I participated in what I guess was the 2017 Santicore and got two prompts out of it. I don't know that they ever went up in any capacity but statute of limitations should have run out by now. The first one was for something like an elemental theory of the world, like how everything is made of earth air fire heart, but without using any of those. Okay.
Philosophers refer to the Honeycomb, chymists call it the Star, the holy speak of a
Gate, and the masses call it the Weave. First proposed by Horax Baldersheef in
Year Unicorn and refined by the Mosphebe cloister in Year Candle, the Weave is a
way of understanding the larger world without getting bogged down in arcana.
Even peasants know the stars do not affect the omens of their birth but even
scholars admit to being lost in the enormity of everything. To seek an answer you
must ask a question but to frame a question at all you need a language. The Weave
is a responsible lexicon to begin inspection from and serves as the only true
common tongue between the civilized kingdoms, the Wracked Legions of Fleisch
Peak, and the Middlers with their strange eyes, short lives, and ancient catacombs.
The Twins: Light and Blood
We know that light was here when nothing was, for we know that darkness comes
when things get in the way of light. Logically once all was light, and we see daily
the aspect of light in all things and creatures. The eyes of those around us, the way
gems and strange fishes shine even deep beyond light's reach, the flash that the
storm cloud uses to frighten the rain into fainting and falling... But we know that
constant effort puts a strain on everything in the world whether it's the plow or
sinew or a dam. The light was wounded in the agony of its own eternity, and so
became two things: blood, which gives all things color and dries in strange shapes
and textures, and the shine itself which bleeds. All things at their most elemental
contain light and blood. This only makes sense since we can see and touch
everything in the world. It's easy to see why the primitives back in the Crystal
Epoch believed this to be the limits of science.
The Movers: Worms, Trees, and Noise
Mosphebe translators correctly theorized that while light and blood make up all
life and matter there was no part of either alone which accounted for the
locomotion of beasts, swiftly racing winds, or the changing of stars and season.
We know that big things are very loud when they move so that's obviously part of
it. We have seen the corpses of the dead dissolve into different kinds of worms
over time so we know that worms are in every creature, probably responsible for
carrying breath and blood and bile. It was difficult to determine what caused the
wind until they realized that clouds drove the winds around and smoke looked like
small clouds...and we ALL know that smoke comes from Trees. Everything falls
into place once these motivating agents are realized. After all, the very ground we
walk on is filled with worms, creates trees, and due to its size sometimes creates
rumbling noise so powerful that everything violently shakes. Volcanoes are places
where we can see light-filled blood bursting out and making smoke at the same
time, which means mountains are rich in Trees make. Countless examples can be
drawn connecting these examples, from the towering clouds that are themselves
noisy to the almost-invisible worms that are found in thin, dying smoke.
The Balance: Cold
A controversial modern concept is the presence of Cold as a binding, limiting,
completing factor. We see this in the way it makes water (a mix of blood and
noise) into a solid thing, so this would logically hold true for blood as well. We
know that when things become colder the light doesn't last as long, bound into a
smaller space filled by cold. And we have seen the way the cold keeps trees from
growing too much at once. Most telling is how snakes and lizards are often cold,
as if they might fall apart into worms and blood and trees if not for cold. This is
probably why light seems to stun them into lying around, while during colder
times they move too fast to see (though we constantly hear their hissing as they
move about the ground, scattering leaves, chasing after their prey the wind). While
generally accepted it has yet to be introduced to any scholarly texts because of the
perceived diminishing power of cold, since most academics agree that you don't
see winters like you used to when they were younger, suggesting cold is an
exhaustible resource we are running out of rather than a fundamental force.