The Score
They say that deep into the Earth’s molten core is a world in parallel with our own. A world linked with ours somehow, and no one for sure knows how or why. Some say that it might have been your world’s great flood that cooled and watered the mountains and valleys below. And even others say that some of the flood’s doomed creatures survived down here.
Welcome to Aerthe. 1879
If you’re from that land called Earth, and I reckon you are, something just might seem a little off ‘round here. Along the jagged peaks of Aerthe’s Iron Root Range, the summer snow doesn’t seem to melt into glacial sun-cups like yours does. And down to the treeline below, the light-starved forest floor still grows abundant wildflowers below a dense canopy of cedar and spruce trees. Even the orchards in the valley further down will continue to bloom and fruit well into the winter.
Some say that something deep and maybe alive lives buried beneath the forest. Maybe it’s just the heat this close to the core. Or shush, maybe it’s faeries! Ha! Whatever it is, here on Aerthe, people’s faith and superstitions burn hot, and our dead are sometimes not very good at staying in the ground.
Nearby, the Clementine Coal Mine sits at the edge of a half-formed boomtown deep in Owl Nation territory. The coal burns hotter here. Some kind of infernal fire pushes the Aerthen steam engines to perform like beasts possessed. It burns longer too; a faint and sickening green glow to its embers, almost transfixing the harrowed eyes of those poor sods who feed their furnaces with their shovels and likely their souls too.
Most of our Songs of Aerthe did not survive the pulp or even the stone they were written upon, and for good reason, I suppose. Even the campfire stories eventually got swallowed up in the back of loggers’ and miners’ dusty throats. The unholy origins of this coal, for instance.
The miners who dug the coal, side by side like ashen brothers, say it’s because of what’s been mouldering within it. Scarcely above a whisper, they talk in the depths of the mine, in the saloon shadows, or even in the church pews near the back…
Nephilim bones.
Those flood myths just might be true. And I reckon that soon, nearly every greedy greenhorn who catches word will descend upon Clementine like a murder of hungry crows.
Greenhorns just like you.
You probably came to Clementine seeking fortune, forgiveness, or love, but some of you will find something else entirely. If you hear the land barely whispering, especially after midnight, or if your reflection in the water smiles at you a moment too long, you are likely not imagining it-
and you’re probably borked already.
Because the coal of Clementine has a way of sticking to the the hands who dug it free.
j. romero howell 