Concerning the Sixth History, and the History which is True
ROOT OF WISDOM is derivative in many ways. It is a fanwork modeled entirely and closely after Weather Factory’s BOOK OF HOURS and deliberately seeks to imitate its style. As writers, we have intentionally sought to match our voice to that of the official game and to make the Haustorium feel like a project that could have come from Weather Factory itself, although we have absolutely no connection to the company and its intellectual property. We are deeply grateful for the Sixth History Community License and the way it leaves room for creative projects like this which are dependent on the years of ingenuity and labor undertaken by Weather Factory.
However, ROOT OF WISDOM is also derivative in the way it represents an Alternate History of the Andes and the Americas more generally. As neither of the authors are Latin American, we believe it is important to clarify our positionality and approach in representing the real Histories and cultures of the Americas within this project, with an emphasis on epistemic humility, decolonial convictions, and an abiding respect for the actual lives and Histories of real people across this Hemisphere.
The following words from Delilah Molotla’s book Lives Unceasing, an in-game text, are meant to serve as a brief diegetic statement of values for the project:
Lives Unceasing
Delilah Molotla’s most poignant work, extolling the resilience and survival of “Indians of all tribes across all Histories.”
I’m reading… ‘For centuries, we have faced extermination and yet still we persist. We each and all join Hatüey in turning away from Heaven and joining our people in what the colonizers cannot help but see as Hell.’
I’ve read… ‘This is not an occult text. Our religions are not magic, and our culture is not pagan nonsense. The Invisible World is invisible across hemispheres, and neither colonizers nor Indians have any special right to it.’
Lives Unceasing addresses specifically the Indigenous Histories of the Americas, which have often been subject to commodification, exoticization, and romanticization by colonizers and their accomplices in the years since 1492 CE. Whether through reductive stereotypes like the “noble savage,” “ecological Indian,” or “edenic primitive” or through subtler narratives like the salvage paradigm which motivated much anthropological work during the twentieth century, the representation of Indigenous History in art as well as academia is deeply fraught. In this project, we have striven to reject these stereotypes and approaches in favor of a humanistic portrayal of all real-world cultures and Histories. Especially in a genre which bills itself especially as a portrayal of “the occult” based in folklore and history, we must be exceedingly aware of the many harmful ways in which Indigenous, African, and Asian religions, lifeways, and material culture have been appropriated by colonizers and their accomplices as de-contextualized objects of “occult” speculation and commodification.
The following statements attempt to clarify our approach:
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We hold colonization and imperialism to be a particular kind of evil, whether it be the Early Modern colonial system of the Viceroyalty of Peru or the twentieth century Yankee imperialism of the Roosevelt Corollary. In depicting imperialist and racist characters like Alfonso de Soraluce and Louize Haig, we are seeking not to reproduce harmful ideologies but rather to critique them.
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We refuse to portray Indigenous and other subaltern people as stereotypes, universally moral, or utopian. Characters in the Secret Histories universe must commit terrible acts in the name of power and yet still are complex, fully fleshed characters with interior lives, competing motivations, and moral depth. While we do not provide any especial moral or spiritual prowess to a character based on their identity, we do make clear in the game’s text the moral superiority of the person resisting colonizations vis-à-vis the colonizer.
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In representing features of the cultures of the Western Hemisphere, we are making no statement about these features as “esoteric,” “occult,” or “magic” in their real lived practice. In the Secret Histories universe, real-world features of religion, history, and culture are reinterpreted and represented in a way to fit the cosmology of a world where “the occult” is real and secretive Hours masquerade as saints and gods. We have modeled our approach to this process of writing alternate history after the approach taken in Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours, which intermittently uses the names of real religious and historical figures with slight variation (e.g. Saint Agnes, King Henry VIII, Cardea) and creates fictional cultural practices with only a tangential basis in history.
It is likely we have not succeeded in every instance, and so we will remain open to and unafraid of critique. Feel free to submit thoughts and feedback through the feedback link on the home page.