Axile
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"Lightning sparks above you in the purple-black sky. The pool you dragged yourself from smells sharp and acid. You'll have to make the eye-scuttlers clean it out when you return."[1]
Axile is a planet in the High Wilderness and the ancestral home of the Flukes, Moon-Misers and Rubbery Men, collectively known as Shapelings. Its star shines with a purple, hateful light.
A World of Shapelings
Befitting its mostly-aquatic inhabitants, the surface of Axile is pocketed with deep pools. The depths of the pools were great stores of vital essences and served as dwellings to the Flukes and the ancestors of the Rubbery Men, who took many forms.[2][3] The shapelings made use of Moon Misers as mounts to traverse the rough terrain, and of creatures called eye-scuttlers for hygiene.[1]
The atmosphere of the planet is rich in Alkaline vapors which protected the inhabitants from the harsh light of its star.[4] Lightning storms are common.[1]
Axile used to orbit a purple star, but the star hated its planet, and especially hated the shapelings. The hateful purple light reduced them to nothing, and eventually the planet spun away from it, leaving Axile a barren rock floating through the High Wilderness.[5][6]
Do you Recall
"Do you recall how they came to that place? And we sang of our lightnings and shapeful disgrace? They tilted their vanes and ennobled their spires. We welcomed them then and commingled all choirs."[7]
Long before the fall of the First City, when the Bazaar traveled the High Wilderness as a Messenger, it visited Axile.[8] The Bazaar and its Masters listened to the plight of the shapelings, and offered them a deal. While some refused, either out of principle or because the price was too high, many accepted.[9]
While the exact terms of the deal are not known, they involved the Bazaar sharing secrets with the shapelings to advance their arts,[10] as well as the shapelings entering the Bazaar and traveling with it to the Neath, where they used the Shapelings Arts to change their bodies and built a civilization.[11][12] This civilization was later superseded by The Fallen Cities, which fell on top of it. Its remains can be found still, in the depths below Flute Street.[13]
While accepting the Bazaar’s deal allowed the shapelings to survive the death of their planet, the cost was steep: unable to find another price, the Bazaar demanded that they abandon love.[11][14]
The arrival of the Bazaar in Axile and subsequent deal are memorialized in the Do You Recall…? poem.
A Candle-Bearer
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 A fellow spirit recognised, Fallen London Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "spirit" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ For A Dream Of Innocence, Fallen London "Those stronger than you have retreated to the deepest places, the greatest stores of Essence."
- ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "In the deepest tunnels, there are no pseudo-bones. Were [the Rubbery Men] without bones, in their original form? Or without bodies altogether?"
- ↑ For A Dream Of Innocence, Fallen London "The purple-black light brightens and the safe and beautiful curtain of alkaline vapour dissolves. It happens nearly every day now."
- ↑ For A Dream Of Innocence, Fallen London "On the now-abandoned surface, the purple radiance fades, as Axile spins away from the star that hates it. None dream there now. None will dream there again."
- ↑ For A Dream Of Innocence, Fallen London "By the standards of its kind, the star above is venerable and weary. It is tired of existing, but most of all it is wearied of the life below it in the pools. The fatigue of aeons makes its hatred no less deadly."
- ↑ Nodule of Violet Amber, Fallen London
- ↑ Who—, Fallen London
- ↑ For A Dream Of Innocence, Fallen London "You refused the price of love. Love has little enough meaning to you now, but you will not be a puppet of a puppet."
- ↑ What –, Fallen London
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 The Pulse of the Principles, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The Rubbery Men were once something quite different. The changes are gradual, but here they were four-winged and four-legged. There they were something like a vertebrate octopus."
- ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "For centuries, Flute Street has been built up on layers of earlier remains, so the lower the tunnels the older they are. You pass through the Bazaar's known history as you descend."
- ↑ Consent to a potentially depraved union, Fallen London "The Rubbery Men have no ceremonies of commitment. No marks of betrothal. Such things were lost to them when the black spires came to them, and failed to find a price."
