The Sheer Vast Face of Penance is an ecumene of nautiloids, with a migratory rhythm of spending part of their world’s long year attached to stones and largely dormant; part of it traveling and interacting in wildly energetic roving conferences. The period of hibernation is largely synchronized across the population, with most individuals making the transition within a few brief day / night cycles. When one loose contingent begins spending more and more time attached but awake, it begins to discover what sort of structures could be built to make the next hibernation more predictable and more comfortable. Simple bulwarks against harsh currents at first, then increasingly sophisticated nests year by year.

Not too many generations on, a growing proportion of the population is largely sedentary. Their lifestyle is seen as indolent and heretical, an affront to the will of the great, fate-deciding current. But their technology and leisure are undeniable. Tranquil cabins to ponder quietly in, alone. Gymnasiums with carefully controlled sea flow. A system of record-keeping based on orienting tiny shards of magnetite in layers of secreted silica. All of their construction makes use of skillful and coordinated control of their natural secretion of this glassy substance, originally evolved to grow and repair their shells.

Shortly after becoming builders, they discover that ingesting certain substances, distasteful as they might be, allows for the construction of stronger, more brilliant, more copious structures of glass. Alas, these creatures’ understanding of biochemistry is nil, and the effects of the arsenic in the best mineral deposits on their cognitive functioning and development are subtle but devastating. Within only four generations, the culture sees its peak and decline. Unlike a typical ecumene that Just Sort of Declined, theirs is a rarer case of one whose fate was written for them, while they remained oblivious, by something as simple as an element.

They live on in the palaces and cathedrals planned and sculpted by their forefathers, but do not understand the logic and philosophy underlying. Crude, profane strata are added upon the sacred structures beneath; heavier, thicker, brutish. This species does not die off, but they abandon their building ways and return to wheeling freely in the sea, having forgotten that these strange and forbidden ruins were the work of their own mothers and grandmothers.

Please accept my highest regards,

V.F.