#You Might be able to on the forgotten island and vaugarde but like not Easily

[silverheartsystem]

I am once again begging isat writers to understand that latitude affects what kind of stars you see in the sky oh my god

[onenightbreak]

Yeah, the sheer quantity of stuff that was forgotten makes it a really weird black hole. I don't think I'd write off the wish's target not being the island rather than Wish Craft or the stars so easily; it makes more sense to me that FI being forgotten wasn't the point of the wish but a be-careful-what-you-wish-for consequence of some other wish in the same way Loop's existence was a consequence of them trying to wish their way out of the loops.

The party not knowing what A Damn Star Is is BAFFLING to me, like have you never looked up at night?? So many (real-world) places have their own constellations and stories about the stars that that info never settled properly with me (<- astronomy liker). Between that and the party brushing off Siffrin's explanation of stars in the observatory with a callousness that doesn't happen much elsewhere, my headcanon has been that the wish also interferes with knowledge of the stars – but feel free to call me out on that if you disagree.

Speaking of the observatory, if there was near-zero precedent in Vaugarde for astronomy pre-wish it's really odd that the House of Dormont would have an observatory and astronomy equipment. The King has probably been to the observatory (the papers in the corner that the party decides was written by a kid with awful handwriting and Memory of Memories identifies as FI's name, among other FI weirdnesses) but it existed in the House before he was there. (IMO the stuff in the room past the star-shaped openphrase door like the orrery is more likely to belong to the King though, b/c how did anyone else get in?)

There's also not no knowledge of Wish Craft in Vaugarde; there's books on Wish Craft in the House ranging from children's cautionary tales to technical essays. Fair point in your replies about headache books being a new phenomena for the party, though.

As for Favor Tree incorrectness, corruption by word of mouth or passage of time wouldn't surprise me even without the memory explosion, and even Siffrin "sieve brain" nolastname goes ??? as soon as the incorrect ritual is brought up. This is actually one of things I mentally pointed to writing my original post: if FI is super secretive, where did Vaugarde get its Favor Tree superstitions from?

It's a good point about there not being more obvious gaps, but take the Daydreaming One's sister! As soon as she's pushed on her where her sister moved to, she loses the thread on having a sister at all. While being unable to focus on the existence of an issue makes it hard to solve (fixing the holes in more physical trade, for example), the Universe being able to smooth over non-existence makes it easy to not even realise there's an issue in the first place. Anyone with connections to FI forgot about them as soon as it disappeared, everything from losing a sibling for Daydreaming One to near-total amnesia for the likes of Siffrin and the King.

Also, the party met two other people from the island, actually! (Three, if you want the King but. yknow.) There's Siffrin's croissant guy, and there's the person from Isaquest who taught Isabeau what Siffrin's "stars" swear meant. The croissant monologue itself also doesn't say they met a huge amount of travellers in general either, even intranational ones.

I think I'd lean on the fantasy genre's typically quasi-medieval time-period for a lack of travellers, which raises a good point: How much cultural or knowledge spread actually can happen with the level of technology ISAT's setting has? What does that look like? Why did I write a whole post defending a point I don't even feel that strongly about??

I'm arguing from a stance that I, by definition of what it, is going to missing information. How do I point out cultural influences on things people can't be cognizant of anymore from a place that no longer exists? But I had fun putting my thoughts on it together, and I might come back and add anything I remember later once I regrasp the thread of what the fuck I was talking about.

i don't get why "the forgotten island was cagey and secretive" is a headcanon i see reasonably frequently, since i don't feel there's that much textual basis for it? i think there's even a surprising amount of evidence to suggest exchange of culture and information between vaugarde and an island that got brain blasted out of everyone's heads a decade before the present day, all things considered