The Power of Art

"Short of direct manipulation of the mind, there is no better way to direct the Egregoric Force than through Art."

— Illustrata

In the world of the Million Islands, the power of thought and belief can reshape reality. The force of collective belief can reshape the land, give birth to gods, and create whole universes within the Dream. In this article, I will explore how various forms of art interact with Egregoric Force to direct and amplify the beliefs of people, and give some examples of how it has changed the world.

The Art of Storytelling

No artistic field has had more impact on the Great Ring than that of storytelling. Stories are at the core of people's beliefs, and a well-told story can shape how people see the world, each other, and themselves. Sometimes, this is a trap - when the Leonaragian spread tales about themselves to frighten others, the power of that story rebounded upon them to make the monsters they made themselves out as.

In other places, people have siezed on the power of stories to shape the world directly. The Talespinners of Liria have spent decades shaping the stories told about their nation in an attempt to tame the wild narratives that have plagued them for centuries. You can read about their plight and the successes they've had in their war here.

Stories are also the seeds of gods. The whispered tales of children spawned the Urchin, the trickster champion of the powerless and abused, while the Lorekeepers of Foxbridge spread carefully cultivated tales to manifest their Librarian. But stories belong to nobody, and they change with each retelling - and the gods they birth change with them. The Lorekeepers are still learning just what kind of story they've woven in their small god of knowledge.

A Song for the Gods

Adjacent to the storyteller is the musician and the singer. Their art can shape the emotions of their listeners, and cast their thoughts in a new light. A good bard can shift the metaphysical atmosphere of a room, and over time can make it a place favored by good luck, or cursed with gloom. They can also derail a story in play, by shifting the mood and the tone of the tale.

One example of this is the case of Billy the Goat. Before the Lorekeepers attempted to make their Librarian, they tested the principles of godcrafting upon the population of Hersey. But an accident of linguistics inspired a single bard, who lampooned their tale in verse. Suddenly, their tales captured the imagination of the people in a new form, bringing for the strange and comedic goat-god of sailors and the island. And Billy was not the only impact - the Glaistig, spirits who had long inhabited Hersey, were also captured by the new narrative and were transformed by it to better fit the bard's song and story. You can read more about Billy and the Glaistig here.

All the World's A Stage

Wherever you go in the Great Ring, you are likely to encounter one of the groups of traveling performers known as the Maskers. These players have formed their own culture, one that is capable of manifesting a form of Folk Magic associated with the theater and plays. The characters in their plays are more than the roles they appear to be - the performance of the Maskers brings them to life in the minds of the audience, causing an Eidolon of the character to coalesce in the Dream. The Masker's performances literally creates the character as an independent being, with wants and desires all their own. Historically, this had led to the possession of actors by the characters they portrayed, especially when a character's goals involved power and domination. But over the years, the Maskers adopted rituals and rites that prevented wanton posession. Instead, they have created the Masks.

Each troupe of Maskers will have a mask for each major character they perform. The Folk Magic they use binds the Eidolons of the characters to the mask, preventing them from simply taking over anyone they please. When the player wears the mask, they gain access to the thoughts and desires of the character - some have even manifest mystical abilities associated with them. But it is dangerous to pull too deeply upon the character's nature. Posession is still a risk with the Masks, although removing the mask from the person will break the character's control. This is why the Masks are removed at the end of every play - by force if necessary. You can read more about the Maskers here.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

The power of art is not limited to performance arts. Painting, sculpting, and other forms of visual arts are just as powerful in shaping the minds of the viewers, and thus the physical world around them. Sometimes a statue seems so alive that people believe it can move - and then it does. Other times, a painting will become a portal to another world - one example of this is the Ibang Daigdig in Mynilad, which has a reputation for capturing people and making them vanish. There is also the alien artwork of Inigmiq, whose icy architecture has entranced dozens over the years, or the Ilagiarnaq statues of the Tuniit, which house the smallest of gods.

Visual art is also key to the manifestation and presentation of the gods. A single statue can lock a deities image into hundreds of minds, empowering and constraining the entity it is bound to. Sometimes warring deities will commission images of each other with an intent to undermine their adversaries - a weak chin or a lascivious leer in the right place can subtly shift how worshippers think of a deity, and their thoughts are the god's essence. In recent years, the Tirta Baya have commissioned dozens of sculptures of their great adversary Rangdayan, with the explicit intent of remaking her image from one of terror to a ridiculous and defeatable entity.

Type

Metaphysical

What is the Egregoric Force?

The Egregoric Force is the driving power behind much of the unique phenomena of the Great Ring. It is the name given to collective belief and thought, and how this can influence the Dream and the Physical realm. You can read more about the Egregoric Force here.

A Crushing Weight of Narrative

Sometimes, the stories about a person can grow more powerful than their own sense of self, focusing the ideas of the multitudes on a single mind. When this happens, the individual can be warped under the pressure, eventually collapsing into a caricature of themselves. This is a condition known as Dissolutio Identitatis, and you can read more about it here.

Stories from Beyond

The Dream connects and binds many worlds, and the strands of Association are not limited to any single realm. Art made on one world will seek out similar pieces elsewhere in the collective thoughts of the universe, exterting invisible influence on both the art and the artist. Most of the time, this leads to art echoing across the multiverse, but sometimes it rises to the level of an Invasive Narrative, when a story forces itself into the world. You can read more about Invasive Narratives here.

The Muses

There are dozens of gods across the cultures of the Great Ring dedicated to the idea of creativity. These entities seek out the gifted and talented mortals within their domains and attempt to inspire them to produce works of great glory, so that they can be sustained by the attention and adoration the art inspires. One thing that all of the muses of the Great Ring demand is recognition - their existence is sustained by the thoughts and prayers of thinking beings, and to be forgotten or ignored is the gateway to death. Should an artist neglect to acknowledge their muse publicly, the wrath of the gods will fall upon them, bringing ruin and despair.

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