Surviving Arkadia

I sat in the wingback arm chair recently vacated by the feline Beast-kin that I’d decided was the most dapper man in Moonstone. It didn’t matter that I’d never been to Moonstone before and I’d only been there since lunchtime. I could always reassess the award if new information came in.

Jethro had been told to wait outside and Ms Robinsdottir, the Chief Archivist, was saying farewell to the aforementioned most dapper man in Moonstone.

I picked up the book that the dapper Amris had been reading. Great Leaps Forward: A history of Paradigm Shifting Technologies and Magics. Volume III. Damn. No point in reading that. I’ve always hated reading a book series in the wrong order.

The Chief Archivist returned just as I was beginning to rethink my stance on reading things out of order. She sat back down on her gilded chair. “You’re an Outlander,” she said. “You’ve expressed some curiosity about what that means and both Jethro and Agnes counselled you not to talk about being an Outlander in front of people, yes?”

“Yes. But they won’t say why and Agnes insisted that I had to get a few levels before she’d even tell me how to find out more.”

“Or, more accurately, she told you that she couldn’t explain and you weren’t ready to learn,” said the Chief Archivist.

“Whatever,” I said.

“Well you’ll be glad to know that I can answer one of your questions. I can explain why it might be a good idea to conceal your identity as an Outlander. Close your eyes and look at the skill tree… please.”

She tacked the please on as an afterthought. As if she usually expected people to just do what she said but recognised that I might find it rude.

Since she’d asked so nicely I complied. I closed my eyes and the familiar tree popped into existence, floating in the dark in front of me.

“What am I looking for?” I said.

“All of it,” said Ms Robinsdottir. “Because you can see all of it. This is part of the gift of Outlander Sight. I can’t see it. No one born here can see the whole skill tree. We can only see the portion that’s open to us. The things we have unlocked or can unlock currently. We can’t see Achievements until we attain them.”

“But Jethro guided me which things to level to unlock stuff?” I said.

“I’m sure he did. The best early career skills to grind are well known. We’ve been compiling skill tree guide books for generations. Some of the best ones were built with help from Outlanders. But that knowledge is valuable. It makes you valuable. Some rich and powerful people would try to possess you so that they could have a monopoly on that knowledge. And this is not even the most dangerous knowledge you have access to.”

“Oh come on. I don’t know anything,” I said.

“True. That’s why you don’t know what you know. The book Amris was reading. Did you look at it?”

“I glanced at the title,” I said.

“And what is that title?”

“Great Leaps Forward: A history of Paradigm Shifting Technologies and Magics. Volume III,” I said.

“That’s an excellent translation,” she said. “You have a real gift for words.”

“I’m not translating anything. That’s what it says.”

She picked the book up off the table and held it up where I could see the title. “Please point to the number three,” she said.

“What?”

“You said it was volume three,” she said.

“Yeah but it was three of the letter ‘I’ like Roman Numerals, you know?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea what a Roman Numeral is. Please indicate the part of this title that tells you it’s the third volume.”

I couldn’t. When I looked at it again I realised that there were no letters I recognised. Certainly no three letters in a row meaning three. The writing looked nothing like any writing system I knew. It looked a bit Korean and a bit more Japanese and a little bit like Hebrew. I couldn’t even tell what direction it was read in. And yet I knew what it said.

“Is that what I’ve been reading all this time? All the street signs? The Gondola timetable? The diary?”

“No. This is an older form of the script we use now. These days it’s only used by Academics and poseurs. The more modern form is simplified and easier to read. Your ability to read and understand languages other than your own is an Outlander ability that improves as you level your core skills. You can also level it like a skill by practising. Eventually you’ll be able to read anything written down with the intent that it should be readable. Even things written in code.”

“Outlander is such a broken build,” I said.

“Oddly enough, you are not the first Outlander to have expressed that sentiment to me, using those very words, this week,” said Ms Robinsdottir.

“I get it. It’s probably better if people don’t know that I’m an Outlander so I don’t get sold into perpetual slavery as a glorified decoder ring,” I said.

“There’s more,” she said. “Outlanders have been coming to this world for a long time. How long exactly is a subject of some archaeological controversy. Outlanders have been writing down their observations of Arkadia for as long as there has been written language. Here in Moonstone we have the greatest collection of Outlander writings in the world. The writings cover the whole history of Moonstone, possibly the whole history of Arkadia. It’s an invaluable treasury of knowledge but the Outlander writings can only be read by other Outlanders.”

“I’m not going to be able to help much there,” I said. “I really only speak one language and it’s changed so much over time that I have trouble reading things written only five hundred years ago. Go back a thousand years and it’s practically gibberish to me.”

The Archivist smiled. “Every Outlander I’ve spoken to has said something very similar. Oh some of them have spoken more languages, and some of those languages have gone back further, but there’s always a hard limit beyond which they cannot read. And they’ve all been wrong. The Outlander Sight will, eventually, if you push it hard enough, allow you to read all the way back. It might even reveal the true history of the Fever.”

“The what?” I said.

“I was afraid of this,” said the Archivist.

“Afraid of what?” I said.