BoGT-001
Everything that can think, and thus dream, lives in the Shadowlands. But everything that can live, still dies in the Bonelands.
BoGT-002
Long ago in the future, on a small ball of rock formed from the debris orbiting a ball of luminous plasma. On the ball of rock the conditions were such that, due to its distance from the star the rock was heated to a temperature conducive to the formation of complex molecules. Owing to its protected possession within the inner solar system, and thus protected by large gas giant planets in the outer solar system, the complex molecules on the ball of rock were able to form into what would much later (and much earlier) be called life.
BoGT-003
This happened on Earth.
The ancestors of the Great Tribe eventually developed language and recorded their own existence, proving that however it happened, it happened.
This likely happened on many other balls of rock, all of them not Earth.
We do not have the records.
However, the age of the universe and the vastness of the same makes the uniqueness of Earth unlikely.
BoGT-004
On Earth however, we have the records. Recorded in stone and paper and binary, The Great Tribe and her descendants have left their history scrawled across the little rock upon which they cling as they spin through the void. On some planets, life and the Great Tribe may have been an immigrant arriving from somewhere else. This may have happened with Earth. On other planets the Great Tribe may have arisen from the interactions of precursors to life, complex molecules that didn’t quite warrant the name life. Beyond this point Mystery spreads its wings and shrouds the truth. We may yet know the answers, and other likely know already- but Mystery knows such answers will lead only to greater questions.
The origin of the Great Tribe is a point for Mystery at the moment. And we must accept the Mystery if we are to pursue the answer.
BoGT-004a
– – Handwritten Notes from Recovered Copy of BoGT-004 – –
A Tribe is a people with a shared culture
A Culture is a people with a shared story
Destroy the story and you destroy the tribe
BoGT-005
We know the ingredients from which life is composed are predisposed to self organize. Life and the birth of the Great Tribe may have been inevitable.
Life would not have been possible without the deaths of early stars. great gravity furnaces wherein were forged the higher elements, the ingredients necessary to form life in the cauldron of ancient earth. Many scientists have pointed out that humans (and of course all life) are literally composed of stardust.
BoGT-006
From simple rules and simple ingredients, the universe organized matter into more and more complex forms, better and better able to self-regulate and self-examine.
BoGT-007
Creation Myths have gods creating men from clay or sticks or breaking them out of clam shells or egg shells. They do not have men creating gods. And yet why not? For this is obviously what happened? Single celled life was the first: The Great Tribe from which all of tribes were cut as natural selection drove evolution to separate the tribes like some biological Tower of Babel story. From the simple bacteria to multi-cellular life to chordates. From chordates upon through varying levels of complexity branching that complexity out in a multitude of ways. The God, being a conceptual being born of and sustain by stories, could not exist prior to the appearance in the fossil record of beings with the sufficient neurological complexity to create and foster the necessary neuro-ecology to support diving life. Just as mammals could not evolve until the oxygen catastrophe altered the atmosphere to make it amenable to the working of animal gills and lungs, so too could gods not arise until there was an ecosystem- the story telling mind- where gods could survive.
So the story of the Birth of the Great Tribe is probably the most honest Creation Myth in history, beginning as it does with the creation of life from the rules of the universe, and ending with the creation of gods.
BoGT-008
First fire – Then dies the star – but Stardust
New Fire – Then rings the star – with stone
Spark – now boil the cauldron – of seas
links – a chain of life – not quite
But rules – breed and birth out order – hold entropy
Now one – Great Tribe across the seas – life grows
And then – and then and then and then – more tribes
Now man – and tales are told – now gods
BoGT-009
The myriad and conflicting tales of the Great Tribe are all allegories of course. As new pieces of the puzzle are unearthed or decoded, new street preachers offer new interpretations. But let us start with what is agreed upon. The tale begins either ‘Once upon a time’, or ‘in the third age’ or ‘before time was chained in a line’, or perhaps best ‘Long ago in the future’. The stories agree that all the tribes were once a single tribe: The Great Tribe. The stories disagree almost immediately from here. They agree that the tribe began to fracture, but the mechanism of the split is a point of contention. Some stories put the blame simply upon geographic expansion, the Great great across the whole of the world supposedly and people thus far removed developed different practices and different ways of surviving in the cruel world of long ago. Others put the blame on disputes, and even cannibalism. Again the spread of the tribe is a factor, but now geographic dispersal leads to squabbles and fights and members of the tribe turning upon each other in the fight for resources, even cannibalizing their brothers and sisters.
Here again we reach a bottleneck, where most stories agree. The growing differences became dramatic, and violence did erupt between the disparate and now quite distinct groups of the great tribe. The Tribe went to war with itself. The tribe ceased to intermarry between the disparate factions. The Great Tribe was a name and a memory that all the smaller Tribes fought for or against or over it’s perceived ownership. Some did cleave to the the ways of the Great Tribe, those who still lived in the way of the Great Tribe. but most did not and a myriad of tribes now lived across the land and the tribes no longer intermarried.
The Fish tribe would not intermarry with the Whale Tribe or the Dolphin Tribe. The Ape Tribe would not intermarry with the Wolf tribe or the Bear Tribe. The Evergreen Tribe did not intermarry with the Stone Fruit Tribe. The Fungi Tribe confused everyone. The Sponge tribe ignored everyone. And the tribes kept fracturing. But a lesson was learned from the fracturing of the tribe. Since the War of the Great Tribe, six great extinctions have occurred and had the Great Tribe still been the only tribe, then it is likely that one extinction would have included the whole of the tribe. But because the tribes lived in different ways now, although many tribes might fall during a great extinction, it was unlikely that they would all fall. The war have brought resilience and survival.
BoGT-010
Long ago in the future – The People were Free once more – They walked the free path – They were warriors
The Hungry Empire hand fallen and torn itself apart and the Wendigo tribes now wandered the wasteland
But the Locust king fears death – And fights to the end – Even though his way is death – The locust king fears death
And from the Wendigo tribes – A new false king rises with a newborn army – A zombie empire – Unaware it is dead.
BoGT-011
I’m awake and it hurts
Better to sleep walk through life as though nothing matters
But I’m awake and it hurts
I’m imprisoned by past decisions and personal inability and the fear others sold me
fine
it hurts but I’m awake
it hurts but I’m awake
This is not a curse
This is not a problem
This is right
This is my path
it hurts
good
It hurts because I was sleeping for the wrong reasons
I was sleeping I should have been awake
it hurts sleep let me ignore it
but I’m awake and I am not going back to sleep
Professor Harbinger's School for Villains 