Old gods and dreamers

While writing the Age of Frontiers lore for its different factions and sites, I remembered that the "old gods" already appear in Slave Pits, along with a few other references to the ancestors, or the dreamers, depending on who you ask. Let's dive into these terms.

A harsh start

Calima's societies started with the very crew members who survived Descent. It was a brutal beginning: a steep fall from the life they knew to the most primitive survival. The vast majority of them had no practical, or even theoretical, knowledge of the techniques humanity used in its first historical steps. But worse than that was the clear realisation that their life, from then on, would be a shadow of what it had been.

Some individuals tried to uplift their groups, with different intentions. Others adapted decently enough to the new conditions, many of them believing this was still a recreation to "win". The rest simply could not cope with their new situation. They became apathetic and faint-hearted, accepted whatever others imposed on them, and turned to sleep to reach the closest thing they had left to the recreations: dreaming.

The children of Calima

The gap between these first settlers and their direct descendants was huge. Their parents' explanations made no sense to children born on Calima, who could only imagine their own interpretations of such concepts. Their will to live was also far stronger, as they did not carry the burden of a better past now gone.

Soon these new generations were calling the survivors of the crew by different names, depending on the region and on how much they valued them. The most engaged and obviously brilliant were the old gods: their knowledge and ideas were too advanced not to admire, and worship. The most nostalgic and defeated were scornfully named dreamers.

These names carry slightly different connotations in the lands of the Star Worshippers and of the Crafters, each shaped by the vision of the past their own leaders pushed on them. But that is a story for another post.

Om