Series Overview: Beneath the Surrounding Canopy
A passive, lonely kid named Lily lives in an organic, jungle-like biosphere (fabricated world) and yearns for
someone to relate to. Until surreal dreamvisions within a dangerous, spiritual world set the catalyst of her
trying to run away from her home and look for other humans. The Watcher, Lily’s distant caretaker and
overseer tries to keep her home.
Themes
- Loneliness
- Bad parenting, authoritarian parenting damages the child’s most important tool they’ll need in life; the brain
- Self control
- Dig in yourself to find the source of your inner problems
- Breaking the cycle and letting go
- A child is like wet cement, everything leaves a print
- Self understanding can lead to self control
- More self control (stoicism)
- Healing from your fears, anger and hopelessness, picking up the pieces again
- Emotional maturity and strength
- Developing the tools to deal with the real world
- Digging in yourself to find the source of a crippling problem in your life
Structure
Exposition
Lily, a troubled, lonely kid tries to learn from her predecessors in the Ejin, her life is one big cycle, rigid and
monotonous, continuing over and over again, she anticipates everything that’s happening in a short period of
time, but she’s completely powerless in altering it in any way. She’s slowly getting corrupted which manifests
itself in anger and directly being able to manipulate the Ejin.
Conflict
Lily’s dreams in the Beneath starts getting more vivid, she realizes that she dreams in a completely different
world. She spots someone who looks a bit like her, Lily has only been interacting with insectoids in the Ejin so
far and chases the being out of curiosity. When she caught the being, she suddenly sees that she’s in the
Beneath.
Not only that, but she’s ventured deeper inside the Dreamspace than ever before, but she’s still adamant that
she doesn’t need to venture inside the Beneath and that her problems are not that bad (especially compared
to the responsibility that the Watcher takes every day). She just wants to get out of here, but she has no
control over the Dreamspace yet.
The same lookalike being turns out to be a native in the Dreamspace, the Dreambeing leads her to a memory,
Lily accesses it through her antennae.
As she ventures inside the memory, Lily learns about the existence of the outside world, she sees other
hominids like Giants, meaning that there are people whom she might be able to relate to after all. But she also
sees that if she’s grown corrupted, she will be fully dependent of the Ejin, meaning she will always be stuck in
the Fabricated World. This sets the catalyst of her trying to run away and find a way to rid herself of her
corruption.
Rising Action
Lily meets all sorts of Dreambeings, some are helpful, others are pranking her or are a genuine threat.
Meanwhile she is dealing with the mentioned conflicts/phases in order to find the source and cure for her
corruption. These phases manifests into memories and labyrinths where it’s really easy to get lost in, full of dead ends:
-Not acknowledging your character flaws, problems from your end when digging back
-Wallowing in your despair, remaining the victim
-Internalizing everything, getting out of the mindset of “they’re putting food on my table, so I’m supposed to
respect them”
Climax
After going through these layers she’s forced to admit to herself that the Watcher is a big source of her anger
and fear. The Watcher, whom she always had to look up to. Before she could learn anything more about
herself and the Watcher, she jolts awake. The Watcher has figured out how to prevent Lily from dreaming
through connecting to her antennae.
This epiphany doesn’t bring her relief, in fact it only makes her feel more hopeless. Because at the end of the
day she’s still stuck inside her own mind and conscience. For the first time she feels like even the Beneath can’t
do anything about this. In the Ejin, she constantly fails her tasks because she has learned to be naturally afraid
and passive. Thus, she hasn’t developed to take on the world.
With this mentality and being unable to enter the Dreamspace, she feels like she’s lost control, realizing that
she has turned too passive, obedient and submissive, freezing in fear rather than shouting back. This has been
a gradual process every time whenever a Worker or Watcher yelled at her. In the beginning she could still yell
back, but now she realizes that she’s turned incapable of standing up for herself, becoming a shadow of who
she once was, a bitter simulacrum of a human being who adapted too well to her environment.
When waking up again in the Ejin, its Workers are going through the regular motions again maintaining the
biosphere. Lily feels like this is going to be her entire life; thus, she reaches her breaking point, her anger
explodes, she’s enraged, feelings of no control, all that anger is released upon the Ejin itself. She tries to tear
everything down but ends up restrained by the Watcher and imprisoned within her own room.
Her corruption has rapidly increased, she had no power in the Ejin compared to the Beneath, but now that is
slowly changing.
Falling Action
Lily is crying in her room; she feels like there’s no way out. But when she opens her eyes again, she finds
herself in the Beneath. When looking at her reflection she realizes that she looks like a Dreambeing, it appears
that a Dreambeing and her have changed bodies. Lily uses this borrowed time to plan a confrontation with the
Watcher. Before she wakes up again, she finds a memory, one where she can see herself in it.
As she wakes up, she sees that the walls of her home are now distorted and there’s an opening again. She sees
the Watcher and confronts them; she tries to connect with the humanity that’s left within them. She explains
in words everything that she’s been feeling in her short life and how the Beneath helped her. But the Watcher
rejects it, telling her that she’s lucky to live her life without worry of predators, they blame the Beneath and
change the argument to the distortion of the Ejin.
Before she could get angry again, she storms off. It’s revealed to the player that the last memory that Lily saw
was the cycle of Watchers. Knowing that she’s an artificial human and supposed to become the next Watcher,
a cycle of corruption in order to preserve a forgotten biosphere, she’s using the chaos in the Ejin to run away.
She finds an opening between the canopy thanks to the Beneath being able to distort our world.
Resolution
Lily manages to run away, the Watcher desperately chases her, at first yelling at her to stay, followed by
begging.
She finds and joins a giant tribe, whom after a tense moment with the elder decided that Lily may stay. This
stage of her life is the beginning of a work in progress, Lily is still broken and corrupted, goes through many
phases but learns to be capable again, antennae start breaking off as she doesn’t need them anymore. She’s
still a long way from losing her corruption and realizing her lost potential, but with babysteps she might get
there after all.
Components
Goals
-
Lily
- Control over herself
- Cure her corruption
- Find the giants, closest hominids outside the Ejin
-
The Watcher
- Control over Lily
- Preserve the ancient ecosystem of the Ejin in order to reap the natural resources from them
- Continue the cycle of Lilys and Watchers
Relations
Protagonists
Lily
The main character and player. A Corrupted, Lonely Kid who's trapped in the Ejin, her strange, fabricated and monotonous home.
When she’s awake, she’s trying to live her life in the Ejin. When she’s not trying to sneak off, she’s performing her daily tasks, like making baskets or furnaces from clay, and failing at them usually. She hates it, she always feels pressured to perform because she always gets yelled at, even at the slightest mistake.
When she’s tired, she’s having Surreal Dreams which has to do with a strange connection with the Dreamspace, which she calls "Beneath." The dreams are often about her experiencing her own memories or the memories of others. Right now, she finds them a nuisance because she wakes up just as tired, as she’s exerting herself just as much in her dreams. But that feeling is all about to change!
Allies
The Dreambeings
There’s a reason why Lily’s advised against to venture the Beneath, as the surreal-looking Dreambeings inhabiting it are regarded as dangerous. But every Dreambeing is different and they all have their own agenda’s and motives for doing things.
Some Dreambeings kidnap people into the Dreamspace,
others will curiously follow you around.
Some may help you wherever they can,
others will just play pranks with you, distorting reality and scaring those unfortunate to cross their path.
Dreambeings are generally unpredictable, cheeky, mischievous, bored and free, and some will go through great lengths to visit our world. But their behavior may be slightly different towards Lily.
Neutrals/Bystanders
The Dreambeings
Competitors
The Watcher
The main antagonist, Lily's distant caretaker and the architect of the Ejin.
Through their appendages, they operate and maintain the entire primordial biosphere in a symbiotic relationship. Together they command perfect, natural order, preservation and protection from the outside world.
Everything must be kept in balance, because any small change influences the ecosystem, and if the ecosystem is in imbalance, precious, valuable wildlife will die. And when precious, valuable wildlife dies, they won’t be able to reap natural resources from them.
But lately some outside force has started misshaping the fabricated world, severely disturbing the Ejin and the Watcher fears that it may have something to do with Lily's dreams. They must be strict about this and to the point with Lily, it’s the only they know how to discipline children, they have little patience to be soft. After all, the cycle must continue, and the biosphere must never be alone. Protect and preserve, they must, protect and preserve…
Adversaries
The Watcher & the Workers
Skittish, loyal and obedient to the Watcher, the Workers live out their small lives foraging, building and expanding their colony in the Ejin wherever they can.
Work work work, quick quick quick, signals are sent to their antennae what to do and where to go. Race towards one side of the Ejin to repair some burned down trees, race towards the other side to fend off intruders disturbing the silkweavers.
They all follow the Watcher’s example and operate in a strict hierarchy. To them, the Watcher is their ruler, their god, the Workers are dependent off them as they built and continue to maintain their entire world. Thus, anything they demand will be executed.
Although they can be friendly, they are antagonists towards Lily’s goal.
Backdrops
Past Events
The Ejin (Fabricated World)
An isolated, flesh-like jungle which operates in symbiosis with the Watcher, nothing but a simulacrum of the outside world. The sky is perpetually dark as it’s covered by thick canopy with the only lights being artificial and the organic tissue dispersed all over the place. Primitive technology is used by its inhabitants, often stone tools, as people have been for thousands of years. The Ejin has lived just as long to witness the rise and fall of many civilizations, always while remaining stable themselves. But it had suffered one extinction event too many, a particularly curious one known as the Second Sun and drought was slowly killing the forest. It would’ve been dead had it not been for one lonely human visiting it, the last human of their civilization. The human already looked rough, as their civilization existed in a harsh, brutal environment. They saw each other’s loneliness and wanted to preserve the world they lost. When they became symbiotic something changed; the primordial forest became flesh, an extension of the human, and the Ejin was reborn. A decade later, the cycle of Lilys and Watchers began.
Beneath (Dreamspace)
In narrative, the Beneath is Lily’s unconscious psyche as well as the Watcher’s and the Ejin’s secret history. For Lily this is the collective subconscious, a storage of memories and remover of her inner masks. But the Dreamspace is not something unique to the Ejin. Various cultures from the Old World (before the Second Sun) and the New (after the Second Sun) reported on sightings of Dreambeings and interacting with the dimension. Very little is known about the Dreamspace itself, other than the variety of Dreambeings inhabiting it and occasionally crossing to our world. But the records written about it has been consistent so far. For example, in the Dreamspace, there are possibly infinite layers thus infinite worlds, travelling in it looks like wandering the cosmos. And entering memories would look like entering a rapidly expanding bubble. Many memories have very geometric shapes, contrasting the amorphous, microbial-looking natives.
An isolated, flesh-like jungle which operates in symbiosis with the Watcher, nothing but a simulacrum of the outside world. The sky is perpetually dark as it’s covered by thick canopy with the only lights being artificial and the organic tissue dispersed all over the place. Primitive technology is used by its inhabitants, often stone tools, as people have been for thousands of years. The Ejin has lived just as long to witness the rise and fall of many civilizations, always while remaining stable themselves. But it had suffered one extinction event too many, a particularly curious one known as the Second Sun and drought was slowly killing the forest. It would’ve been dead had it not been for one lonely human visiting it, the last human of their civilization. The human already looked rough, as their civilization existed in a harsh, brutal environment. They saw each other’s loneliness and wanted to preserve the world they lost. When they became symbiotic something changed; the primordial forest became flesh, an extension of the human, and the Ejin was reborn. A decade later, the cycle of Lilys and Watchers began.
Beneath (Dreamspace)
In narrative, the Beneath is Lily’s unconscious psyche as well as the Watcher’s and the Ejin’s secret history. For Lily this is the collective subconscious, a storage of memories and remover of her inner masks. But the Dreamspace is not something unique to the Ejin. Various cultures from the Old World (before the Second Sun) and the New (after the Second Sun) reported on sightings of Dreambeings and interacting with the dimension. Very little is known about the Dreamspace itself, other than the variety of Dreambeings inhabiting it and occasionally crossing to our world. But the records written about it has been consistent so far. For example, in the Dreamspace, there are possibly infinite layers thus infinite worlds, travelling in it looks like wandering the cosmos. And entering memories would look like entering a rapidly expanding bubble. Many memories have very geometric shapes, contrasting the amorphous, microbial-looking natives.
Plot type
Series Overview
Related Characters
Related Locations
