Let's start with an image - for the artists to howl at and run screaming to better places of less precision, predictability and general non-artistry (we actually have them right here too):

Now that they got bored already, we can see what the above image means. On one hand, it means about 10 hours of "exploring" in Eulora by means of the trusty Foxybot¹. More importantly perhaps, it means systematic, square-shaped and quite fine-grained coverage of Eulora's roundish island soil for the grand purpose of finding... dead molluscs. And the skins that snakes have shed and slithy toves and even rotten canines of the giants who possibly ate all the sweetness of this land in ages long forgotten and therefore never missed.

It also means - quite possibly - an ongoing battle between rickety reeds (the green army there) and shiny rocks (red), with enemy green infiltrators in the very heart of the mighty red army. Oh noes, cry the shiny rocks and bring in their trusty berries -dressed in yellow- to support the flanks. But mighty reeds against the reds have secret spies of similar colours: a few clumps of dry grass are stuck up the rocks' bottom, while two-leaf clovers are - quite possibly - the masterminds behind green's attack, plotting away behind the front lines, in an empty space that begs more digging. The two gray squares are really nothing other than vermin - the swarming grubs that will eat in the end all armies on a battle field, or at least those parts left behind after the battle, in any case.

Anyway reader, I got carried away, can you tell? Faced with the utter order and precision of straight lines that are totally, utterly and quite purposefully ignoring not only the "beauty" of the landscape but its very own structure and everything else to go with it, the mind either goes and does something entirely else for the next few months until the whole thing has been covered *at least once* (covered as in beaten with the hoe, the stick, the adze, not as in truly forced to reveal what it holds on each mm square of its soil) or otherwise begins its own story. An ultimately pointless, useless story, but apparently needed in the moment, quite the opposite of the map above: an apparently pointless, useless map, but ultimately needed if I am ever to actually truly know what resource is where². Or at least... was...at the time when I made the map.

Le sigh.

1. Updated version armed with extreme precision and fancy rituals: each explore is followed by one hop 3 coordinates further and then one spin on the ground - for better positioning really. ↩

2. And I'll link here for reference the laughter story on this matter, which really goes to show the Universe could do with a kick in its pacademia nuts specifically from me. ↩

Category: Eulora

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