DATASET 02Roads
The road to Backwater is paved with desire, not luck. Exploitation of the region's unique natural resources brought civilization, infrastructure, exposure and despair. It's likely the root of the characteristic reticence that outsiders notice when interacting with Backwater natives.
Twelve thousand years ago, after the glaciers receded, megafauna cut the first paths through the forests. Humans followed the hunt with the seasons, up and down the coast. The first people may have been drawn to this place to hunt bioluminescent sea creatures native to Halfmoon Bay, the largest harbour in Backwater.
There is evidence of pre-agricultural permanent settlement on the ridge above the bay that must have been, before European contact, teeming with bay pearls that Pokelogan people—doctors, shamans and regular folk alike—still use for a variety of medical and sociocultural purposes.
Similar bioluminescent effect off the coast in Central America (source)
There also seem to be partially submerged remains on the largest island, called at various times Tortoise Island or Picaroon Island, that predate all existing settlements in Backwater and are unrelated to the 18th century remains of French battlements that flank the entrances to the main harbour. The water table was originally much lower than it is today so the prevailing theory proposes the existence of a megalithic stone site or even a ziggurat, flooded and buried since the melt of the last ice age.
i. Sui Generis
STAMP SERIES
Stamps issued by the District of Pokelogan sometime between 1975 and 1989, digitally restored. They were found in Anna's possession, loose except for the one on the envelope above, and badly damaged. Depicted on the stamps are examples of sui generis resources found only in Backwater:
The briar woodtick, a known carrier of Ruta virus, a neurological condition resulting from inflammation of the cerebral meninges which can, ironically, only be cured by a second bite from an infected tick.
The All-Seeing Eye is a Masonic symbol and may be connected to the psychoactive effects produced by some of Backwater's flora and fauna, most notably the bay pearl (Ctenophora tentaculata).
Loosestrife kale, which requires salt water rather than fresh for growth, is a primary vegetable of the Pokelogan diet and a reputed panacea that provides a wide variety of health benefits and is notoriously foul-tasting.
Velumenite, a rare mineral occasionally found alongside coal or gold seams, is used for primitive applications such as paint and weaponry, and modern scientific purposes in the fields of piezoelectric technology and radiographic detection.
ANIMAL: BRIAR WOODTICK
Official seal of the Autonomous District of Pokelogan, digitally restored. Depicted is the ubiquitous briar woodtick (which is said to both carry and cure disease), the blood in its abdomen forming a rough outline of Backwater’s coast and islands. The woodtick also appears on the 2 1/2 Ranz stamp.
ANIMAL: CTENOPHORA TENTACULATA
These sea creatures are not actually jellyfish but a species called ctenophora tentaculata, locally known as bay pearls, and at one time they must have been so numerous that the harbour glowed blue with photocyte-initiated luminescence. Contained within small sacs in their translucent bodies is a thick fluid known as gamma-mesoglea (gMS) or “siglak” that reportedly induces entheogenic effects in humans when consumed.
THE ETERNAL SPIRAL
Ethnographer Lydia Musgraav hypothesized that the bay pearl was central to early people in Backwater and intertwined with concepts of fertility, the sun, and the spiritual world. Versions of the spiral and the eye appear throughout Pokelogan culture, from petroglyphs to contemporary state insignia to graffiti. Above, from left to right: the coiled symbol for the bay pearl/siglak often accompanies the Far Sighted Eye, associated with shamanic vision. The Inner Eye is one of the most important glyphs in the sigil magic tradition of the Returned Disciples of Tal Barat, and related to the all-seeing eye which appears on the 10 Ranz stamp (based directly on etchings from William Morgan's Mysteries of Freemasonry).
WHO WERE THE ULMU?
According to interviews with some residents of Pyre Ridge, the Ulmu came to Backwater many thousands of years ago after the destruction of their own homeland, and intermarried with ancestors of contemporary indigenous peoples. The linguistic similarity between “Ulmu” and the Mi’kmaq word Lnu (“my people”) warrants further research. By the time the French arrived, the Pokelogan people were already a mix of Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Basque and Norse, and the Ulmu were only legends.
Besides some petroglyphs of indeterminate age, little trace of the Ulmu remain. Those who claim to follow their ways may or may not have evidence-based reasons for observing “ancient” traditions that are usually no older than a few generations. The religious community of Tal Barat calls itself the spiritual heir of the Ulmu, whose advanced civilization once spread across continents, they claim, before a catastrophic event scattered survivors to the ends of the earth.
Illustrations based on rubbings from petroglyphs collected by Musgraav, remains of a larger carved mural inside a now-submerged cave on Tortoise Island.
MINERAL: VELUMENITE
The first real roads in Backwater were built for resource extraction: logging trees and mining gold and coal, at first. In 1882, the McNought & Schmid Mining Company, searching for gold, found something else.
Velumenite or Evanderite, named after Sir Evander Frye, a gentleman geologist and adventurer who first brought the mineral to European attention in 1818, is a very rare antiferromagnetic pseudopyrite with scientific and military applications. As the mine proved productive, secrecy became imperative, isolation became profitable and statecraft became necessary, and the valuable mineral continues to be a significant reason for Backwater’s continued isolation.
The mineral appears on the 20 Ranz stamp, issued circa 1975.
Natural velumenite formation under ultraviolet light
Dalton F. W. McNought and Georg Helmut Schmid got their capital from wealthy randlord Barney Barnato, who reportedly missed out on a stake in the first velumenite mine in the world, in what is now known as Namibia, then called German South West Africa. The District of Pokelogan was born a German colonial protectorate, a mining camp that grew into a village on disputed land, like so many frontier towns. “Autonomy” seems to have been a legal maneuver by the M&S Company, in order to avoid paying taxes on resources extracted from land they did not own to a country on the other side of the world. But German South West Africa dissolved during WWI and by 1918, Pokelogan was an autonomous colony with no international trade except through the M&S Company, which became the sole economic partner of the Pokelogan District Council, formed in 1921.
McNought & Schmid Colliery, 1889
Anna Miller’s father, Anton Schmid, appears to have worked as a builder at the velumenite mine in Namibia in 1932. Though Schmid is a common German name, the unusual spelling makes it more significant. It is possible that Anton was related to Georg Helmut Schmid, founder of the McNought & Schmid company.
If so, perhaps the property transaction Anna made once she was firmly settled in Canada, long after her father had passed, was an attempt to recover what she believed was hers.
VEGETABLE: GODSICHOR
“Nightplants” refer to flowers and fungi that bloom and are harvested at night, sometimes exclusively under full or new moons. Many of them are bioluminescent to some degree and thrive in soil with a high velumenite content. Nightplants are often used for their healing properties. Godsichor fungus (below) is dried, powdered and made into tea, taken as an effective treatment for mild radiation poisoning, known as “moon sickness”.
VEGETABLE: LOOSESTRIFE KALE
Loosestrife kale is technically considered a nightplant, so ubiquitous in Backwater that is is rarely cultivated intentionally. It requires salt water rather than fresh to grow and can be found in salt bogs along the coast in Pokelogan. Traditionally, it is eaten cooked with breakfast and has a strong seaweed-like taste that is notoriously difficult to acquire.
The plant appears on the 15 Ranz stamp, issued circa 1975.
ii. Compulsion East
They say you'll know the road if you’ve walked it before in a different life. Some say they heard a call, something insistent and unquenchable, pointing them back east to a place with many names and shifting edges. Objects retain a shade of their original home, their original makers, ancestors who whisper through stains and chips and creases, making maps that can only be deciphered in altered states.
Mystical or not, our research indicates that those who already have a connection to Backwater—whether biological, historical or metaphysical—are far more likely to find their way there, sometimes over very long distances with little solid information. Those not in that category can expect to find themselves waylaid or beset by catastrophe on the way there or back.
RETURNED DISCIPLES OF TAL BARAT
Our first local landmark was actually mostly in the ocean. Structural remains of the original Acadian settlement of Port Meduse stick out of the water on a coast that has eroded considerably over the last 250 years, near a swampy delta in the southern part of Pokelogan territory. The name probably derives from the same source as L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland: L'anse aux meduses, French for Jellyfish Bay.
Five hundred years before the French, the first Norse settlers named the bay Tunglskinforaðhǫfn (literally "harbour of moon creatures") and built sod houses into the bluff to the north. The Tal Barat folk, who settled in Backwater around the mid 20th century, have long emulated this tradition. They built modern, sophisticated versions of the traditional sod house, which can be seen jutting at strange angles out of the earth.
Curiously, this silty delta features a number of unusual standing stones or cairns, perhaps carved from a quarry to the northwest. In autumn, the swamp turns red with cairnberries, a variant of wild cranberry usually cooked into jam or dried into tea by locals.
Remains of a sod house near Darger’s Head, circa 1890.
Cantilevered Tal Barat house built into the rock, circa 1979.
PIRATE RADIO
Of the people we interviewed who had a personal connection to Backwater, 80% confirmed that the Autonomous District of Pokelogan has an official radio broadcasting station and had listened to a broadcast. 30% claimed to have seen a local television program at some point when they lived in Pokelogan.
Our interviewees, ham radio enthusiasts Lee M. and his son Randy M., have recorded eight instances of rogue transmissions* on frequencies they don’t belong. They believe these transmissions originated in Backwater, and that their purpose is to communicate with those who seek the mysteries of this place.
*We hope to be able to digitize these recordings in future.
We think the coywolf, one of Pokelogan’s apex predators and a notorious pest, is a fitting mascot for a Backwater radio station: a hybrid that survives by improvising.
PSYCHIC AUTOCARTOGRAPHY
At some point in the 1990s, Pokelogan University (a small and unaccredited institution established by renegade theosophists in 1919) offered a course called Introduction to Psychic Autocartography, taught by visiting scholar Dr. Niflyn Eugast. The underlying assumption seems to be that physical locations intersect with a person’s internal psycho-spiritual configuration, itself imagined as a geographical landscape, and that one may reach deep insight about the self by a sort of automatic map-making.
The brochure below contains an excerpt from what is apparently the definitive text on the subject, A Legend Is Born by Dr. Atef Diab. Could this possibly be the same Atef Diab that Anna Miller corresponded with? So far, we have not been able to find a physical or digital copy of this book and so cannot confirm that it really exists.
(CLICK TO ENLARGE BROCHURE BELOW)
SIDE 1: Crystals, charts and ghost hunting tools are for sale at the Arts Store. Pokelogan University’s Academy of Metaphysical Sciences offers courses in such subjects as “Astrology for Fishermen” and “Energy Balancing with Crystals” for prices listed in Ranz (PRz).
SIDE 2: A description of the purported “ancient mapmaking tradition” of the Tal Barat that developed into psychic autocartography, taught by Swiss master Dr. Niflyn Eugast. An excerpt from the seminal text “A Legend is Born” by Atef Diab presents the spiritual seeker as an alchemist exploring modalities.
In any case, trekking deep into the subterranean geography of one’s own psyche is not without pitfalls.