#straka

April 29, 2026:

Tomato Tertiary, Veilspun, Opal.

Hi, so im on a d20 kick at the moment and the background magic of cloudward ho has me by the throat :D

So the Ramansu station crystals were yellow, blue and pink from a central green focus and as Straka energy is red and Van's Jazzy Tazzy energy was lunar-adjacent, the crystals are probably diluted power shown in lighter shades. The green energy is later assiged to Gath. There are naturally occuring high concentration flares of these energies called biangles.

So there's the biangles:

Effulgent: solar enegy, yellow/white, into Zood

Obtenebrant: lunar energy, blue/black, into Shahar

Calefactory: mechanical fire, pink/red, into Zern

Green??? Into Gath???

Now the eldritch extradimensional beasts:

Sun lion: presumably Effulgent light energy, Zood

Tazg'agwa: psychic cephalopod, Obtenebrant lunar energy, Shahar

Straka: furnace crow, Calefactory metal fire, Zern

GREEN??? GATH???

Zood and Zern share an atmosphere, but Gath has an absolute void after atmosphere, while Jazzy Tazzy swims in Shahar- a sea of stars and space-time??? Seems like an 'equal and opposite' deal for Zood-Zern and maybe Gath-Shahar. But thay're also all linked by biangles. And the sun-moon duality of the Zood-Sharah Sun lion & Squidtopus means Zern-Gath are probably linked, especially as Gath is a Steampunk/Gaslamp setting.

Which if the hints about Widow's breath and green Queen's Smog mean anything... with parallels to Zern being burnt out by trapping the 'destructive' Calefactory energy there...

Opposite of fire that's not water? Lightning. Red mechanical fire and green electricity.

Gathi biangle:

Voltaic: electrical energy

Gathi beast:

A crystal deer. Quartz is a piezoelectric crystal that produces charge under mechanical stress. Electricity arching between a huge rack of antlers like tesla coils. Maybe Gath is the only place that regularly gets lightning. Who knows.

At last, the first book of the year is set. I've been wanting to dive into this one for over 1.5 years, and I'm finally starting this week.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure yet how I’ll read this one. Since you have the novel itself written by the mysterious author ‘V.M. Straka’, and four sets of annotations in different colour combos written by two readers analysing or commenting on the novel.

I have done some research on how to read this book, and I’ve found the order in which you should read the annotations. I’ll put them here (also just for myself, so I know):

1) Dark Blue ink (Jen) and Black ink (Eric)

2) Orange ink (Jen) and Green ink (Eric)

3) Purple ink (Jen) and  Red ink (Eric)

4) Black (Jen) and black (Eric)

I found most information on this site: Reading Guide: How to Read “S” aka Ship of Theseus by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst — Books Are My Third Place. Worth checking out, if you want more details on how to read this book.