Prophet-Sap

The sickeningly sweet scent of the sap rose into the air as the last candle was lit. It smelled like death, and I would know. I held pen in hand as I felt my consciousness begin to fade, the familiar drone beginning. I could pick up faint whispers, snippets of forbidden knowledge nipping at my mind, but I held them back. Finally, I went over the edge, and I saw through its eyes, saw into that abyss, saw it all laid out before me, each moving part of the impossible puzzle blinking before my eyes. As the screaming began, I started writing.

— An average afternoon for the navigator of the good ship Monumental

The Pariah's Tides are nothing like the oceans of the rational world. In the rational world, navigation is a very cut-and-dry affair. Find your destination on a map, plot a course, fiddle with some navigational instruments, and your job is done. On the Tides, however, it is rather a bit more complicated. After all, you can't plot a course to a destination on a map when it's impossible to get your hands on an accurate one.

Abstract Geography

The Tides do not operate by normal geographic rules. Rational thinking states that if a landmass is in a place, then that place is where it is. Thus, if one heads to the place where it is, one has reached that place. The Tides do not care what rational thinking states. An island will be in one place in one moment, and the very next it will decide to simply be somewhere else. One day Estotiland will hardly be a stone's throw away from Antillia, next the two islands will be untold leagues away from each other. Understandably, this unique take on geography has a number of rather infuriating effects. For starters, it makes mapping the Tides just about impossible, crushing the dreams of countless aspiring cartographers. While island-scale maps are still in use, since most Tidal islands tend to keep their shape, even while their exact location is unknowable, any attempt to make a map of the whole of the Pariah's Tides inevitably leads to frustration and, in many cases, madness. There are legends of a certain map, created by the legendary explorer-prince Zichmni, which is actually capable of accurately representing the Tides in full, but it only exists in stories of Zichmni's great campaign. Even without maps, ordinary navigation is still impossible, since there's no way to know if an island will still be in its last reported position when one arrives.
This problem, however, is not without its solutions. After all, if navigation was impossible, then trade between islands, even knowledge of other islands, would be all but nonexistent. This is not the case, and it is all thanks to a single substance: prophet-sap. This viscous, dark golden-red substance is used by the navigators of the Tides in order to get an insight into their workings and estimate the trajectory of their islands, so that they may guide ships into the right ports at the right times. It is a bizarre substance, and a dangerous one at that, but it is also essential for Tidal society to function, and thus its risks must be endured by the brave navigators who choose to use it.

Strange Origins

Where does prophet-sap come from? That is a complicated question, and one which the vast majority of people, even navigators, do not know the answer to. They purchase it from people who purchase it from people, who in turn purchase it from yet more people. Go far enough up the chain, however, and you reach a certain individuals. Pardon their plurality. Rumors exist of a men who wear a three-faced mask, who are more than just an ordinary people. There is something off about them, something which compels those who meet them to refer to them in plural terms, rather than singular. They deal in many things, primarily premium whale oil and bone, and other more bizarre things reportedly recovered from the beasts' bodies. In addition to that, their greatest export is prophet-sap. Those in the know would call this individuals the Boatmen, and would know that they hail from Gamburg, the City of Stove Boats.
In Gamburg, the Creed-wracked live out their miserable lives, making their fruitless attempts every day to kill the great white whale upon which they dwell. As time goes on, however, the Whaleman's Creed continues to fester in them, wreaking terrible changes upon their bodies. Their skin, which has already become tough and coarse, continues its transformation. It becomes thicker and thicker, rougher and rougher, first feeling like leather, then more resembling tree bark than anything else. This resemblance is not made any less uncanny by the white scars which form upon a Creed-wracked's body, first as nothing more than white lines, then deepening and widening into great grooves, cracks in the Creed-wracked's craggy skin. At first, the Whaleman's Creed made them strong, making them taller, more upright, more imposing. But now, it works in the opposite way as their joints twist and warp, their spine bends unnaturally, their limbs grow and shrink in all the wrong ways. What few vestiges of humanity they had left begin to ebb away as they become truly monstrous.
All the while, their mind is not on their bodies. They don't care about what's happening to them, they don't pay attention to every new pain, every awful sensation as the body twists and pops into ever more inhuman forms. Their only care is for the great void that they have begun to spend every day, every night staring into, the abyss that has called out to them, whispered in their minds. Wrong John's Blowhole. It is much like the feeling they experienced when the Whaleman's Creed first took hold of them, calling them to sea, calling them to hunt, calling them to Gamburg. And just like that feeling, this new call is impossible to resist. They can try, but it will not be long until the Creed-wracked descends below, into the darkness. Some choose not to fight the call, instead embracing it and going below willingly. They undergo a ritual called the Casting Off, in which their skin is gouged with blades and their body bathed in blood and oil, before they drink a final draught of prophet-sap and whiskey and leap into the Blowhole. They believe that they can somehow kill Wrong John from within, though this theory is challenged by the fact that Wrong John is still very much alive.

The Fettered Prophets

Those who resist the pull, however, are perhaps far more interesting. They know that they won't be able to endure for long. They also know that once their will breaks there is nothing, save for another Creed-wracked as strong as them, that will be able to hold them back. Unfortunately, with the Whaleman's Creed having progressed so far, there is no another Creed-wracked as strong as them. But that doesn't mean that they are hopeless. There is one thing powerful enough to hold back a Creed-wracked at their full strength, and that is a Creed-wracked. But that doesn't just mean the Creed-wracked's arguably-no-longer-mortal body, it also means that Creed-wracked's boat.
When one afflicted by the Whaleman's Creed becomes fully Creed-wracked, their name is devoured by the raging curse that burns inside of them. Because of this, they end up adopting a new name, stolen from their very own ship. This binds the Creed-wracked and the ship together, making them one, and is likely the cause for many of the transformations the Creed-wracked endures. This linking of names, however, also means that the boat will be capable of enduring any punishment the Creed-wracked attempts to rain down upon it, for it is as tough as the Creed-wracked is strong.
In order to prevent themself from leaping into the Blowhole, a Creed-wracked will have others bind them in ropes and chains to the prow of their ship, and in a final act they will pierce their own chest with their own harpoon, which has been forged anew in the raging blood of Wrong John and is strong enough to pierce just about anything, pinning themself to their ship. Then, their ship will be lowered into the edge of the Blowhole, so that they may stare ever onward into the void. Their form continues to change, their body melding with the ship so that the two eventually become all but indistinguishable. Their mind slips over the edge, though their body stays in place, and they begin to babble ever on about everything and nothing, a constant stream of unearthly consciousness which some interpret as the words of Wrong John.
As they babble, so too do they bleed. The wound caused by their harpoon strike never truly heals, and dark, viscous blood slowly oozes out. The blood of a fettered prophet is nothing like that of an ordinary human. It is thick, dark, and golden-red. It gathers on the end of the harpoon's shaft, and each drop is carefully caught by those who tend to the fettered synod. This substance, called prophet-sap, is more precious than any gold, in its purest form. Some is kept by those of Gamburg, for personal use such as in the ritual of Casting Off, but the rest finds its way to the Boatmen. They take the prophet-sap, and in return pay the Gamburgers handsomely in supplies. The prophet-sap then in turn finds its way to others, who sell it to others, and so on and so forth. Pure prophet-sap is incredibly hard to come by, as the Boatmen make sure to dilute most of their stock, since it's simply too dangerous in its purest form.

Usage & Effects

Prophet-sap is typically mixed into candle wax or incense, because even while diluted, only a small amount is required to induce the trance required for navigation, and overdosing can have serious effects. A navigator burns a candle or some incense in a closed room to prevent the smoke's escape, and allows themself to pass into a trance. In this state, they must endure the whispers and screams, and focus on the knowledge that is important for their job. In this state, they can predict the Tides' arrangements at any given time, and can use their navigational skill to pinpoint exactly where a ship should sail to in order to intercept the target island at the right time. Timing is incredibly important when sailing the Tides, and in some cases missing the mark by even a few hours can be disastrous.
Prophet-sap is relatively safe to use when one is careful, but there are still some side effects that plague navigators. While in a sap trance, their minds partially cross from the precarious position the Tides hold in between reality and unreality into an even more precarious position, just at the very edge of the abyss. Unreality flickers over their consciousness, and they run the risk of tipping over. Ordinarily, this would not happen. However, as one takes more and more sap, they begin to build a tolerance to its effects. This requires greater and greater amounts be taken in order for a navigator to be able to properly navigate. Most will eventually realize the risk and stop, but some who are either too stubborn, too foolish, or too desperate to stop will keep going, and more often than not they end up going over the edge.
What happens to those who go over the edge is not pleasant. Whereas ordinarily a navigator only gets a peek into the mind of a fettered prophet, now they're all the way in there. Their mind and the fettered prophet's broken shell of a mind are one. The first thing to go, of course, is the navigator's name. Names are of reality, and when exposed to such conditions they rend like paper. With their name gone, there is no longer anything preventing all the navigator's abstractions from escaping. At the same time, there is nothing preventing something from forcing its way in. There are some things that no one was ever meant to know, and the navigator now knows all of them. Whereas in many situations, a nameless individual is empty, and seeks to fill itself, a navigator is now full. Full of impossible knowledge, ideas that cannot possibly exist in any rational world. And yet, when the navigator speaks them, they exist nonetheless. There can be no predicting what happens when one hears such impossible knowledge, because the very concept of what happens does not yet exist. Needless to say, the next couple of minutes are brief, terrifying, and often very fatal (or worse) for everyone involved.
Don't do drugs, kids.

Type

Organic