Revision as of 20:27, 30 April 2010

The cosmos is seperated into the "real world" that people will be fairly farmiliar with, and TwinWorld. The door Oswald installs is one of the few pathways between the two, though the Fay and Zarth can occasionally make other portals and temporary connections.

There may be other worlds as well, but currently only Earth and TwinWorld are conceptualized.

Transporting material between worlds

How do we want to deal with moving things between Earth and TwinWorld?

Industry, explosives, and gasoline

Ben has a sort of ideal for an industrial society that exists without explosives or fossil fuels, and which is embodied in the Zarth. However, what happens when these materials or tools are brought over from Earth to TwinWorld? Can they transport anything like this? Are materials changed into their equivalent?

Fairy Treasures

There is a lot of lore about fairy treasures turning to leaves and acorns when the fairies have left. Perhaps we can use this for transporting materials from TwinWorld to Earth. Everything carried is changed into mundane and fairly useless stuff when it gets back to Earth. Twigs, dry leaves, soil, old tin cans, coat hangers, rusty cogs. This would lend to the "imaginary" quality of TwinWorld, since anything brought back would have a resemblance, but not the function, of it's former self in TwinWorld.

Fayrie and Zarth

Since the question was raised, seems to me like the right way to do talking points like that is in talk pages, so I moved this to the talk page. --Toad 19:20, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Questions

• What level of awareness do people have in the "real world" of Faierie?
• What level of weirdness goes on in (or leaks into) the "real world"?

Mythology, History, and Cosmology

Watching the sun rise this morning, it occured to me how much of our mythology and culture is based around the world God created. We, as "modern men" wake up in darkness, even when the sun is shining, and turn on lights whenever we want. However, for most of our history, the myths that were born were made by men and women who woke up to the sun every day. Who watched the sunrise, and wondered, and marveled. People who were afraid of the forests for their secrets, or of the night for its terror. Seeing clouds pierced by moonlight, knowing that the mountains your grandfather trod are still visible on a clear day, remembering the last rain, how uncomfortable it was, and wondering when it will rain again. These are all things that shape our language, our myths, our expectations, and how we think about the world.

So, when considering a place like TwinWorld... a place where there are no days, no mountain ranges, no lasting landmarks (except near the Great Tree), certain death at the horizon, and roiling life all around... considering all of that and more, what kind of a culture and mindset would the "people" living there have? What kind of myths would they build? What kind of cities? What would they worship when they stoop to worshiping idols? How far would they go to make something of beauty, or secure safety for themselves and their friends? What would they love? What would they value?

Two hundred years ago, the sun, moon, and stars were the standard of reliability, beauty, and wonder. Now we trust machines to be reliable, and wonder at screens filled with our own visions. But in TwinWorld there is no sun, there is no moon. Can we even imagine the thoughts that would mark the minds of a Fay? What pictures would adorn their walls? When would they rise, and when would they sleep? Their culture and cognizance will have some fundamental ideas that will be naturally alien to us.

Tolkien was interested in history, and I think we should be as well. What stories do the Fayrie tell each other? What legends do the Zarth recount?

As an attempt to craft a Silmarillion type overarching history, here is a basic outline of a proposed origin story, as well as the Fay and Zarth interpretation of it.