have a hand in betraying one of the last untouched pockets of ancient colors.
“No.”
“So you lied to me?”
“No– erm –not really a lie…” Lytea bit her lip, with a glassy sheen forming in her eyes. She was not prepared for this response. She had forgotten how somber Sam got every time they would approach the tree. Maybe because she had gotten used to the ritual over the years.
“All these years I thought you could feel it too. That I wasn’t crazy,” Sam started to lose the battle to keep his temper in check. After a deep breath, he continued, “This tree is more than just any old tree, to be studied for its colors and then taken away to make more farmland. Its more than just another means to make money,” Sam started to get heated, “There is more to life than money and luxury. Don’t you see that?”
“Look, Sam, I never felt the ‘stirrings’ that you claimed to feel. I’ve never been able to talk to the Willow. I always thought that those were child’s games, because you were lonely. I just liked hanging out with you, and getting a chance to be away from Ceil,” Lytea wished she could read Sam’s stony expression, “Its not like its easy being his fifteenth child. I couldn’t do anything that hadn’t been done before. And because I wasn’t of age, I just had to sit and be pretty,” Lytea hated the decades of memories of needing to stand at attention, feeding Ceil’s ego. The next 8 siblings younger than Puice had managed to cause so many different iterations of trouble, that by the time Lytea and three older short-haired siblings in her age-group developed personalities there was no iteration of trouble that the Quartano Head of Housekeeping hadn’t seen before. Lytea was glad that at least some of the staff had children around her age.
“You actually like me for me. Or at least I thought you did,” Lisa spat her words more hurtfully than she had anticipated, “I thought you knew that I played along because I like you, and not becasue I believed in any of that Draconian nature crap,” She know that this last bit would sting Sam, being that it was a jab at his religion, a tidbit shared in absolute confidence.
Despite Sam’s familiarity with Lytea’s views his religion, this jab stung. Lytea’s family worshiped Emily, the most accepting member of the Art Collective pantheon, but still, a member of the TriVerment accepted pantheon. A religion whose beliefs could not be squared with his own. The Quartanos would never divulge Sam’s religion if the TriVerment pressed, but most of them didn’t care enough about Sam to even learn what deities he worshiped. It was closer to a blind eye being turned, rather than acceptance. For much of their childhoods, Sam had assumed Lytea was different. That is why he risked trusting Lytea when they were kids. At that time, Lytea seemed to need the unique calming powers that the colors of the Willow could provide. Furthermore, Sam had an inkling that Lytea was far more lonely than she let on. Most would assume she couldn't be lonely, given the size of her family, but from the moment Sam met her, he saw the loneliness in Lytea's eyes and heard a cynicism unusual in another 8 year old. From a young age Sam was remarkable at reading people, and sensing powerful places, even when unsure of what he was doing.
Luckily, Sam recognized this last jab was because Lytea was throwing a fit, her method to get attention from anybody other than himself. Sam started brisquely along the wooded path again, unsure of how to respond to all that had been revealed. He felt betrayed, hurt, and shocked about Lytea’s lie. The familiarity of swamp allowed both of them to never trip over a loose rock, know where to silence footsteps to avoid a waking a cuzzle learning to feed her young, and to keep their clothing pristine, despite carrying expensive electronics or a bag of gear, and being surrounded by moist muddy terrain. To most, this kind of conversation would be detrimental here. Sam hoped that Lytea’s mood would calm once they reached the Willow, as it normally did, so they could talk about the gravity of the situation.
Additionally, he hoped that he would settle himself down, so that he didn’t forget Lytea’s Quartano status, and lose his cool, jeapordizing his position in the household. Cos had some sway over keeping employees, but he could not protect Sam from the consequences of insulting a family member.
Sam believed that it was of upmost importance to keep powerful places hidden from the TriVerment. There were very few ways of discovering new colors. The Willow was the only natural source of color Sam knew of. He was figured that nobody else knew about it, because the TriVerment would have taken it centuries ago otherwise. He would not have even recognized the power of the Willow, if he didn’t occasionally listen to the disguised Draconian teachings that his Siklandish parents passed down to him. Sam’s parents also regularly reminded him that he was lucky to live in Linaria, where less dangerous to be a Draconian, even if that fact still had to remain hidden. TriVerment raids were less common here.
Despite the dangers of exposing this place clearly, favored by the Great Dragon, to a follower of the Artist Collective, Sam decided to trust Lytea with the location of the Willow, and showed her the distinct yellow dye that could be made from its leaves. Sam had yet to recreate this color when “borrowing” Lytea’s BrightLight. Some of Sam’s most treasured memories revolved watching for the Willow’s messages, and experimenting with the colors she provided. Sam’s decision to work in service was guided by the Dragon speaking through the Willow. The Quartano job was also, a way for him to ensure that he had the protection of a Linarian Great House, and allow him calm and help those who needed it, without them knowing, and without drawing attention to himself. The Great Dragon even provided Cos to protect Sam, and teach him harsh lessons about the reality being a Siklish and a religious minority under the TriVerment.
Around fifteen minutes passed in silence, as Sam contemplated his response to this information. Lytea knew better than to interrupt Sam in this state, so she was going to allow him to break the silence.
[1]: Color-magic adept: the class of Artists, who are the most skillful at using color-magic. All people can do it to some degree, but Adepts are not limited by hue in order to do magic.
[2]: BrightLight(Needs a new name, as this is a real product), is the Huetopia equivalent to a computer screen. It developed to allow everybody easy access to color-magic. While everybody could use color-magic before, one had to be an Adept to be able procure nuanced flavors. Typically the region of a person’s birth would have a huge effect on the types of colors they could work with. BrightLite became the great equalizer.
[3]: Curl is the ancient religion practiced in Sikland, near the Angular Lakes
[4]: Euclidean school is the Huetopia equivalent of primary school; the school attended before university.
[5]: There are four recognized gender groups in Huetopian society: Long hair, No facial hair; Long hair Facial Hair; Short Hair no facial hair; and Short hair, facial hair. TriVerment laws require 3 consenting adults (at least 27 years of age) of different groupings to solidify a union. Physiologically, 3 adults are needed for a child. The stereotypical middle class family has 3 parents and 8 kids. In reality, the average number of children per family is typically closer to 3, but TriVerment propaganda wants to see a larger population of people loyal to the TriVerment, so they use propaganda to make it patriotic to have 9 children.
[6]: Slicings is the Triangle Nation equivalent to “fuck”
[7]: Blue is the color that the dragon gifted the Circular People about six thousand years before this story takes place. Blue is an aquatic color, and is uses to perform water, and continuous magic
[8]: Yellows and greens are typically found in Linara, and are farming colors. A typical Triangle response would be “grey-purple, so that I can poison the meat of my enemies”. While this sounds violent, and is exactly what a Triangular leader tried to do
[9]: Sinish, the main language spoken by the Triangle Nation, it is taught in public schools. All major legal documents are written in Sinish.
[10]: Asym is an ancient, nearly dead language, known only to some of the Ellipsiod tribes. In the modern day, most of its speakers are Ellipsoidian. The language is mostly reconstructed, with many words borrowing from Sinish. There was a break in continuous speakers from after the Great Takeover, where Sinish was nearly forgotten, except for what was written by ancient artists.
[11]: I need to find a better name. Hamentashen would make no sense in this setting, but like that's what these cookies are.
[12]: Slice-a-plane: Huetopian/ Sinish word for “mother fucking”
[13]: Torus: Sinish equivalent to “hellscape”
[14]: There are 16 Old Linarian families. Much of Linarian wealth has accumulated in these families. Linarian life often follows the feudal system, so people who are not related to an Old Family, work for one.
[15]: The top-point of the family is like saying the head of the family. This is a somewhat common practice among the wealthier Old Linarian Families. The Quartano family looks similar to a patriarchal family, but because there are typically 3 or 4 people in a marriage, they are referencing the diamond shape, when a parallellogram is tipped such that the corners are up down, left and right. This also works when an equalatteral triangle is oriented with a corner pointing up
[16]: Scalene is a term for an employee early in their career. They don’t have enough experience yet to have found balance, and therefore authority.
[17]: Typical Triangle society has marriages between three people, known as unionship partners. Typical “straight” relationships are such that no two people have the same gender. See footnote 5 for more details.
[18]: Skalin, Para, Ceiler, and Puice, the oldest four, already got all of Ceil’s inheritance.
Enter a world full of bright colors and geometric geometries, where the politics of the past inform the leaders' decisions while oblivous to the ancient magic forces stirring.
Will a group of graduate students complete a quest to understand their history and make an informed decision about continuing to live in their previously invisible utopia?
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