>>26810809

At that time, in the old capital of Susurra which straddled the narrow, continent-spanning labyrinthine world of the Winders, a relatively routine project to expand the outskirts of the city ushered in the long-avoided ire of what roars above. The new road, a main thoroughfare meant to connect to what would become another agricultural sector, exploded into chaos when the cavern ceiling collapsed in an instant, bringing some 20,000 cubic kilometers of ocean in with it. Of the more than four million Winders residing in Susurra at the time, approximately 370,000 escaped. The rest, along with their sprawling capital city and the most ancient library of their people, were lost to the sea.

The Winder world was cut in two by the tragedy. No road lead past Susurra, only through it or through its outskirts and so no path between the two branches of the world remained unflooded. For thousands of years to follow, the Winder people residing in each half of the intact subterra were forced to leave all those in the other for dead.

>cont'd...

>>26810903

>The Library of Mournful Whispers began as a combined Memorial and mass grave but, at the time of its completion in this sense, it took on an additional purpose. As widespread preventative tunnel restructuring using new engineering techniques went on across the recovering nation, a push for reform resulted in an abandonment of the old forms of long-term information storage. Rather than risk losing millenia of their history once more, the Winders of Murmur developed a written language of carved symbols. All these engineering, social and linguistic advances stemmed from the many great minds which came to collaborate in the excavation of the Library of Mournful Whispers. The many workshops and ad hoc classrooms which surrounded the site became permanent fixtures when the project was finished. Lesser Libraries of scholarly purposes cropped up around the monument over time and, 41 years after the completion of the greater Library project, the surrounding facilities were officially sanctioned by the Heptarchy as the University of Murmur.

As for the other side of the coin...

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>>26810933

For millenia, the Honnêtes were a nomadic people, with tribes roaming the seas and occasionally meeting one another in a usually peaceful fashion. This changed when a small, previously uninfluential tribe, the Long-limbed, seeking to dig into a patch of shallow caves along the shore for momentary rest in their travel, (and to possibly feed on what may have had the idea before them) discovered that one of the caves opened up into a sprawling, labyrinthine abyss. Larger by far than any there people had ever imagined, this place was like a sea unto itself. The ceiling and strangely shaped floor of this massive cavern were littered with patches of vividly glowing, wormlike grasses which swayed slightly with the all-but dead current. Halofish, for obvious reasons, had taken a liking to the place and, along with their predator, the deep shadows, made the newfound oasis a place overflowing with life and food.

For centuries thenafter, the other tribes had told tales of a hidden tribe of their ancient foe, the Mummers, lurking just beyond the reach of the Honnêtes' realm, gathering strength and awaiting their moment to strike once more, having already devoured the lost Long-limbed tribe.

>>26811001
Aw, man, Long-limbs went down?
And I just came up with a name for their capital, like, two sentences in.

Shit yeah, man, where the heck have you been?
What's happening next, are we developing Winders and Honnêtes into cultures, or get started with the airborne lifeforms?

>>26811147
They were lost to their kin.
For they found all they could ever need in order to thrive like they had never even dreamed, all within arm's reach in the necropolis of what-they-don't-know-was Old Susurra

>>26811183
Sorry, work has been shitty. Also got done with my summer interim Calculus III class and my 7-hour final exam burnt me out for a few days.

>>26811217
Oh don't apologize, I didn't mean that.
Just happy to see you, thought you gave up.
Also good luck with the tests

>>26811183
Well we have a good deal to work with here. Up to you folk. Do you have any inspiration regarding any of the following?

The other Winder nation opposite Murmur?
Possible rediscovery of the lost Long-limbed tribe?
Were the whispers of a lurking Mummer tribe really only whispers?
What's it like for the Long-limbed in their new home and how is their culture impacted by the drowned ruins of the thriving Winder city?

>>26811257
Thanks, and yeah I worried that I might not pick this back up. Although I'm done with class for now.

>>26811217
Excellent! Their capital, or their oldest, city should be Mosca-où, the Fly-Den, nonsense Romanofrench but pronounced almost like another city founded by a long-limb (Yuri Long-Arm)

>>26811338
Ha, delightful. Also I just realized that there would be a great deal of tension and superstition among the Long-limbed who settled Mosca-où. (Old Susurra)

Remember what was decided regarding the Honnêtes attitude toward sameness and clean patterns?

See through the eyes of one of the Long-limbed early in their settlement of Mosca-où.

>You've just swam into the mouth of a large cavern complex near the center of your tribe's newfound home and found a half-kilometer long, perfectly uniform tunnel. Down each side of the tunnel, at regular intervals and precisely mirrored on either side, are openings into massive, perfectly symmetrical rooms, each with a uniform grid of perfectly circular holes bored into the floor. Something with a mind made this place.

The Old Ones were here.

>>26811287
Uhm, I'm pretty dry after 4chan Cup tragedy, but for what it's worth I'll put a vote out for the Mummers. Maybe the technological discoveries of Long-limbs led them to new taming and farming techniques, learning to use the unholy beasts. Or they stroke a dark pact or something.

>>26811411
>Long-limbed finding the Library of Old Susurra.

Also forgot my name.

>>26811411
Awww shit did not see that coming.
Magnificent catch, man. Their collective psyches are gotta be fucked.

>>26811479
Yeah, I'd imagine that upon discovery of many things the Winders left behind, there would be a huge uproar among the Long-limbed, with many on one side believing the city ought to be abandoned, that it is haunted. In fact...

>After the discovery of the "Hollow" in the center of Mosca-où, and the stories of what happened to some who entered there, the prevailing belief among the Long-limbed soon became that this place was the very one from which the Mummers first came. It was believed that the Evil of Sameness dwelt in the Hollow and corrupte d those who enter.

In truth, the combination of confusion, becoming lost in the labyrinthine interior of the old library, and an epilepsy-like effect induced by swimming rapidly past the perfectly uniform passages occasionally ended with an individual suffering a violent seizure in which its partially autonomous tentacles would twist around themselves and the body, ripping the individual apart with the violence of its convulsions.

>>26811636
Rumor helped a great deal to induce a state of severe panic, of course.

>>26811411
I'm guessing in this context, the Mummers hiding in the tunnels would be seen as Al the more fearsome Servants of the Crawling Pattern Below.
As I said, I would like to see them occasionally captured and enslaved.
But the first contact... That would be horrific. Soon after discovering the maddening maze, the Long-Limbs tried defiantly to redraw and rebuild the ruins in the appropriate chaotic pattern, perhaps recreating their tartan. They learned a lot from the Old Ones' methods of building and tunneling, and Mosca-Mementos, the curious, uniform crystal statues of an unknown life, provided ample material of peculiar quality.
The intrusion, however, did not go unnoticed. The farther they went and the more they learned, the more they disturbed the ruins, and the remnant Servants of the Moscas, hiding in the caverns, did not take lightly to it.
Retribution was coming.

>>26811761
>Al
"all", of course. Goddamn SwiftKey's autocorrect, type "Weird Al Yankovic" once and you NEVER see the end of it.

>>26811761
Ha I can just imagine one day a courageous young Long-limb is scouting out in the reaches of the tunnels and comes to a dead end, looking out through the liquid's surface, she sees (A winder pilgrimage to the edge of the lost Susurra) a crowd of a few dozen statues of the Old Ones, all perfectly aligned, their heads bowed in silent reveries.

And then one makes eye contact.

For the rest of her life, many will call her mad and will do so more out of denial than skepticism.

>>26811912
So if the Mummers were to resurface as a legitimate threat to the Honnêtes, they would first have to become:

A) Sentient
B) Bigger/stronger
C) Highly evolved in the use of their camouflage
D) Write-in?

>>26812022
Eh, I think we have enough sentient species, and we didn't even get to the airborne ones. Let's save THAT kind of conflict for the cultural rifts.
Becoming stealthier would make most sense for an edged-out species, and make the Retribution all the more terrifying.

>>26812139
Yeah I like the idea of the mummers having only s shred of sentience. Enough to adapt to simple success-failure feedback and recognize patterns of its prey's actions but nothing like the ability for creatuve/abstract thought.

The reason they've become so well-camouflaged is the exact same reason the Honnêtes became so smart: Evolutionary pressure via predation. In their retaliatory campaign for survival, the Honnêtes hunted the Mummers to near extinction, killing every one they could find.

Every one they could find.

>>26812022
Another vote for improved camouflage. However I would like to put an idea out there: That the mummer's camouflage abilities are highly evolved enough for the Mummers to temporarily pass themselves off as Honnetes by mimicking the Honnete language, and similar tricks. This may lead to witch hunts of 'hidden mummers'.

>>26812234
Sorry, haven't gotten to my writefagging juice yet, would gladly write out the colonization war then.
I picture the defense of the Pattern Below, with the eventual fall back to the confines of Mosca-où would produce not only horrific casualties, but also refugees to the Overside. Scorned and feared as the madmen they were, sheds of their forbidden knowledge that got through to the other Honnêtes sparked a revolution in the method of living, and brought forth construction of permanent, semi-organized settlements.
Think dwarves got displaced in late Neolithic, came upside and built pyramids to honor their lost mountains, and otherwise Sumeria Is Aliens trope

>>26812406
And since the Mummers aren't really sentient, they simply mimick what they see most often.

>You, swimming from your den in the early morning to tend the Halofish farm, pass by another early riser.
You: "Good morning."
Other: "Hello"
You: "The current is gentle today, eh?"
>Just before you pass each other
Other: "Hello."
You: "Eh? Umm, friend are y-"
>There's a small, torrentially strong current behind you which kicks up a cloud of silt. For just an instant, he looked larger, so much larger than he was, and then there was nothing but the small silt cloud.

Shaken, you check on your family, the young and your mate are fine. You go about your day, the morning's experience gnawing at your mind.

That night, your neighbor never came home to his mate.

>>26812406
Unable to parse the language completely, and aware of their lacking, they might mimic a few sentences they observed from their victim, or fire back what was said unto them. They would be generally quiet, but perhaps able to ride it out for a few days.
Far more fearsome would be the Honnêtes who agree to harbor them, in exchange for passage to the deeper caverns.

>>26812569
That's pretty much exactly what I envisioned. Just the fact that the mummers can speak now- no matter how poorly- is also going to cause all kinds of paranoia-fueled witch hunts.

>>26812584
And worse yet. They're genetically similar enough to still viably mate. The precedence alone would plant seeds of doubt and paranoia deep within the cultural consciousness of the Long-limbs. How many of their best hunters got their talent from monstrous parentage? Are they simply exceedingly clever Mummers, playing their part as a member of society until such time as they can feed copiously when our guard is own before making off with the loves of many? How long until they show their true colors?

>>26812689
*lives of many.

So, the underworld ones, they'd have some sick identity issues. Some would turn defiantly chaotic, even in their actions, others, debasingly appreciative, revering the ancient order and, perhaps, secretly worshipping a captive Mumer (they only hunt the inherently undeserving in the eyes of the Order, being dragged to the underground is actually a sign of acceptance)
Between them, the two groups, confined to the frontier settlement (those who go too far on each side would likely flee to the either sode), have created sophisticated studies of abstract art and geometry and mathematics.

>>26813092
Speaking of some of their mathematics;

A common technique for steeling oneself in the presence of the Evil of Sameness is to calculate the harmonic series mentally.

Does pi still hold the same trait of being absolutely unpatterned/non-repeating if expressed in base-6 arithmetic? I'd think it does, doesn't it? If so then it'd definitely be a sacred figure to the ones who remained "sane".

>>26813402
Excellent idea!
While we're on counting: how many, uhm, distinct segments do their tentacles have?
Maybe we can cram more digits in, like that (Sumerian?) trick with counting finger joints for a base-12 system.

>>26813630
They can distinctly display differing colors at 4 sections along the length of their tentacles.

>>26813092
>>26813630
Well I think we've fluffed them out pretty well. Gonna have to hit the sack though because work in 7.66 hours. Will archive first tho. If this thread survives the night without being eaten by Mummers, I'll bump with some content in the morning and possibly continue to begin work on the aerial species tomorrow after work @ ~ 14:00 Eastern time (GMT -5:00)

>>26813751
Hm. With colors, what's up to 100 on the five tentacles, counting the hundreds on the sixth (up to 2000) if I'm counting this right lel
Some digits would coincide with words though, like in Chinese

>>26813990
[may night be un-loud, bro]

[calm be the waters, brah]

Hope my translator works right.

>>26812689
That's dark, man. Do we have a name for the mix bloods and the witches?