Broken Keel

Within is the Insumousu Autonomous Region on Thalassa. The Xianzhou “Daiyu”, broken and crippled, crashed here, and so began the civilization of Insumousu.

“Once upon a time, the palace of the gods fell down from the sky.”

First came a black shadow beyond the atmosphere, then flames from the friction of the atmosphere, and at last it revealed its whole shape, a colossal palace so great that even if all the artisans of Insumousu were gathered together they could not have made a thing so vast. It fell slowly, as though congealing at the horizon. The ocean of Insumousu is wide enough, but no one dared say for certain whether it was wide enough to hold this palace of the immortals fallen from the sky.

“Some fled in every direction, and some stayed in the villages on the seabed and on the land, waiting for the gods to descend.”

The wreck of the Xianzhou “Daiyu” fell onto the surface of the planet Thalassa. The center of the Insumousu waters was struck and formed a bottomless pit of water, and only after seven days did the planet slowly recover. The magnificent ruin stands silently on the seabed, like the remains of a god, mournful and splendid. The people of Insumousu who survived the disaster had always lived on the seabed, and they were astonished and full of regret that their familiar homeland had been struck and shattered by the palace of the immortals. They cheered and leapt for joy, for after this descent of the gods the wreck of the “Daiyu” had become their new home.

Improved living conditions gave the people of Insumousu more time and energy for thought. Looking around at the magnificent ruins, they at last had time to ask the important questions: who were “they”? Where did “they” come from?

At that time the people of Insumousu did not yet know how to smelt metal, nor had they invented writing. They had no choice but to fill in their knowledge with imagination and to explain everything through stories. And so “legend” was born. Legends were passed from mouth to mouth, and they created “myth”. Myth built up understanding, and from it “civilization” was created. Hundreds of years after the stars had shifted, Thalassa became a trading partner of the Xianzhou Alliance, and the sea dwellers of Insumousu set foot inside the “Palace of the Immortals” for the first time and saw the whole of a Xianzhou for the first time. At last they learned the truth about the “descent of the gods”.

The well educated people of Insumousu have always regarded themselves as descendants of a kind of the “Daiyu”. “What the Daiyu once pursued is what we should pursue, and what the Daiyu once resisted is what we should resist.” When they speak of the stories of the past, they still begin in the same way.

“Once upon a time, the palace of the gods fell down from the sky.”

The broken vessel of the Xianzhou “Daiyu” fell and lies moored forever in an unfamiliar land. Perhaps the time has come to untie the rope and let it go home.

With the enlightenment of civilization, the people of Insumousu no longer regard the victims of the shipwreck as gods come down to earth, but this has not changed their reverence. The poets of Insumousu have sung: “The great sea swallows mortals, but the soul will live forever.”

By the calendar of Insumousu, the second rest day of the month of the roaring sea each year is the “Festival of the Descent of the Gods”… The sea dwellers recite scriptures, swallow herbs and dance strange dances along the currents, in memory of the “gods” who fell in order to bless Insumousu. In modern times the “Festival of the Descent of the Gods” has gradually lost the religious meaning it once had… Folk songs have replaced the scriptures and food has replaced the herbs, and only the strange dances remain as a cultural heritage handed down to this day.

In the last few hundred years of the Planetary Calendar, Insumousu has not hesitated to share its unique culture with the outside world, and the form of the Festival of the Descent of the Gods has been quietly changing as well.

The land cities of Insumousu are usually the world of the young, and during the festival they stay awake all night and sing. Visitors from beyond often choose to join the great events of the festival, and Xianzhou visitors in particular are very fond of this place, for they love its lively air, hot as burning fire and overwhelming as the tide. When youth has passed, the lungs of the sea dwellers slowly contract, one side of the neck turns into a form of gill, and the limbs and both eyes change to suit life underwater better. The poets always say, “The people of Insumousu leave their noisy youth behind on land, and bring their quiet old age to the sea.”

At the urging of the Xianzhou Tianshu Merchant Guild, the festival has gained one more rite… slipping into the broken ship “Daiyu” to look for starskiffs, gathering the remains of the Xianzhou people, and then launching them toward the fixed star to which Thalassa belongs.

As they came into contact with the history of the “Daiyu”, the people of Insumousu also learned the tragedy of the moment of its fall: when the Xianzhou Daiyu broke apart and nothing could be saved, Qingzhu, the leader of the Daiyu, decided at once and swore to make a heroic sacrifice in order to cut off the spread of the curse of the Abundance plague. The Xianzhou Alliance hoped that the fallen heroes would receive a glorious memorial ceremony, and the people of Insumousu, saved from disaster, gave their own answer as well.

At a certain hour on the night of the festival, the cheering suddenly falls silent… The young, the children and the Xianzhou people sit on the shore, while the grown ones rise up out of the water and look solemnly upon the surface of the sea. Soon afterward, several starskiffs shoot up out of the water and fly toward the fixed star.

On the starskiffs a line of very beautiful Insumousu writing is carved… “Untie the rope for the drowned sailor. Do not weep. After I am dead, you will be able to put out to sea in peace.”