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ysabetwordsmithThese are the setting and content notes for "The Hobbomak."
Berkshire County, the farthest to the west in Massachusetts, has a north and a south area of lowest population density. The southern one includes the town of Otis; Emma and Jesse go exploring in the woods near there.
Massachusetts and other parts of New England include many stone circles and chambers, of which a hobbomak is a circle marking an area of strong spiritual power.
Rock art includes petroglyphs (carved into stone) and pictographs (painted on stone), both methods found in New England. The same symbols are often used to decorate jewelry, clothing, and other items.
Read about symbolism in Wampanoag art.
There are many different definitions of old-growth forests. Some focus on lack of human disturbance, others on tree age or stand development. I generally consider it a forest that has experienced at least one full generation of its oldest tree species since any large stand-clearing event. Thus, all the trees in it have grown up inside a forest. This is the type implied by the images of seedlings growing old, dying, and being replaced by new ones.
Many tribes have myths about people traveling to and from the stars or sky. Underground worlds and people also appear. In this setting, these are neither fictional stories nor aliens, but rather humans who have used time travel to escape dangerous situations. So North America was not depopulated primarily by disease, but by people fleeing as refugees. Some of the equipment was left behind and later used by people who discovered it and wanted to change the past.
Time travel can work in different ways. In this setting, time travel is like digging a tunnel underground. It takes a lot of work to make a tunnel, and it's hard to tell where you're going. Once a tunnel is made, traveling through it in either direction is a lot easier. However, making changes in the past can block off certain futures, like a tunnel collapsing, which strands people in the alternate timeline they have created. For that reason, the people who developed the time travel technology don't typically try to change events; they focus on rescuing temporal refugees who would've been killed otherwise. Taking them out of the timestream alive causes little if any disturbance, as the timeline is robust enough to compensate for trivial changes.. People who stumble across the technology don't know this, so they are more inclined to meddle and cause a collapse.
Berkshire County, the farthest to the west in Massachusetts, has a north and a south area of lowest population density. The southern one includes the town of Otis; Emma and Jesse go exploring in the woods near there.
Massachusetts and other parts of New England include many stone circles and chambers, of which a hobbomak is a circle marking an area of strong spiritual power.
Rock art includes petroglyphs (carved into stone) and pictographs (painted on stone), both methods found in New England. The same symbols are often used to decorate jewelry, clothing, and other items.
Read about symbolism in Wampanoag art.
There are many different definitions of old-growth forests. Some focus on lack of human disturbance, others on tree age or stand development. I generally consider it a forest that has experienced at least one full generation of its oldest tree species since any large stand-clearing event. Thus, all the trees in it have grown up inside a forest. This is the type implied by the images of seedlings growing old, dying, and being replaced by new ones.
Many tribes have myths about people traveling to and from the stars or sky. Underground worlds and people also appear. In this setting, these are neither fictional stories nor aliens, but rather humans who have used time travel to escape dangerous situations. So North America was not depopulated primarily by disease, but by people fleeing as refugees. Some of the equipment was left behind and later used by people who discovered it and wanted to change the past.
Time travel can work in different ways. In this setting, time travel is like digging a tunnel underground. It takes a lot of work to make a tunnel, and it's hard to tell where you're going. Once a tunnel is made, traveling through it in either direction is a lot easier. However, making changes in the past can block off certain futures, like a tunnel collapsing, which strands people in the alternate timeline they have created. For that reason, the people who developed the time travel technology don't typically try to change events; they focus on rescuing temporal refugees who would've been killed otherwise. Taking them out of the timestream alive causes little if any disturbance, as the timeline is robust enough to compensate for trivial changes.. People who stumble across the technology don't know this, so they are more inclined to meddle and cause a collapse.
