The Unexplored Places

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CONTENT WARNINGS: animal death, detailed description of injury to animals

Did our presence here transform the natural landscape of Antarras? Did our footsteps change the ground we walked on, which had never before seen human feet? It would be naive to pretend it didn't, that's for certain. But it would be just as naive to imagine that we could ascertain the exact extent to which we altered that environment, just as it altered us in turn. There's no telling if the rivers would have started to run red in their own course, no knowing if the storms would have come on without us there to witness their thunderheads. It's impossible to say with any semblance of certainty that Antarras became what it did because we interfered—just as it's impossible to say that it didn't.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: Not a noble deed, but a necessary one.

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CONTENT WARNINGS: animal death, detailed description of injury to animals

Wildlife on Antarras was puzzling to the first settlers, who had never known any animals besides those few they'd encountered on Earth, the rare ones left in the wake of a mass extinction on the planet they were running from. Aside from horses, which the settlers had brought with them, they found themselves face to face with creatures the likes of which they'd never seen, and not knowing precisely what else to call them, they gave them borrowed names. An animal what flew became a bird, or a raven, or a vulture. One that slithered close to the ground they called a snake. A dog-sized four legged scavenger was a coyote, or a jackal. And a huge predator with massive teeth and terrible claws became a bear—less a species distinction, and more a warning, like language had a memory that would teach anyone who heard it to keep their distance lest they find themselves prey.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: A stranger comes looking for aid.

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People always supposed it might be possible, that somebody lived out in the Ruin. In fact, I reckon most people assumed it had to be true. As dangerous and downright undesirable as it seemed, we'd made a home of Antarras out of a desire to find freedom and a chance at a better life, so why not the Ruin too? But the question was never taken all that seriously. Surely, anybody who chose to live out there would be a loner, a strange or lost soul, who probably wouldn't last long enough to make any trouble for anybody decent. The hellstone'd mutate them til they turned into just another monster, or the monsters would kill them before it got the chance. There were too many problems sitting right at our doorsteps to consider what might be lurking far enough away we'd never have to face it ourselves.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: Foreshadows of things to come.

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CONTENT WARNINGS: description of body horror (1:10:34-1:13:25)

The Confessors, of course, were more than just priests. Having received the word of God directly from the source on their pilgrimages, it wasn't uncommon to hear the faithful say that the Confessors held onto some small fraction of His omniscient revelation. If you were lucky enough to have a Confessor located in your home parish, you wouldn't only go to them for the sacrament, or for confession: you'd probably also go to them for advice. Their instinct guided directly by His hand, it was rare for a Confessor to steer their congregant wrong. Not just priests but intercessors, guides. In the early days of Antarras, the Confessors were as critical as the Guild or the Manufactory in determining the order of things, how best to safely build a community that stood a chance at survival.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: Several surprising revelations.

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It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that there is no limit to what the Company would do to keep its grip on Antarras tight, but that doesn't mean the average person really understands the depths of the Company's machinations. What's worse, where it used to be the case that one could tell a Company member a mile away, from their dress, their deportment, or their demeanor, the decision makers higher up quickly learned that most Antarrans were conditioned to keep mum around anyone with a whiff of the Company about them, and made a move to arrange for operants under cover. No matter how strong a town's collective spirit, there would always be one sucker hungry enough or tired enough or cowardly enough to accept an offer to pass along seemingly innocent information in exchange for a few coin, and when that didn't work, well, the Company started hiring people who could act.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: X marks the spot.

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CONTENT WARNINGS: discussion of auditory hallucinations

I heard a story, once, from one of the original settlers, out in Swallow's Pass, about the first time she saw a ghost in the Ruin. The ghost of her father, dressed in his work clothes, standing in the distance, in the fog, and calling her name. She said it felt as real as anything she'd ever seen, chilled her to the bone, and while she'd never believed in ghosts before, she knew this had to be one. But, she said, the strangest part was, her father had died on Earth, when she was seventeen. Two decades before any human ever set foot on Antarras, two decades before the first ships left Earth in search of this new home. "Is this hell?" she asked herself. "Have we fled a dying Earth only to find ourselves where the dead were already destined to go?"

This week, on Ruin's Gate: A return to Jericho yields surprising results.

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CONTENT WARNINGS: discussion of auditory hallucinations

What is a ghost, anyway? It's a question the people of Antarras have had to ask more than once. Leaving aside the obvious, here, there's more to consider than one might think there'd be. Is a ghost a demon? A spirit? Is it something else? Problem is, on a planet that plays tricks on the mind, it isn't just a question of "how real are the ghosts?" It can also be a question more along the lines of, what do we mean when we say "real?" If something has enough of an impact, can you say it's real even if it's only in your head? If something can really hurt you, does that make it real?

This week, on Ruin's Gate: Four puzzle pieces.

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CONTENT WARNINGS: drug use [1:01:42-1:03:22], brief depictions of body horror [1:28:18-1:34-13]

People found all sorts of ways to cope with the uncertainty that came coupled with living somewhere as dangerous as the frontier. Some turned to drink, to gambling, to all the vices known to mankind, as could be expected. Some to violence, to stupor, to fantasy. Some, of course, turned to God and all his attendant mercies, to praying their rosaries and church on Sundays. And others still turned towards each other, to the workaday pleasures of tipping your hat as you pass someone on the street, lending a hand when it's needed. It's those last ones who run the risk of being forgotten, in these kinds of histories, these tales of how the world we know came to be how it is. But it's those same people who built the floors we tread, who kept the walls standing upright. And when things on Antarras began to go badly, they were the ones left picking up the pieces.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: A storm hits the Gate.

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CONTENT WARNINGS: missing child, discussion of parental death and grief, blinding [48:30]

If you take the word of the people who've made their names in Ruin's Gate—and usually, dear reader, I am just wise enough to remember to do that—then the thing you most need to survive out here isn't luck, or money, or knowing the right people. It's something else altogether. Take, for instance, a game of Covenant. Odds are, you're as likely to draw a hand of snakes as you are to end up with a pile of stones, but if you stop playing the game when you've only just drawn your hand, you're missing the entire point. It isn't just that any hand can win if you know how to play your cards: it's that the whole point of playing is to leverage those cards to your own benefit. Every card, no matter how low, is an opportunity, and the people who thrive out here are the ones who've learned to see the right round to play it in.

This week, on Ruin's Gate: A desperate race from danger.

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