Post by Insano-Man on Sept 21, 2018 12:47:25 GMT -5
This topic is a child of the Well of Japes article directory.
WHAT?
To say that the Well's history is unreliable is a given. To say that it doesn't make any sense is like saying water's wet. Ask a caustic crab surfing the Sea of Hate and it'll give you as accurate an account as anyone else. Historians and archaeologists descend into psychotic rage just thinking about the subject. The fools and daredevils who go looking for hard evidence on the Well's past typically end up about twice as nutty. If you've found this article expecting a comprehensive idea of what's happened near the Well of Japes, you're in for some disappointment.
One of the only concrete facts about the Well of Japes is that, up until about 400 OSC, it didn't exist. For about four centuries of recorded history, the Well was nothing but a lump. The Pioneer Network logged it as a swelling patch of dirt and not much more. Somewhere between 400 and 450, the pimple popped. No one was happy about it. Nearby communities evacuated, died out, or simply disappeared off the face of the Erf. Pioneer records of the event read in a madman's scrawl. After that, the entire area was cordoned off. Scientific inquiries ended in complete disaster.
After announcing itself to the world, the Well went sightseeing. It started drifting across the planet as the years and jumps went by. When it started out, it was near the center of the present-day map. At the midpoint of its life, it was near the northern pole. All the while, it's been growing, bit by bit. When it began life, it wasn't bigger than Pyretip Peak. Nowadays, some reckon it'll detach itself into its own continent if given the chance. A few ape-minded attempts were made to blast it to pieces with orbital bombardment. They didn't work. The Well just snickered and kept rolling.
The Well's location is about the only thing that's ever been reliable in its history - usually. Past that, it's nothing but a mess. Pioneer Network data set the tone for every historical record afterwards. First, it was forests; they simply got up and sprinted by their roots into the Well's mouth. Second, it was demons; real, live, fireball-hurling demons, throwing parties and besieging Looney bunkers everywhere. Third, it was the migrations; psywaves screamed out, caught the handfuls of villages still hanging around, and turned homebodies into wistful nomads. All this was just in the first month.
Around 600 or 630 OSC, things took an even stranger turn. The people around the Well started organizing into a nation. Banners and flags hanging off every home, little cottage industries doing their best to equip an army. No one had any idea why. The Pioneer Network couldn't explain it. Loonies tried to poke around in towns, only to be met as invaders. By 650, it stopped making any sense at all. Towns were full of skeletons - who were still talking, walking, and trying to their best to imitate life. The flags were still there, with fresh skulls printed onto them. The nation was still there, with all its soldiers looking a little more dry than usual.
680 hit. The skeletons started digging. Why, no one knows. They gathered up on the edges of the Well, started chipping at the shores, and did their best to go down. The bone army pitched its tents all around. Accidents were everywhere. About one third of every dig site ended with the Well flooding in and transmuting the teams into ice cream. Some found gold, felt their eyeless sockets well up with greed, and formed breakaway states. Others happened upon skyscrapers, punching up from the Chambers of Myth, and rode them to the clouds like colossal elevators. The Pioneer Network was still trying to get past the whole "skeletons" part.
By about 720 or 730, the Well's stomach gave out. It coughed up its guts in a disaster that sent a psywave across the entire planet. Disco came back, redworlders took to death metal, and tens of thousands of people died of strokes. The skeletons died out - all except for the bunch riding the skyscrapers. They went off into space, up like rockets to settle the final frontier. They made it up to orbit, braked hard, and stayed there. They didn't have any of the equipment to survive space, but they managed. They were skeletons. It was no big deal.
Up there in the black, they founded a new society. A new nation. Skyscrapers turned into space stations. Smaller buildings turned into shuttles. They declared themselves independent - again - and went to work building on what they had. The Well spewed again in 750 and sent a chain of acid-clogged asteroids into orbit to help them out. Man-eating bugs came with them. Of course, they didn't find men. They found skeletons. There was a sort of camaraderie between them that fostered a mutually-beneficial relationship. The bugs took charge of security, the skeletons maintained their industry. People in orbit were going insane just hearing about it.
After that, birds. People out near the Well like to joke about birds, but, back in 760, the birds were no joke. They rose up from the Well; white doves, black falcons, fanged ducks with scythe wings. It was a tornado of avian death, swirling around and out across the Cackling Circle. Behind them spread a terrible miasma of death and dance. Hallucinogenic chemicals wheezed and spittled up from every pore in the Erf with every extra bird to the flock. People who breathed them in usually suffered a series of complex seizures that looked a bit too much like the worm.
Sure enough, the skeletons were involved. They sent research teams to the planet, studied the birds, and learned their language. They struggled with bone-hungry plants in twisting forests of quasi-lithic flora. They helped nurture the flock and spread it to other continents. Still foaming at the mouth, the Pioneer Network lashed back. Somehow, the bird-bone alliance prosecuted an effective defensive campaign. Set was forced to acknowledge their sovereignty - for a time. There are no surviving records of the supposed Skull War of '79. It's all for the best, really.
In the 780s or later, spacers and Zaschian ships arrived at the bone city in the sky. They found birds, bugs, and bones working together in fastidious harmony. For around a decade, or possibly longer, the Japes Sector was a commerce hub and an industrial powerhouse. Somewhere in that time, someone in the Pioneer Network had simply had enough. A fleet was assembled, a barrage of nuclear missiles was fired at the city, and the entire region of orbit was wiped out. Mop-up operations crushed the surviving skeletons. No one asked why. Legend has it that some skeletons still cling to their old city, hiding in drifting ruins. No one wants to find out of it's true.
The birds were still there, down in the Cackling Circle. The Network didn't pay them any mind. What the Well did on its own turf was its own business. For the people still living there - or showing up from the Chambers of Myth - it was a reign of terror. Empty-eyed guards stood grim watch in every town, waiting for when the avian menace would come. Men, women, and children were all snatched up into the sky every day. Hordes of flesh-hungry penguins rampaged across the Circle. The oldest villages still bear the scars of those terrible times.
In the times just prior to the Splinter Wars, the rain came and washed it all away. The Well groaned and sneezed. A thunderstorm covered up the Circle for two years straight. Rainwater drenched it all and turned the birds to a feathery slush. Emus dissolved in the midst of their cruel sieges. Blood, bone, and beak all melted to nothing. So did the earth, too; for those two years, the entire Circle was a churning slurry of liquefied mud. Towns sank or swam - if they didn't turn their homes into boats, they were lost below. The Circle was inexplicably pink for about five years afterwards.
Things started getting more solid when the Splinter Wars finally struck. The Third Invaders saw the Well as some kind of orbital defense weapon - for some reason. Repeated attempts were made to bomb it out and turn it from a big hole into a field of smaller holes. None of them worked. At least two fleets of Third Invader ships were lost in the attempt. They kept at it, taking beatings from redworlders and Zaschia the whole time, just to pummel the Well. The Pioneer Network couldn't figure it out. They certainly didn't have anything over there.
When the Big Split happened, aliens all across the planet figured the Well was a better choice than the Loonies and cultists everywhere else. They took their chances. Redworlders arrived first - and promptly turned around. The Well was alive then, shifting and sloshing like water. It wasn't like the whirlpool times of before. The ground was solid, but it flexed and bumped like a raging river. Just stepping onto the surface was enough for a lifetime's worth of spinal trauma.
Still, there was some kind of safety on the periphery of the Well. Little communities established themselves close to eachother. Sorassan passed on by, just in time to see the end of the Well's bounce-house days. That did not mean that things were any better. When the sorassan arrived, they found living lightning, sentient plasma, and the first crystal wastes. Not exactly welcome with the greyskins, they pushed in. Things got weird. Gravity slipped sideways. Blizzards hit with the taste of tears. Towns were full of vocal cubes of solid stone. The aliens ran screaming out the other side.
Things after the Big Split are foggier - a kind of mercy, all things considered. The recurring theme with every snippet of history that followed was that the Well was satisfied. The pranks were a little less wild and elaborate. The jokes weren't as common. The japes were still on, but there wasn't a concerted effort to destroy every psyche on the planet. At the same time, the Well started experimenting more. It took a longer look at orbit, started toying around with the fundamental concepts of reality. Slowly, but surely, it shaped up into the Well of today.
Without a central source of history for the Well, it's close to impossible to find a single, solid fact about it in recent history. Nearly five centuries have gone by without much to go on but folklore and townie tales. At the same time, not many people are asking. The people living around the Well don't have the permanence in their lives to care. The people outside would prefer not to remember that the place exists. Spacer, Looney, cultist - no one's got the same story and no one's all that keen on setting the record straight.
WHAT?
To say that the Well's history is unreliable is a given. To say that it doesn't make any sense is like saying water's wet. Ask a caustic crab surfing the Sea of Hate and it'll give you as accurate an account as anyone else. Historians and archaeologists descend into psychotic rage just thinking about the subject. The fools and daredevils who go looking for hard evidence on the Well's past typically end up about twice as nutty. If you've found this article expecting a comprehensive idea of what's happened near the Well of Japes, you're in for some disappointment.
One of the only concrete facts about the Well of Japes is that, up until about 400 OSC, it didn't exist. For about four centuries of recorded history, the Well was nothing but a lump. The Pioneer Network logged it as a swelling patch of dirt and not much more. Somewhere between 400 and 450, the pimple popped. No one was happy about it. Nearby communities evacuated, died out, or simply disappeared off the face of the Erf. Pioneer records of the event read in a madman's scrawl. After that, the entire area was cordoned off. Scientific inquiries ended in complete disaster.
After announcing itself to the world, the Well went sightseeing. It started drifting across the planet as the years and jumps went by. When it started out, it was near the center of the present-day map. At the midpoint of its life, it was near the northern pole. All the while, it's been growing, bit by bit. When it began life, it wasn't bigger than Pyretip Peak. Nowadays, some reckon it'll detach itself into its own continent if given the chance. A few ape-minded attempts were made to blast it to pieces with orbital bombardment. They didn't work. The Well just snickered and kept rolling.
The Well's location is about the only thing that's ever been reliable in its history - usually. Past that, it's nothing but a mess. Pioneer Network data set the tone for every historical record afterwards. First, it was forests; they simply got up and sprinted by their roots into the Well's mouth. Second, it was demons; real, live, fireball-hurling demons, throwing parties and besieging Looney bunkers everywhere. Third, it was the migrations; psywaves screamed out, caught the handfuls of villages still hanging around, and turned homebodies into wistful nomads. All this was just in the first month.
Around 600 or 630 OSC, things took an even stranger turn. The people around the Well started organizing into a nation. Banners and flags hanging off every home, little cottage industries doing their best to equip an army. No one had any idea why. The Pioneer Network couldn't explain it. Loonies tried to poke around in towns, only to be met as invaders. By 650, it stopped making any sense at all. Towns were full of skeletons - who were still talking, walking, and trying to their best to imitate life. The flags were still there, with fresh skulls printed onto them. The nation was still there, with all its soldiers looking a little more dry than usual.
680 hit. The skeletons started digging. Why, no one knows. They gathered up on the edges of the Well, started chipping at the shores, and did their best to go down. The bone army pitched its tents all around. Accidents were everywhere. About one third of every dig site ended with the Well flooding in and transmuting the teams into ice cream. Some found gold, felt their eyeless sockets well up with greed, and formed breakaway states. Others happened upon skyscrapers, punching up from the Chambers of Myth, and rode them to the clouds like colossal elevators. The Pioneer Network was still trying to get past the whole "skeletons" part.
By about 720 or 730, the Well's stomach gave out. It coughed up its guts in a disaster that sent a psywave across the entire planet. Disco came back, redworlders took to death metal, and tens of thousands of people died of strokes. The skeletons died out - all except for the bunch riding the skyscrapers. They went off into space, up like rockets to settle the final frontier. They made it up to orbit, braked hard, and stayed there. They didn't have any of the equipment to survive space, but they managed. They were skeletons. It was no big deal.
Up there in the black, they founded a new society. A new nation. Skyscrapers turned into space stations. Smaller buildings turned into shuttles. They declared themselves independent - again - and went to work building on what they had. The Well spewed again in 750 and sent a chain of acid-clogged asteroids into orbit to help them out. Man-eating bugs came with them. Of course, they didn't find men. They found skeletons. There was a sort of camaraderie between them that fostered a mutually-beneficial relationship. The bugs took charge of security, the skeletons maintained their industry. People in orbit were going insane just hearing about it.
After that, birds. People out near the Well like to joke about birds, but, back in 760, the birds were no joke. They rose up from the Well; white doves, black falcons, fanged ducks with scythe wings. It was a tornado of avian death, swirling around and out across the Cackling Circle. Behind them spread a terrible miasma of death and dance. Hallucinogenic chemicals wheezed and spittled up from every pore in the Erf with every extra bird to the flock. People who breathed them in usually suffered a series of complex seizures that looked a bit too much like the worm.
Sure enough, the skeletons were involved. They sent research teams to the planet, studied the birds, and learned their language. They struggled with bone-hungry plants in twisting forests of quasi-lithic flora. They helped nurture the flock and spread it to other continents. Still foaming at the mouth, the Pioneer Network lashed back. Somehow, the bird-bone alliance prosecuted an effective defensive campaign. Set was forced to acknowledge their sovereignty - for a time. There are no surviving records of the supposed Skull War of '79. It's all for the best, really.
In the 780s or later, spacers and Zaschian ships arrived at the bone city in the sky. They found birds, bugs, and bones working together in fastidious harmony. For around a decade, or possibly longer, the Japes Sector was a commerce hub and an industrial powerhouse. Somewhere in that time, someone in the Pioneer Network had simply had enough. A fleet was assembled, a barrage of nuclear missiles was fired at the city, and the entire region of orbit was wiped out. Mop-up operations crushed the surviving skeletons. No one asked why. Legend has it that some skeletons still cling to their old city, hiding in drifting ruins. No one wants to find out of it's true.
The birds were still there, down in the Cackling Circle. The Network didn't pay them any mind. What the Well did on its own turf was its own business. For the people still living there - or showing up from the Chambers of Myth - it was a reign of terror. Empty-eyed guards stood grim watch in every town, waiting for when the avian menace would come. Men, women, and children were all snatched up into the sky every day. Hordes of flesh-hungry penguins rampaged across the Circle. The oldest villages still bear the scars of those terrible times.
In the times just prior to the Splinter Wars, the rain came and washed it all away. The Well groaned and sneezed. A thunderstorm covered up the Circle for two years straight. Rainwater drenched it all and turned the birds to a feathery slush. Emus dissolved in the midst of their cruel sieges. Blood, bone, and beak all melted to nothing. So did the earth, too; for those two years, the entire Circle was a churning slurry of liquefied mud. Towns sank or swam - if they didn't turn their homes into boats, they were lost below. The Circle was inexplicably pink for about five years afterwards.
Things started getting more solid when the Splinter Wars finally struck. The Third Invaders saw the Well as some kind of orbital defense weapon - for some reason. Repeated attempts were made to bomb it out and turn it from a big hole into a field of smaller holes. None of them worked. At least two fleets of Third Invader ships were lost in the attempt. They kept at it, taking beatings from redworlders and Zaschia the whole time, just to pummel the Well. The Pioneer Network couldn't figure it out. They certainly didn't have anything over there.
When the Big Split happened, aliens all across the planet figured the Well was a better choice than the Loonies and cultists everywhere else. They took their chances. Redworlders arrived first - and promptly turned around. The Well was alive then, shifting and sloshing like water. It wasn't like the whirlpool times of before. The ground was solid, but it flexed and bumped like a raging river. Just stepping onto the surface was enough for a lifetime's worth of spinal trauma.
Still, there was some kind of safety on the periphery of the Well. Little communities established themselves close to eachother. Sorassan passed on by, just in time to see the end of the Well's bounce-house days. That did not mean that things were any better. When the sorassan arrived, they found living lightning, sentient plasma, and the first crystal wastes. Not exactly welcome with the greyskins, they pushed in. Things got weird. Gravity slipped sideways. Blizzards hit with the taste of tears. Towns were full of vocal cubes of solid stone. The aliens ran screaming out the other side.
Things after the Big Split are foggier - a kind of mercy, all things considered. The recurring theme with every snippet of history that followed was that the Well was satisfied. The pranks were a little less wild and elaborate. The jokes weren't as common. The japes were still on, but there wasn't a concerted effort to destroy every psyche on the planet. At the same time, the Well started experimenting more. It took a longer look at orbit, started toying around with the fundamental concepts of reality. Slowly, but surely, it shaped up into the Well of today.
Without a central source of history for the Well, it's close to impossible to find a single, solid fact about it in recent history. Nearly five centuries have gone by without much to go on but folklore and townie tales. At the same time, not many people are asking. The people living around the Well don't have the permanence in their lives to care. The people outside would prefer not to remember that the place exists. Spacer, Looney, cultist - no one's got the same story and no one's all that keen on setting the record straight.
