There is no speech nor tongue to which
Their voice doth not extend;
Their line is gone through all the earth,
Their words to the world's end.
— The Sacred Harp, 483: Golden Gardens
Organization of This Document
For the most part, this document is not meant to be exhaustive, but I think it's interesting enough to deserve multiple sections.
Section 0, You are Here: Executive Summary
An overview of everything within this document.
Section 1: The Environment
Section 2: The Characters
Section 3: Collective History of the World
Section 4: Common Metaphors or Symbolism
- The Wayfaring Stranger
- The Broad and Narrow Path
Appendix 1: On the Sacred Harp
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The Environment
I keep trying to describe this world and every time it comes out too clean. It's not clean. It's a world made of abandoned cabins with drafty doors and roofs that rattle when it hails, which it does a lot. There are trails through the woods that only the cats who walk them remember, and if you don't remember them you're in trouble come winter. Speaking of winter: it gets cold here. The kind of cold that gets into your bones and stays no matter how many blankets you pile up. Speaking of blankets: there aren't enough of them. The characters in this world judge a place by its cracks, its drafts, whether the door closes properly, and whether there's a decent rat supply nearby. That's just how it is. The weather has opinions — snow falls when grief needs something to cover it, hail arrives during confrontation, storms match the emotional stakes. I didn't design it that way on purpose but that's definitely what happened.
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The Characters
The primary characters who live in this world are Revenant and Wraith, who are both faunafolk. Their documents have a better grounding of what they are and where they came from, so it is recommended to read each in-detail before starting on them.
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Collective History of the World
This world doesn't have a shared history in the way the old one did. The old world had clans and legions and exiles and borders — all that stuff. That was real, and it happened, and it matters, but it's not here. The characters in this world arrived through a break, a fracture, a choice to step off one road and onto another that didn't exist on any map of the old territories. The collective history of this world starts with the first step into it. Everything after that is still being written, one abandoned cabin at a time.
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Common Metaphors or Symbolism
Trav'ler haste, the night comes on,
Many a shining hour is gone;
Storm is gathering in the west,
And you are so far from home.
— The Sacred Harp, 108b: The Traveler
The general symbolism of this world is that the characters are travelers who journey through life, but are forced to a path they did not know existed before, such as The Fool in tarot cards being a traveler whose life is told through the rest of the Major Arcana. They take their journey through the roughness of being a Pilgrim of Sorrow towards the Greater or Promised Land.
The Wayfaring Stranger / The Pilgrim of Sorrow
I know dark clouds will gather 'round me, I know my way is rough and steep; Yet golden fields rise afore me, where all the stars, their vigils keep.
— Traditional folk text, Wayfaring Stranger, alternate of The Sacred Harp, 457: Wayfaring Stranger
I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow, cast out in this wide world to roam; uncertain of life for tomorrow, I want to make heaven my home.
— Traditional folk text, The Pilgrim's Song. Surprisingly, not found in the Sacred Harp.
I know I have something to say about this but every time I try to write it down it comes out wrong. The basic idea is: the characters in this world are strangers in a land that was never quite home. They travel because staying still means being overtaken by what follows them. The Wayfaring Stranger is the one who keeps walking even when the destination is uncertain. The Pilgrim of Sorrow is the one who knows the road is rough and steep and walks it anyway. They're the same cat at different points in the same journey. I think that's the whole thing. The sorrow isn't something to overcome — it's just the terrain.
The Broad and Narrow Paths
Broad is the road that leads to death,
And thousands walk together there,
But wisdom shows a narrow path,
With here and there a Traveler.
— The Sacred Harp, 38b: Windham
In general Christian symbology, the "narrow path" is meant to represent the life of walking with your Creator. Instead, in this world, the Narrow Path is not chosen. The Narrow Path is given to you by a challenge you must not overcome, but instead come to live with. The characters here have been shoved onto the Narrow Path. They must take the road less traveled, one that does not have a map before the characters step forward into that unknown frontier.
The broad road, instead, is for those who don't have to think about every choice they make to the point of it meaning their survival. The two roads are right next to each other, only a short league away, but there are thorns between the broad and the narrow road. To try and step onto the broad road when life forces you to diverge to the narrow road is torture. To join someone on the narrow road is to find a world adjacent to but not instead of your own.
This is a personal allegory that I have for disability, but it is also the foundation of this world.
The Promised Land
Doesn't actually exist. The journey continues even throughout the afterlife, as Wraith knows intimately well.
On the Sacred Harp
You do NOT need any knowledge of the Sacred Harp to draw the characters in this world. However, it is heavily influenced by said, and it may be helpful to you to understand at least part of it before you start to draw any character from this world.
This world takes from the canons of both the 1991 and 2025 editions. Particular songs of interest are listed below. I also have the Shape Note / Sacred Harp Standards playlist, which has plenty of other songs that also reflect the atmosphere of this world.
If there is no edition marking, it can be found in either edition:
- 47b, "Idumea" (obviously, the whole story is named after it!), and its variants:
- 231b (2025), "Trembling Spirit"
- 428, "World Unknown"
- 38b, "Windham"
- 130 (2025), "The Old Graveyard"
- 50t (1991), "Mortality", and its variant:
- 181, "Exit"
- 29t, "Fairfield"
- 108b, "The Traveler"
- 41 (2025), "Evening Hymn", and its variants:
- 118 (2025), "Heavenly Meeting"
- 209, "Evening Shade"
- 302, "Logan"
- 51 (2025), "Star in the East"
- 483 (2025), "Golden Gardens"
- 421, "Sweet Morning"
- 522, "Ye Heedless Ones"
- 332, "Sons of Sorrow"
If you would like to read the text, search for each song on Sacred Harp Bremen: