The Spinning

You stand on the deck of a great ship made of gold and iron.  The ship’s metal mechanisms shift and steam around you, and several control panels whir and flash with symbols you don’t understand.  A glass panel separates the deck from the greater space beyond.  Outside, ephemeral swirls of color drift past the ship, galaxies and hurricanes of pale blue, purple, green, and silver.  Four appendages extend in front of and behind the ship, centering on a beam of bright white light that seems to be passing beneath the ship, as if you are on some kind of astral railroad.  The ship deck is empty save for you and one other individual, a woman in an elegant teal gown.  She wears a golden tiara and golden jewelry adorns her entire figure.  She hovers, a few feet off the ground.  Her hair seems at one moment to be the color of a robin egg, and then the color of a mint leaf, and then that of malachite.  She seems to be glowing, holding an elegant golden staff inlaid with a bright white crystal.  She speaks to you as she moves forward toward the glass.

Voiced by Calista, Madame of Doors

Come now, we have much to see, and not so much time, for you must be on your way soon enough, to see the others.  Now look, in order to see where you are going, you must recall the path behind you.  The path backwards is the same for all of us: it is a tome.  It is the way forward whose branches split into a thousand little splinters.  Story, myth is the tether we fasten to ourselves as we fall into these depths.  Story is ageless.  And of all the ageless things, there are none more mysterious and intangible. We create stories as much as stories create us. In the dawn of time, before we could speak, we were telling stories with our bodies and our art. They are impatient. They burst from us like mountain springs, clawing towards the surface before the proper channels exist to hone and refine these radiancies that lie within all of us. When a story, an idea, a spirit bursts from us, a piece of it joins the Astral Sea, the waters from which we all draw inspiration and divine sacred knowledge. The Astral Sea’s currents are shimmering and every-colored, its vastness incomprehensible.  That’s what we sail through now, love. Look around.  The glitter, the endless depths, the iridescent swirls, all of it greater than you or I will ever know.  Here, in this endless, swirling beauty, your own little legend begins.  Your soul is made of five pieces: dream, starlight, life, death, and spirit.  Each piece was given by one of the ancient gods, our ancestors.  The Spider, the Serpent, the Fox, the Toad, and the Owl.  I will show you each of them.

Long ago, in the great chasm, there was nothing but an endless current.  Deep Vitali the Dreamweaver, our creator, spun her Web, and for this we owe her all our history.  This device you and I are in, the spinnerette, is a ship that can surf along the threads of her Web in order to travel between its nodes.  Cerebus created it, designing it after Vitali’s own shape, hence the ten spindles that extend from it.  You’ll meet him soon enough, though.

Many have pondered why Vitali spun the web.  The doomsayers claim that we are all her prey, caught in the web, and that any day she will come to consume us all.   The more romantic scholars believe that if Vitali is a Dreamweaver then she is a Dreamcatcher as well, a collector of strange odds and ends that drift through the sea, and that she watches all from the Hallowreach.  Are you keeping up well enough? Then let me tell you a secret: the romantics and the doomsayers are both wrong: Vitali is a mother.  She spun the web for her nine daughters.  They are the true masters of our fate.  How did she come by the daughters?  They are the offspring of her consorts: the Serpent, the Fox, the Toad, and the Owl.

   The webs’ nodes and spirals served as wells for magical energy, but substance could not accumulate before being swept away by the current again. The Starlight Serpent Redona found the Web’s magical properties curious and bountiful, praising Vitali for her work.  Vitali was endeared to the creature’s kind tongue and powerful aura, and took them as a lover. They began to use their own magic to carve the Radiant Spheres in the Hub Spiral. They created ten spheres, one for each node on the hub spiral. The Radiant Spheres provided great light and warmth to the Web. Around these balls of light, Redona placed smaller spheres which orbited in perfect rhythm. Redona was inspired, they had created gravity in the web.

Upon one of these small composites, two traveling fey built a home away from the chaos of the sea. Faesi and Zugtov, the Fox and the Toad, are inevitable reflections, death and life.  Faesi explored the orbiting spheres and used her magic to grow new life all over them. Zugtov imbued the life with decay so that it could recycle its nutrients and grow stronger. Lush jungles, teeming swamps and great tygas grew throughout the systems.  Vitali found their many great gardens beautiful, and loved them as well.

Then, the last of the creators, Ko , Keeper of Souls, drifted into the web with his Well of Spirit. The Owl God saw the life that roamed the lands Faesi and Zugtov had created, divided his spirit well into many, and breathed consciousness into the Web. The thinking, creating things were beautiful to Vitali, and she loved Ko as well.  Vitali and her four consorts created the Nine Daughters of the Spider, who master the fates of these beings.

Vitali, Redona, Faesi, Zugtov and Ko. The Spider, the Serpent, the Fox, the Toad and the Owl. It is for this we say that our essences are, in equal parts, dream, starlight, life, death, and spirit.  Now go, love, you’ve much more to see.  Find Thecla, she will tell you more of the folly of these beings.  She should be in the archives room.