Eishiloni
Dwends of the Dead Light
Saturday, September 22, 2018
Today is the Autumn Equinox, which marks the beginning of my favorite time of the year: the festive season, lasting through January 1. To celebrate, I want to give you a look at some of the most ethereal beings of the Preterfolk: the Eishiloni.
(And, yes, this actually being posted a month late, on Oct. 27, but use your imagination! Autumn is at its height!)
While there are no large spoilers—in fact much, of the delay on this piece is due to some strenuous pains I took to cut down spoilers while still being able to talk about these fascinating creatures—this article nevertheless contains slightly higher-level spoilers than you'll usually find in Curious Tale Saturdays articles. However, I've added a Spoilers Portal later in the article to allow you to escape those spoilers if you desire.
That said, if you want to play it extra safe on spoilers, I recommend you skip this entire article.
Now, sit back and enjoy the tale of the dwends of the Dead Light…
The Melammorjur Greatforest
To begin to know of the Eishiloni, we must first know of the Melammorjur.
In most Curious Tale Saturdays, I talk about the east of the world: the Sodaplains, the Howl Riada, the Kingdom of Davoranj, the Sourran Landstorm under the Sheer, and of course Gala. This is because the story begins here, in the East. But across the world—all the way across, in the West—there is the vast and majestic Melammorjur Greatforest, larger than all of the aforementioned regions combined. Melammorjur encompasses, with room to spare, the entire Kingdom of Tanzibay, itself the second most powerful nation in the world, and dozens of smaller countries. It reaches from the impassable Kask Kadoo Mountains of the farthest north to the illimitable Ocean in the utmost south.
Most of the Greatforest is unsettled wilderness. It is one of the few areas of the world where it is convention among mapmakers to name only the region, and not an owner or polity. No one owns the Melammorjur. No person of any stature is deluded enough to even claim to. No nation dares such a claim either. Even Tanzibay—the country that could press the strongest claim—regards Melammorjur as unownable.
In Melammorjur, the wood heals back faster than it can be cut by axes or saws, nor will it burn even when heavily oiled, for the air is so wet and the wood so clever that fire cannot catch. It is nigh impervious to Kindred industry, and seemingly immortal to the ravages of time, infestation, and natural decline. Much of the east of Melammorjur is mountainous as well, the Tiree Mountains that shelter Tanzibay from the rest of the world, making Melammorjur all the more impenetrable and ineffable. (If you remember the RPG, this is the name I have given to the mountains where the Battle of the Mountain Keep occurred.)
And so the Melammorjur is unspeakably old, and wild, a realm. The trees are vast, rising thousands of feet high—so tall that, after spotting them, you can walk toward them for days.
There is even a well-known disease, called by many names across the world, that afflicts people who have never seen the Greatforest but now mean to enter into it for some reason: Upon seeing its imposing boundary, people have been known to panic, even go into hysterics. Others fall listless or even comatose. Many of these who nevertheless do proceed into the forest, die once inside—from no apparent cause.
Only the mates of Tanzibay, in concert, can truly press the Greatforest back, and even then only in small steps, only defensively, and only when their resolve is mighty.
In the Melammorjur, the vegetation is so thick that there are places where you cannot travel on the ground—where the growth is so woody and dense that it would take days to go yards—and so there are great Tanziban highways that pass farther up, suspended from tree limbs.
But there are other places in Melammorjur where the foliage is not as thick, and the canopy sometimes gives way to groves and meadows, or larger expanses. Most of Tanzibay's great cities are to be discovered in these spaces.
There are many regions indeed in the vast Melammorjur Greatforest—for the north of it is farther from the south than Davoranjium is from the Village of Ieik.
Nevertheless, this forest has a core, and the core of the forest is the place called Colla Carrangian.
The Braids of Colla Carrangian
Deep within Melammorjur, on the far side of the Tiree Mountains, the place called Colla Carrangian—also called The Braids of Colla Carrangian—is widely thought to be the living heart of life on Relance.
It is said that in days of Derishos before she was diminished—before the Dissonance—Colla Carrangian, not Nuajj as it is today, was her seat of power. Her ancient presence there is often attributed to the hardiness and longevity of these trees, as well as to that of Tanzibay—a mighty country which, even though it would not rise until tens of thousands of years later, was nonetheless still born of the same soil that Derishos had once graced.
Yet Tanzibay has very little presence in Colla Carrangian itself. In the Relance of the present day, Colla Carrangian is what we would think of as a cross between a national park and a holy site. People revere this land for its beauty, heritage, and power. They do not build here.
In the Braids of Colla Carrangian, Melammorjur is not at its densest. The trees are very tall, and the canopy takes up most of the sky, but nevertheless the trees are comparatively slender than in other parts of the Greatforest, and there is much more space between them. In these spaces many other things flourish: plants, animals, fungi…and dwends. There are ancient ruins, too, most splendidly the remains of the Celestial Pyramid, believed to have been the physical house of Derishos' divinity—a vast temple palace surrounded by the remnants of a mighty city, which, millennia later, would become the architectural inspiration for the Tanziban Royal Palace of Sunhame far to the north.
Colla Carrangian is distinguished by its legendary, eponymous Braids—endless, twisting helixes of woody plant flesh, wider in diameter than a viutar is tall, that have the fibrous appearance of rope, encrusted in lichens, moss, and other things. Like a heap of distorted springs piled on the ground, they meander through Colla Carrangian like serpents stopped in time. They have no discernible endpoints, no apparent biological function. They wrap and wind through the forest, ultimately disappearing into the ground. There are dozens or hundreds of them (the Tanzibans have long attempted to chart them), all throughout Colla Carrangian. What they really are, exactly, is unknown—though there are certainly theories and beliefs—but one thing that is known with certainty is that it is the outermost Braids that mark Colla Carrangian, because it is here, at this boundary, that the laws of nature begin to warp.
Those who travel to Colla Carrangian speak of a "roaring" inside themselves, as their life burns brightly within them. Nor is this mere perception; Tanziban scholars have proven that Colla Carrangian agitates a person's spark, like flames fanned on the bellows. It doesn't add to a person's total spark, but causes it to burn more brightly, more quickly. Things grow eagerly here—so eagerly that their growth is not always correct, leading to all kinds of short- and long-term sicknesses for unfortunate travelers. And death, when it comes in Colla Carrangian, is absolute, with the dying known to fall into total peace and deepest sleep. It is a place where, when the time comes to die, you will know it.
This is only the beginning of the strange ways of the Greatforest's core. It is the easiest place in the world to hallucinate, and people sometimes lose all connection with reality here. Sometimes they get lost, in which case they either succumb to deprivation, to be consumed by the forest, or become so lost that they lose their Kindred nature and transform into dwends. Even without visions, coming to this place is known to change personalities, sometimes permanently. Dreams here—for those who sleep—are known to offer glimpses of other things happening elsewhere in the world. And everyone who comes to Colla Carrangian can tell you of the voices they hear, both outside their heads and within.
If all these incursions against the sanctity of the mind are undaunting, the perversions of physical reality perhaps will dissipate a traveler's courage instead: There are rains without clouds; winds that can give frostbite in an instant or burn without warning the next. There are storms whose fog offers tantalizing glimpses into other worlds. There are hours where the sun simply stops in the sky, or the stars at night, for long minutes on end. The more surreal phenomena are almost dreamlike: Languages stray outside their boundaries; people speak words that make sense within the forest but not without. Tools can accomplish different purposes. People may find themselves with different limbs, or voices, or faces. Powerful thoughts can take physical form; powerful words can push on reality like a hand pushing against a sand-hill.
Even the world itself is uncertain in this place. In Colla Carrangian, people can suddenly vanish, only to reappear just as suddenly later—or not. Fundamental properties, like the pitches of music or the weight of air, can waver. Foreign matter sometimes loses its solidity, causing structures to fail and gear to fall apart. When it happens to the ground, anything and anyone supported above will fall in—often with inadequate time to escape before the substance resolidifies. When this happens to the body of a person, the result is like a burst bag of liquids.
It is believed by those who are likeliest to know, that in Colla Carrangian the fixedness of creation is weak, for it was here that Derishos, in her original and true form—the form of Dsa—gave the world its shapes. And so Colla Carrangian is a primal place, a place where potential and reality blend together like oil and water, bubbles of one continually passing through wells of the other. If that is to be believed, then Colla Carrangian is akin to the edge of the world, beyond which the mortal realm ends. Some in Tanzibay, which has a rich culture of theater, opera, and dance, describe Colla Carrangian as "Behind the Scenes"—the place where the elements of a performance are staged, assembled, and dismantled.
The dangers of Colla Carrangian are enough to inspire stories and terror, but not so inevitable that people have abandoned and forgotten this place. On the contrary, many people come here, and most of them leave in one piece. And why do they come? Well, there is of course the sheer splendor of the place. But moreover, the wonders to be found here often weigh far more heavily upon people's desires than any fear. Scholars, artists, students, leaders, scientists—many people come here out of curiosity, eager to see for themselves what they have heard in the stories.
It is a land of mystical riches, not gold but power of another sort: Illumination. The Braids of Colla Carrangian can unravel mysteries and allow people to develop potent capabilities. Jemis Finick, the Guard of Galavar, is one of those who traveled here, to observe and learn, and he profited handsomely for it when it came to his powers as a numeneer—and as a trickster.
The Eishiloni: Spectacles of Nature
There are countless dwends in Colla Carrangian; nowhere else in the entire world has such a dense and diverse population of the Preterfolk. So thick they are, that some have exceeded their own bodies and given form to entire species of dwends—something unheard of anywhere else in the world, where individual dwends are almost exclusively unique, not tied to any race of their own. (In fact this is one of their fundamental differences from the Kindred.)
One of these "species" of dwends is known as the Eishiloni, and they are among the largest and oldest species of dwends among all the Yondred. Roughly as long as a viutar and three times as heavy (though they do have some variation in size from one to the next), eishilons have the general shape of slugs, long and tapering: fat in the middle and tiny on the ends. In their natural state they levitate—like fish in water—by no known mechanism, and they move through the air with perfect ease.
But, most significantly of their appearance, they glow. Indeed, that is the meaning of eish: "light." They have no faces, no limbs, no discerning features of any kind other than their general shape, but their bodies glow from end to end with a uniform, creamy warm radiance, or sometimes even a shimmer, like the color of sunlight on the daytime side of the Golden Hour. And they are bright enough for their glow to be easily seen during the forest's shaded daytimes.
(A note on capitalization: If capitalized, "Eishiloni" refers to the entirety of their kind. If uncapitalized, "eishiloni" or "eishilons"—or the singular "eishilon"—refers to some number of individuals.)
The Eishiloni have appeared twice in my published works to date. Their first appearance came in "The History of Karrusíbtael the Great," in the excerpt I published when I announced Mate of Song. In this sacred song, the Eishiloni got four entire lines to themselves:
And the eishiloni sang in my midst!
Of their tails wrapped around moon and star, Shosen!
Ribbons of silk draped in faerie light, and
I dream of their voices to this very day.
Their second appearance came in a Curious Tale Saturdays article about Murrateel DeTeel:
The Resistance desired of him to go and learn more about the Galans, but Murrateel was preoccupied by the doom upon him, and so they sent him to the Greatforest, Melammorjur, to confer with the mystical eishiloni who dwelt there, and whom many among the Resistance revered.
With much struggle he arrived in the thicks of Melammorjur, and the eishiloni deigned to counsel him, and from them he learned that he too could cast himself into the Ocean, as he had done so many times before, and that the Great Ocean would consume him, and therein release him from the Powers of the Gods.
The Songs of the Eishiloni
It is thought that the Eishiloni number in the low thousands in Colla Carrangian, with perhaps one or two hundred more dispersed across the rest of the world at any given time. Thanks to their numbers and their light, and their voices and songs, the Eishiloni are easily spotted by travelers.
Yet it is rare to hear them sing, especially in concert with each other. The Eishiloni are famous for their songs. This music is often described by those who have heard it as one of the most intimate and beautiful sounds in the world.
When they do sing, they often sing of themselves, depicted in beautiful poses. They also like to sing scenes of nature, such as the surge and calar (sunrise and sunset), or the motions of the Greatforest's own Thousand Rivers, some of which pass through Colla Carrangian. They enjoy singing of the sky, especially the nighttime sky, and often incorporate themselves into their depictions, as agents of the divine.
Sometimes these scenes of nature include their observers—the people who are present to hear them. Their lyrics here ring true, describing people's personalities, experiences, or thoughts with high fidelity. Many people who have heard these songs went on to say that it changed their outlook on life, drawing attention to things about themselves they had ignored or overlooked.
Most of their songs are descriptive, like all of the above. Occasionally, however, the Eishiloni sing prescriptively, egging specific people on, inflaming their sparks, encouraging them toward some desire. Most of the people targeted by songs like these go insane, and, if they do, it is usually violent and immediate; they will typically immediately begin a killing spree right there on the spot, a spree that continues, unnaturally, without rest or water until the individual is either subdued or dies of dehydration, cardiac arrest, or some other condition of their fugue.
It seems, then, that to hear the song of an eishilon is beautiful, and to be sung of in these songs is an especial delight, but to be sung to by an eishilon is quite another thing. Tanziban scholars speculate that this is connected to the physical anomalies that permeate Colla Carrangian. But as for why, or if there even is a why, theories diverge.
The Counsel of the Eishiloni
Thus far I have presented Colla Carrangian as a mystical and surreal place, because these qualities are essential to imagining what it might be like. Yet the greater experience of Colla Carrangian, for the travelers who visit it, is the serenity and sanctuary of being in a deep forest, and the practicality of the limited inroads of civilization in this wild place. There are Tanziban roads, as well as campgrounds, latrines, and even a small plaza where travelers can exchange goods. Colla Carrangian is about twelve miles straight across, and considerably longer if you're following the roads—to say nothing of sightseeing.
The Eishiloni, too, have a practical side to their nature. Their song topics may be customarily inscrutable, but the Eishiloni are also well-known for the things they say outside of their songs—that is, for giving wise counsel, especially oracular counsel. Many people come to Colla Carrangian in hopes of finding an eishilon and asking it a question, or telling it of a problem. The eishiloni who hear these pleas sometimes accommodate the pleaders, answering directly, not in song but in plain speech.
And while they don't speak with colloquial familiarity, they don't speak in riddles either. (At least not deliberately.) For one thing, they speak in the Divine Locution—which every person inherently understands, at least at the literal level. (The intrinsic comprehensibility of the Divine Locution does not extend to higher-level ideas, only words and phrases.) But second and more importantly, eishiloni give counsel that, though sometimes hard to absorb or contextualize at first, and frequently not immediately obvious for its relevancy, is nevertheless sharply on-point—almost without exception. Tell an eishilon of your problem and, if it answers, the answer will be a pertinent and workable one.
It might not be what you want to hear, or it might not immediately make sense, but that wouldn't surprise most people who know anything of these dwends: The Eishiloni speak with a much wider perspective than most viutars have. Scholars who have studied the counsel of the Eishiloni generally believe that it is usually best to look at the counsel in the context of an outcome of a solution to the original problem or query—though there are also a variety of other, less common (but still recognized) forms that eishiloni counsel can take. To put it in simpler terms, the counsel of the Eishiloni is very much about the bottom line.
Spoiler Portal!
I don't mind giving out low or medium-low spoilers (like everything up to this point) in Curious Tale Saturdays. And if you're a regular reader, you probably don't mind reading them.
However, coming up are full medium-level spoilers for the nature of the Eishiloni. These are moderate spoilers, specifically limited to the Eishiloni themselves. (There are no direct spoilers about anything else.) They are spoilers inasmuch as what I'm about to explain is not presented with a frontloaded explanation in the story, but rather is something that is developed for the reader gradually in the course of ATH and other Curious Tale works.
If you wish to avoid those spoilers and preserve that journey, I have prepared a tasteful Magic Portal for you, which will take you to the other side. Otherwise, read on to learn about the true nature—at least within the limits of medium spoilers—of the Eishiloni.
Dwends of the Dead Light: The Terrific Nature of the Eishiloni
What are the Eishiloni? What do they do? What do they want? They're not animals; they're dwends—Yondred beings of the Preterfolk. And the Yondred always have a purpose beyond mere existence. I've told you the first part of the meaning of the name "Eishiloni": Light.
The other half, "Lon," means Dead.
In several of the Relancii cultures likeliest to know the truth, the Eishiloni are considered to be manifestations of that which ends. And not just any "that," but the Kindred—specifically the ethe, convictions, and intentions of the Kindred in the immediate future.
The Eishiloni, therefore, are more precisely representations of the Kindred soon to come, and their nature is to transform the present world so as to facilitate this coming—to whatever extent is necessary so that they may continue to exist. They're like visitors from the future in that respect, trying to steer the course of history, except they don't actually come from the future, and they don't have the willpower to want to "steer" anything.
To put it another, perhaps less daunting way, the Eishiloni are omens of world change. Without necessarily possessing willpower of their own, at least as we would know it, the Eishiloni reflect the sum of Kindred willpower, desire, and principle throughout Relance—and they are the physical manifestations of its realization. They physically represent both the ending of the collective identity of the Kindred of the present moment, and the coming of the collective identity of the Kindred of the immediate future.
You may rightly think of their nature as the divine version of eyesight. When Dsa was destroyed, this power expelled from her and became its own, independent entity: the Eishiloni. What does a God care to look at? Not rivers and flowers and hills. It was the will and fixations of the Kindred, and those who preceded the Kindred, that drew the interest of the Gods when they created the world. That's what Dsa did see, and her divine vision survives on its own to this very day as the Eishiloni, a mindless eye looking out upon an immediate future world that is constantly coming into being, with the continual passing away of each present moment. But though the eye no longer has a master, the creatures of the Gods—the Kindred—strive to understand the Eishiloni's power, and they appreciate it in their own way.
The Significance of a Narrow Field of View
The Eishiloni draw certain people, not deliberately but simply by nature, to the Braids of Colla Carrangian—from clear across the world if necessary, in order to effect these realizations, bringing into being the new truths of reality necessary for the Eishiloni to continue existing. As I've already said, this is not a willful behavior; it is simply their nature. In extreme cases they even depart the Melammorjur Greatforest entirely, in small numbers, to travel the world so as to encounter the people they need to see. In fact, one of these "house calls" is part of a subplot in Chapter 1 of After The Hero.
The Eishiloni aren't strictly drawn to the most willful or powerful individuals (though there is a fair amount of overlap). And this is a big part of what makes them so terrifying: They don't think about individuals the way we do. They think about outcomes, realizations—they think about what the world is constantly becoming. And they interact with people whose will, views, or ambitions relate to the manifestation of that constantly emerging future world.
But not on an individual level. If a person's spark stands in the way of what is to come, or is in disharmony with the vector of reality, that person will be amended through song (that is, driven mad, and made to lose their influence) or words of death (which kill outright), or else their problems or desires will be solved, resolved, satiated, altered, or dispersed altogether so as to reflect the world change that the Eishiloni represent—no matter how big or small, weak or powerful, that individual is. The world is constantly in danger of going in the "wrong" direction, toward an immediate future other than the one that the Eishiloni reflect. That can't happen—it literally can't happen—so, in the cold balance of nature, such divergences, and the individuals behind them, are essentially a rounding error in the arc of the world, and the Eishiloni correct that error. In essence, then, they are a little bit like a mindless, communal version of Atropos.
Most people who encounter the Eishiloni either see them and nothing more, or hear them sing. Some are given answers to their questions or problems. Usually the outcome is not all that bad, and often it is world-changingly beautiful. The Eishiloni don't necessarily care—at least not in the way we might expect—and aren't really even aware if a given person's experience with them is "good" or "bad." But the Kindred who meet the Eishiloni are always deeply moved, whether or not they survive.
And why is this what the Eishiloni are? Why is this what the Gods wanted to see? Well, that one I can't answer. Too big a spoiler. But I can tell you about the Dead Light.
The Dead Light
Across many cultures in Relance, there is a phrase: the Dead Light. This refers not to the Eishiloni per se, nor to the emerging world of the immediate future, but rather to the present world. It is similar to the concept of mortality, in that it explicitly defines the here and now in terms of its inevitable end. Just as mortal beings die, the mortal present will also die—and in fact dies anew with each subsequent instant of time.
"The Dead Light," then, is a metaphor for fate—for the doom of change and the inexorable fact that all things will pass. This is not how the Gods would describe the Eishiloni, but it is certainly a fair description from a Kindred perspective.
While most Relancii would not be aware of this, one comparison that might drive home the point for you is the idea of looking up at the stars at night: All of the starlight that you see, comes from moments in time that are already gone. The world shown by starlight is long dead by the time it enters your eyes. It is, in a sense, "dead light," because it illustrates a reality that no longer exists.
As ushers of the emerging world, the Eishiloni are therefore also cast in the role of Atropos, as I mentioned, or the Grim Reaper: They are harbingers of doom—doom in the classical sense of the word. Their light doesn't come from a dead past like starlight does, but rather reflects a future imminently arriving—a future that will displace the world that is. Their "dead light," then, is not their own glow or shape, but everything else. To look upon an eishilon is to see the truth of mortality.
The Eishiloni's Will
I keep qualifying that the Eishiloni don't "necessarily" have willpower.
Well, there is an even more terrifying aspect to the Eishiloni: They are not, in fact, mindless creatures driven by instinct alone. They are sapient, and sentient. They do have a willpower of their own. Even though many of their behaviors are driven by nature, they transcend this by also acting in the interests of their personal and communal desires. They are dwends, after all, and powerful dwends almost always have a sense of self.
The nature of the Eishiloni's collective desire is not something I'll be getting into today, but I will say that the Eishiloni are perhaps one of the most straightforward glimpses, among all dwends, into the ultimate nature of the Yondred—and the question of why dwends exist.
What the Eishiloni desire, as the autonomous eye of a dead God, an eye that looks into the future of the dreams and convictions of the Kindred, is the fulfillment of an unanswered wish. The Eishiloni have no power to change the future, nor to choose the future. As correctors of the rounding errors of the world, they are executors of a function outside their control. Where the Eishiloni do have agency is to look that which lies outside the sum of the Kindred. Like Afiach, they dwell at length on the world's beauty, and like her they carry with them a permanent sadness at its constant passage, mingled with a permanent delight at its constant emergence.
Most of their songs, they sing for themselves.
The Difference Between "The Future" and "The Immediate Future"
If you hit a cue ball on a pool table, there is only one possible position that ball can end up in. After accounting for the geometry of the table, the positions of the other balls, all the imperfections of everything, the currents of the air, the humidity—every factor—there is only one place the ball can go.
The "immediate" future is future already set in stone. It isn't a place of speculation and possibility, but the very opposite: an inexorable approaching destiny. It is the cue ball in motion that has only one place to stop.
The Eishiloni do not represent the grander idea of the mutable, undetermined, open-ended friend we call "the future." They represent the immediate future, the unalterable fate that is coming whether you like it or not.
By understanding this, you can make deep inferences about the intentions of the Gods.
Communal Aspect & False Discrepancies
Inside the Braids of Colla Carrangian, the Eishiloni are rarely seen completely alone. They cluster and are highly communal. While each one often has quite a bit of space to itself, it's usually a safe bet that, if you see one, there are others nearby. And sometimes they do swirl together, almost playfully.
Out in the wider world, the reverse is true: It's extremely unlikely to encounter more than one eishilon at a time. If you do, it will usually be two, or at most three.
The significance of multiple eishiloni clustered together, versus a smaller number or even just a single one, is a matter of understanding the Kindred willpower and identity that the Eishiloni's presence represents. The nature of the Eishiloni is augmented exponentially by the congregation of subsequent individuals, and the Eishiloni in total manifest the willful power and identity of the entire world. Seeing more eishiloni in a given place at a given time is a sign of great power in motion.
Now, why, then, are eishiloni not present at every momentous occasions in the world? For instance, there were few if any eishiloni present during the battle between Rennem's expeditionary force and the Galan army and people in the City of Sele. The answer, not to be too coy about it, is that the truly significant changes in history are not always what they seem to be. In that battle, there were no rounding errors in the fulfillment of destiny. Things unfolded exactly as they were supposed to.
If an eishilon is present anywhere outside Colla Carrangian, it signifies that the course of history itself is in danger of changing, and must be resolved. And, even then, there are other factors at work that further determine whether the Eishiloni will appear…
Can a Rounding Error Ever Be Intentional—And Can It Ever Prevail?
The nature of the conceptual framework I've laid out points to an obvious question: Is this a system that can be cheated?
The answer to that is yes.
The Eishiloni themselves possess this power: It's the same power that allows them to do the opposite, to bring the "correct" future into being. In terms of the physics, they could just as easily bring an "incorrect" future into being. But they are incapable, by nature, of doing that. They literally couldn't; they would cease to exist if they tried. The only Eishiloni who exist are the ones who bring the correct future into being. That's the power of selection for you.
(the stronger-than-usual spoilers, that is)
Music Representing the Eishiloni
The Eishiloni's own songs are quite enchanting. It would be difficult to fit them into a genre space, but words like "ambient," "peaceful," "harmonious," and "melodic" come to mind, though they are by no means constrained to any of these concepts.
Music representing the Eishiloni, on the other hand, tends to have more violence and urgency in it, at least in my mind. It's a conceptual decision I made, given how powerful of an impact they have on people. The powers of Colla Carrangian, their home ground, are deep indeed, and unsettling to anyone who seeks consistency or security of familiarity—which we all to some extent do.
So when it comes to The Curious Score, the first piece of actual music that I wrote for the Eishiloni has an ominous quality to it. It's restless, even relentless.
"The Eishiloni Over Soda Fountain"
In order to have it ready for release today, I had to give up on battling some stereo problems and just do the whole thing in mono, and there are still a few dynamic issues, but overall it's in a good enough state to publish, and is the first Curious Score piece I've done in a while!
The scene to which this music is set (it is event music) takes place late in the night, during the tail end of the Battle of Soda Fountain. Almost three dozen eishiloni—an unprecedented number so far away from Colla Carrangian—gather from the city and approach the flagship of the Galan sandship fleet, intentions unknown. Eishilons have been appearing in Soda Fountain all day, but no one realized just how many of them there were. They'd thought there was just one of them that had been getting around the city. But no, far more than that.
In the music, you can here the foreboding of their appearance in the distance. You can hear individual eishiloni fluttering through the air in the form of two musical trills that sound in the first half of the piece, and you can hear the whole group of them swarming the ship at the climactic end of the piece.
There are two melodic themes, both original to this piece (not variations on other Curious Tale music):
The first melody is the larger of the two, and receives a basic introduction in the first half of the piece followed by a full statement in the second half. Its notes jump around fairly boldly across the scale, signifying the Eishiloni's own tenuous relationship with the rules of reality that govern most of the Relancii, as well as their terrific power to shape people's thoughts and nature.
The second and more important melody is a short motif, just three descending notes, which play over and over again, including in numerous variations, representing the finality that the Eishiloni themselves represent.
This motif is a direct homage to the exact same three-note motif in one of the pieces in the Oxenfree soundtrack, titled "Dead Light." In fact it's such a direct homage that it might be fairer to call it a remix (though it is also different enough that I feel comfortable calling it my own work).
At any rate, "Dead Light" is a terrifying track that really stuck with me when I heard it. As you can surmise, it also influenced the meaning of "Eishiloni." I had already named them as creatures of light ("eish" means "light" in Hebrew), but the idea of "dead" light came to me when I heard the Oxenfree music. I came up with my own spin on what that meant, and voila! Here we are today.
It's not a coincidence that this scene happens at night, and I wish I could do justice in a description here to the imagery in my mind when eishiloni swarm the Indisputable, and in particular Silence and a Davoranjan Ranger, who are above deck. With the eishiloni's flashing, swirling light, and the sandship's own lights, all set against the magnificent cityscape of Soda Fountain ahead of them, and the River of Fire flowing across the skies above, from Sele to Davoranj, it's really a sight.
Mysteries Abound
I suppose there's a risk in dwelling on the point that I had to seriously revise this piece so as to cut down on spoilers, because it tells you that the remaining material still represents a fairly thin barrier to further insights into the story. On the other hand, I don't think anything I've written here will tarnish your enjoyment of the actual story, when it comes. A little bit of foreknowledge can actually whet the appetite, by creating familiarity and expectation. When you read Chapter 1 you'll be on the lookout for the Eishiloni. Those who haven't read this will find the Eishiloni sneaking up on them in that chapter, because they're not introduced as a big deal yet they end up being part of the chapter climax.
I think either way of experiencing the Eishiloni is exciting, honestly. With ironic knowledge, you won't be as surprised, but you'll be thinking differently about what's happening, and able to comprehend more. I guess it's a bit like the difference between reading a book for the first time, and rereading it.
Anyhow! That's all for this week. I hope it was exciting to you!
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
