Lore: Fragments One – Three

You’re all pretty deep in the woods, figured maybe a top down perspective might help.

I worked with Endri to create a post detailing everything we’ve learned from The Book of Briars so far and questions that are still unanswered.

If there’s anything we missed (Endri will be thrilled) leave it in the comments.

Fragment One: Fraylily

• The Journal: For some reason Sullivan left DG a journal of a man who left society in the late 19th century. On a walk in the woods one day he found a mysterious glade with strange flowers.
• CRSumner: Sumner has a Tumblr blog where it seems he/she is obsessed with books and fantasy art. Sumner had a dream about a flower called a “fraylily” which was the solution for the first fragment.

Questions:

• Did Sullivan have something to do with this? Did The Book “put” the clues in the journal page or did SG know they were there?
• Are the flowers in the journal called fraylilies?
• The journal cuts off before we learn why the flowers fill the author with “wonder.” Do they look like Sumner’s illustration?
• Was this journal published by Ackerly Green in the unaltered “MAGIQ” timeline?
• Who is the “Wandering Man” who wrote the journal? Is he significant?
• How did CRSumner dream the answer to the fragment?
  • Is he aware of what’s happening?
  • Does he know more than we do?

Fragment Two: Eye of The Moons

• We’re introduced to a person calling himself King Rabbit or The Rabbit King. He’s helpful, but also a pain in the ass.
  • He hinted that he is somehow in temporary possession of someone else’s body:

“Did you enjoy my new collection? I admit it was rudimentary, primitive even. But what do you expect? I’m not used to having thumbs. Painting is fun, but I think I prefer curation. Got to run, time is ticking and the treasure I was promised is almost in my (his?) hands.”

• He claims that he was promised something in exchange for creating or managing the second fragment site, Burrow In The Fray.
• From his Instagram posts it seems he’s the same person who DG has seen following her in the UK and NYC.
• On the Burrow site, KR revealed “the truth” about several people who have been declared dead throughout history, hinting that in the unaltered “MAGIQ” history they survived and most were gifted with “magimystic” powers.

Questions:

• We have assumed for years that the alteration happened around the time period that the books were published, then rolling forward. But one of the people KR mentions died in 1681. Do the changes go much deeper than we originally thought?
• We assumed we’ve been prevented from seeing a world that was filled with magic. But in these King Rabbit histories it seems that magic existed, but was still something that happened in secret, or was at the very least, “fringe.” Do we know much less than we think we do?

Fragment Three: Currently Unsolved

• Someone calling himself The Last of the Travelers has been trying to reach out to us from some other time, dimension, or reality, but he can only speak in verse.
• Those verses are from a poem called The Minnying of Ojorad. It’s about several animals coming together to mourn an important figure. We assume they’re representatives of humans (though Eaves and Endri hope it’s about actual anthropomorphic animals.)
• Traveler has since vanished from DG’s blog.

Questions:

• The Guild houses from Ackerly Green’s Guide to MAGIQ are obliquely mentioned in the poem. Was this poem published by Ackerly Green in the MAGIQ timeline?
• Was Traveler’s connection degraded or is he really “gone”?

DG:

• The email address I used to first contact DG now just bounces back.
• Comments left to her never show up.
• It seems she never saw Travelers comments either.

Questions:

• Why can’t we contact DG if Sullivan wanted her to have the journal page? Aren’t we on the same side?
• Is she somehow protected?
• Did he want her to solve it or did he think it would be safe with her?
• Orvin said several things to her at their lunch hinting that he knows the world has changed. Does he or are we just reading into it?

The Fragment Pieces:

• Every time a fragment is solved we receive several scraps of paper. It seems like we’re assembling some sort of recipe or spell.
  • We still don’t know how it will unlock the book.
• With the second fragment we also found secondary puzzles we called “bonus content” that also contains pieces of the spell. Are there other unsolved puzzles we haven’t discovered yet? Are they necessary to unlock the first part of the book?

Why?

• Why do we have to solve riddles and puzzles and pass tests to unlock the book?
• It almost seems the book is sort of making way for the unlocking? Showing us pieces of the truth?
• Or maybe this is the only way to unlock it? To let the truth start bleeding through until it becomes a flood?
• The book has several entities working with it that all seem to want the book unlocked.
  • Who are they?
  • WHERE are they?
  • How can they communicate with us?
  • Why are they communicating with us now?
  • Is it because we found the Guide to MAGIQ?
  • Or is the Guide discovery a symptom of some other place/time/dimension trying to communicate with us?
  • Did it “fall” from somewhere else?

You’ve uncovered more information in the past three months than the Mountaineers as a group have uncovered in thirty years.  I hope this helps you keep up the good work.