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thebigcjart · 3 months ago

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Just realized I forgot the Land breakdown so here you go

Land of Hollows and Wastes

Kane's land, the Land of Hollows and Wastes, is a barren, mountainous wasteland, with only one source of water left towards the north pole of the planet.

Design

All of the players' lands in this session follow a specific naming scheme: Land of (Two syllable word dealing with the player's past) and (One syllable geographical feature).

I know that traditionally, Lands are keyed to Aspects than random character qualities, but there is a Cherub mucking about in the background that has a few choice words for this "tradition" guy. Will be more on him later... anyways

The geographical features are present in the lands because in this session, the players all lived together before entering the medium in the group home. In order to reach their potential, they must explore the world outside of their little bubble, and thus, exaggerated geographical features. Another consequence of this is Alli's (Seer of Space) land not fitting the "Land of X and Frogs" mold. I'll detail her land in another post, but a because of that, all of the frogs are actually spread out through everyone else's lands, and she needs to use her Seer powers to look for them. Again, I'll talk more about that later, but lands are purposefully funky in this session.

The Wastes refer to the entire surface of the planet being uninhabitable for life. The sun one day suddenly got too hot, and all the plants went up in flames, and the water started to boil, etc. The planet can only really be explored at night or in the shade.

Hollows are small, sheltered valleys and would be wooded if not for LoHaW's general lack of viability. Kane is an individual who, through wacky ectobiological means, is essentially hollow. Categorically, there's not much going on with Kane, so that's about as deep as that past analysis goes. What goes a lot deeper is the fact that the entire planet itself is also hollow. The mountains and valleys provide the only shade against the lethal sun. These small valleys, almost like sunken lanes, weave across the entire planet, and many turn into caves proper that all funnel into the planet's empty core.

Therein lies Khaos.

Consorts

The consorts of LoHaW are salamanders. Very cute. Like real salamanders, they live under rocks, which is to say, the mountains. There used to be villages of them on the surface, but then the sun got too hot, and almost all of the water boiled away and all of the surface plants were razed in flame. The salamanders burrowed into the earth, but a lot of them died. Now, they feed on roots and absorb moisture from the ground. All of the water that was left unboiled began to flow towards the north pole and flowed uphill instead of downhill. Freaky. The few settlements of salamanders left are now acclimated to underground life, and those who go out into the harsh sun are certainly lost forever. Kane can only safely explore in the shade or at night.

Quest

Kane's quest as determined by the game is as follows: They must venture deep into planet, confront Khaos, then wrest Khaos's throne from the denizen and drag it up with them to the barren surface, claiming their place as ruler of the Void, and banish the deadly sun.

However, this is only how their quest is treated mechanically. When Kane encounters the salamanders for the first time, this is what the salamanders tell them. Kane makes a promise to these guys that they will take the throne.

At this point in the story, Kane and Jake have started to form feelings towards each other. It's some messy combination of Flushed and Caliginous, but humans don't really recognize the latter as romantic anyway, so it's fine (*Laughs maliciously*). Jake goes AWOL and none of the other players can contact him. Kane isn't really good at recognizing their own emotions, so this troubles them two-fold.

When Kane gets to Khaos, Khaos is NOT slumbering, as denizens do in cannon. There, Khaos gives them...

The Choice.

Abandon their quest and fail the consorts of this world, searching for Jake though he might not be found,

or take the throne and become the ruler of this empty land.

Kane does not hear out the rest of The Choice. They abandon their quest completely before Khaos even presents the other option.

You see, the game wants Kane to literally resolve their title as Heir of Void by "claiming the throne" of Void; but instead, they actually philosophically resolve their title through the classpect's verbiage itself "One who inherits Void and ascends through Void" (the interpretation of the Heir class given by Ouroborista here). Void being the aspect of darkness, nothingness, absence, oblivion, and irrelevance. Kane, by rejecting their quest like this: is absent in the proceedings of the game's storyline, is irrelevant in the sense that a myth of some prophesied hero fades into obscurity, and they end up being an empty promise to the consorts of this land. This properly sets Kane's personal development arc to be an effective Heir of Void, unlike some more narratively irrelevant ones like Equius.

I'm not exactly sure how Kane reaches God tier from this point, as they don't have a dream self so maybe they'd have a sacrificial slab on both moons? Or like, Khaos's throne is really their sacrificial slab? Dunno, though it's probably a really cinematic sequence involving Kane and Jake sacrificing themselves to save each other. Think that'd be cute.

UPDATE: I figured out how Kane reaches God-tier AND how their quest resolves. Check it out on Jake's land post.

Khaos. Kane Mendoza's denizen for my Homestuck fansession. Here's the scoop on the design process, if you were wondering why it looks so much like a certain hard to pronounce serpent-god.

Now, here's the lore significance:

Khaos

Khaos is the denizen of Kane Mendoza's Land of Hollows and Wastes.

Khaos is the sort of opposite of Yaldabaoth. Where Yaldobob is the “God of Monsters” and represents creation and ‘trapping the divine in the material’, Khaos represents the backdrop on which creation must take place and is the potential that can only be reached by discarding the very concepts of ‘divine’ and ‘material’. Khaos is essentially THE void personified and is easily as powerful as Yolobroth. Khaos, being the essence of nothingness, is deeply connected to the medium and the background on which the furthest ring and all incipispheres lay, and has noticeably more sensitivity to fate and prophecy as well as that which is outside of the game itself.

Greek Origins

In ancient Greek cosmogony, Khaos is the mythological void state preceding creation. The most popular is Hesiod's creation myth, where Khaos is both seen as a deity and a thing, like Tartarus who could be both a place and could birth children. From Khaos came Erebus and Nyx.

Plato's Timaeus (Where Dirk gets his Chumhandle from) suggests that Khaos is a "receptacle of all becoming" (Timaeus 49a); a medium in which traces of the elements are in disordered motion, conditions highly susceptible to be shaped by the demiurge (which is also covered in Timaeus).

Hesiod's interpretation of Khaos is a void without anything in it and Plato's interpretation of Khaos is a medium through which things come to exist, and in a sense, both are right. The Aspect of Void in Homestuck is non-existance distilled into its most general form. But it is also the sheer nothing that spans the gap between sessions. This dichotomy between being nothing and being nothing else (as opposed to being something and something else respectively) are both a key part in the reach and omnipresence that Khaos (the denizen) possesses.

Kane's symbol, a circle with a dot inside it, was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or Absolute.

Gnostic Ties

The Gnostics believed that there was only one true, absolute god, which in the context of the Homestuck universe, Khaos is not. They called this god "Agnostos Theos," the unknown or unknowable god. This is very much Khaos, as to know or understand the void causes the void to cease being itself; unknown not by lack of research, but unknowable by definition.

This god, also called the Monad, was ultimate and perfect, existing completely outside of creation. It has been described as illimitable, unfathomable, immeasurable, invisible, eternal, unutterable, and unnamable, all things that are equally true for the aspect of void in its truest sense.

I'll make a separate post about the alchemical symbology somepoint down the line after I finish the seven players. Looking forward to that!

#homestuck #fansession #cj infodumps #mouse art #ms paint #canon style #lohaw #khaos #kane mendoza #heir of void #the choice #one could argue that this roundabout way of doing it is what skaia wants in the first place #but the only way for that to actually happen is for the game to want it done the “intended way” anyway #so it has to act “normal” for once in order to get the abnormal paradox backdoor solution to its puzzles it really wants #or not and we can just blame the cherub again #im down for whatevs

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