#frostlands

Wildfrost Week Day 6: Frostlands

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Calm Ophilia in the Frostlands 9.13.22

Next is the Frostlands, in the town of Emberglow! The characters in order are; Sofia - Scholar/Ice - Wealth (5-Star) Cless - Thief/Thunder - Fame (4-Star) Miles - Warrior/Light - Power (4-Star) Rodion - Apothecary/Dark - Fame (4-Star) Shelby - Apothecary/Ice - Wealth (4-Star) Guti - Hunter/Wind - Fame (3-Star) Telly - Cleric/Ice - Wealth (3-Star) Felline - Thief/Thunder - Power (3-Star)

Eight paths, eight travelers. Octopath Traveler is an RPG on Switch that follows the paths of eight people whose fates intersect. While there is an overarching story, generally the plot is focused much more on their individual paths. And when taken together, their names spell out "Octopath".

The continent of Orsterra is divided into eight distinct regions, one of which is the Frostlands.

The narrator and others have retreated to a walled community in Vermont called “Arcadia.” The narrator is a teacher, either in the traditional modern sense (teaching in a school), or in the Native American or ancient European context, as the wise elder in the town.

Excerpt:

Once upon a time I testified before the great assembly of our land.

When I describe this event to our children here in Arcadia, it sounds like a fairy tale. Once upon a time this old woman was a young idealist who tried to persuade our mighty Congress that a monster was stalking the land.

“Did they listen to you, Auntie Rachel?” the children ask.

“Oh, they listened to me, but they didn’t hear me.” “So what did you do?”

“I thought and I thought, and I wrote and I wrote, and I put together an even better presentation,” I say patiently. “I had to somehow describe the monster in a way that these mighty people could understand it.”

“What did the monster look like?”

“It was invisible, my dear children, but we could feel its hot breath and see the terrible things it did. It could make the oceans rise. It could make the crops wilt in the fields. Still, we kept feeding this terrible beast.”

“But why?”

“It’s what the monster demanded. Some monsters want to devour little children. Others insist on young maidens. But this monster demanded tankers of oil and truckloads of coal. Even as it grew, it demanded more and more.”

The children are wide-eyed by now. “What did you do?” “I talked to those great people again and tried even harder to describe the monster.” As I slip into the past, the faces of the children become those of long-dead politicians. “I provided more detailed graphs of rising temperatures. I cited statistics on the impact of burning coal and oil and natural gas. I displayed photos of what the melting ice and the surging sea had already done. And then I showed them the future: submerged cities, drought-stricken lands, dead seas. They looked, but they didn’t see. They listened, but they didn’t hear.”

Exclamations of concern jolt me back to the present. I gaze at my little students. They are simultaneously confused and upset.

“Great people are not always good people,” I conclude. “What did you do then, Auntie Rachel?”

“I stopped talking, my darlings. I came here to escape the monster. I came to Arcadia.”

They look disappointed. The children know their fairy tales. They expect someone — a knight in shining armor, an orphan child with special powers — to appear suddenly and slay the monster.

“There was no knight,” I lament. “The monster still lives. We can feel its hot breath even today.”

A reptile I may be, but I am a Draconian, a race designed to live in the bitter cold and utter darkness of the Frostlands. According to ancient legend, each of us has an “inner fire” within us, which allows us to maintain the body heat necessary for activity.

Starloom’s party traveling through The Frostlands

Tyrant is a member of my native race: the Draconians, those who inhabited the Frostlands at the bottom of the universe. On our home island, he was a measly general who fought in the civil war that Ancient began. When he tired of the fighting, he took a band of Draconians with him to forge a new homeland, better than the one he had fled. While ruling a small island south of Odina, however, he found that discipline and order require incentives and punishment. He became known for brutalizing his own rebel clan into submission through frequent and unpleasant executions.

However, Tyrant became dissatisfied with life as a dictator-king, and so he turned to the trusty Draconian-operated enterprise that was the Dark Hunters. I thought he might prove useful in conquering Metru Nui, and promised him the bulk of Ta-Metru when we succeeded. Unfortunately, I failed to anticipate Tyrant’s capacity for delusions of grandeur. He challenged my authority so often that fending off his would-be coups began to drain my resources for fighting the Toa - and so, he had to go.

When I ordered his contingent to target Toa Lhikan, Tyrant took the job with pride, expecting to secure his place among the legends. Once he was surrounded by Lhikan and his Toa, with my operatives nowhere to be seen, I expect Tyrant realized that legendary feats are more difficult than they may appear. He was forced into the Silver Sea, where he promptly disappeared. He wished to go down as a legend; instead, he went down as a historical footnote.

POWERS: Tyrant has the power to absorb and store heat, then release it at a time of his choosing. He can survive extreme temperatures, turn stone to lava, and rise on beams of superheated air, among other applications. I do not know how he acquired this power - it is not natural to our race. I suspect he was modified by another entity, but who would be so foolish as to grant Tyrant this kind of power?