The Knotted Heart of Odd

In the First Summer, long before ships set sail on the morning tide and sailors made their homes on rocky shores, only the trolls wandered the Great Blue Ocean. Some were small and waded only in the shallows, and others contented themselves with striding across the sea’s floor far beneath the waves of the surface, but the greatest among the trolls stretched all the way to the clouds. It was said that when these trolls stirred their briny toes all the fish of the ocean came dancing to watch the tides turn, and that the bottoms of their rocky soles were as scarred as the face of the moon. 

Because it was summer, the trolls all spent as much time as they possibly could relaxing in the chilly depths, and it was in this way that the first Troll Game of all came about. You see, one day the three tallest trolls of them all were shambling around in the deep when they came across a great stone spire lancing up out of the water. Being a competitive sort of creature, the trolls proposed a contest. Whoever could climb to the highest point of the stone spire would be declared the winner, and would have their meals of fish brought directly to them for the rest of the summer. Each of the three competitors’ mouths watered at the prospect of all of that fish, and immediately they began to clamber up the tower, their long stony limbs churning in the breeze. 

The three trolls climbed all day and into that first summer night, each on their own side of the spire, each laboring ceaselessly to reach its summit. On their way up they passed the nests of birds that had not yet begun to exist, and gnarled little trees that were older than the ocean itself. They passed sections of the tower where gems glittered in the moonlight, and caves that had been bored into the rock by woodpeckers of indescribable size. Each troll encountered their share of unimaginable wonders, but they stopped for none of them, thinking only of the fishy reward awaiting them atop the spire. Slowly, more days and nights started to pass the trolls by, and soon the seasons began to turn in their ancient circle. The trolls had long since passed the blanket of the clouds, and the ocean’s surface was but a distant memory to them as they neared the end of their long climb.

Finally, finally, dragging bruised limbs and minds battered by the unending toil of the climb, all three trolls reached the spire’s summit at the very same moment, for of course they were all three equal in all things. Seeing each other for the first time in centuries, the trolls let out a collective cry not of bitterness, but of relief, for their task was ended and they could return to the blissful ease of that First Summer. They decided to jump down in unison, picturing the refreshing ocean that awaited them far below. But it was no longer summer in the Great Blue Ocean, and the trolls met a very different fate at the bottom of that terrible fall. In the time it had taken the three trolls to climb the spire, the First Winter had arrived.

Instead of the gentle waves of the Summer, the trolls crashed into a blanket of ice that covered the ocean for as far as anyone could see. Though the ice was as thick as a mountain, the heavy trolls plunged straight through it, and sank like stones to the deepest part of the sea. They stayed this way for many years, each curled up tightly to avoid the grasping claws of frost that pried at their hearts. But finally, when the Spring arrived, the trolls began to stir from their rocky slumber and once again stretched their limbs skyward. When they reached the surface of the sea and continued to unfurl, the surprised trolls realized that they had grown even taller in their Winter sleep, and they now reached the very top of the sky, just as tall as the spire that they had once worked so hard to climb. The three trolls were delighted at their new vantage point and decided never to move again, content to stand together and watch the seasons spin.

*****

Many years passed, and all of the trolls that once wandered through the briny depths slowly wore away, as even the oldest of stones must eventually do. Eventually, only the three tallest trolls remained, but their limbs had grown heavy and their joints creaked like sleeping mountains shifting in their beds. The trolls remained this way, rooted in the ocean, as stony spires jutting from the deepest part of the sea.

For centuries sailors told stories and sang songs about the deeds of the trolls, and it was whispered in taverns all across the Sleeping Sea that strange things happened at the place where 4 towers met. Few adventurers ever dared to sail to the 4 pillars, and it was a serpent’s age before one Odd man had a very Odd idea. 

His name was Featherfair, and he was an inventor by trade. He had joined a pirating crew early in his youth, and though he was skilled in many things his first and only love was knot tying. He could tie sheep bends and bowlines and barrels, figure eights and butterflies, and three hundred and six knots that he had invented himself. Featherfair’s incredible knot making soon earned him renown across the wide ocean, and when he had gathered a worthy crew to follow him in his grand nonsense, he designed a ship made entirely out of rope. He called it The Grindle’s Left Knobtooth, and set off for the 4 Spires of the trolls. 

Featherfair and his loyal crew had no difficulties in finding the spires, as they were visible from all across the ocean, and when he finally reached their base he began to act on his brilliant madness. Prior to setting sail, he had designed a heavy ballista, and loaded it with a massive spear seven feet long and fashioned from the trunk of a twenty year old oak. The tip of the spear was made from the sharpest steel, and trailing the bolt was a rope as thick as an ogre’s forearm, braided by Featherfair himself over the course of a month’s long nights. With his preparations in place, the captain sailed out to the center of the great square formed by the 4 magnificent spires, and began to shoot his bow. 

Again and again Featherfair shot the ballista into the spires, trailing ropes in all directions and creating a web of netting as complex as any spider’s. As he shot, his boat began to unravel, for after all it was made of the very same rope he had tied to the spears, and when Featherfair took aim for the final time he and his men were perched on only the planks of wood that remained from the dismantled boat. One by one, the crew dutifully grasped the last rope and began to shimmy their way up into the net, hauling planks and wardrobes and anything else they could salvage from the wreckage of their former ship.

*****

In the years that followed, Featherfair’s knotted home only grew, until it became a bustling city suspended above the ocean’s waves. Every year, passing merchants were happy to give up their extra scraps of wood in exchange for a hot meal and a good story, and in no time at all the web of ropes was known across Odd as a waypoint for pirates and adventurers. Newcomers built shacks and taverns, some attached to the walls of the spires and some suspended on nothing but ropes dangling over the void. When there was no more space, the city simply built itself up, adding layer and layer of intricate netting extending up into the clouds. When a boat was too old to sail, or was smashed in two in a violent storm, the citizens of the hanging city were all too happy to cast their ropes down and haul it up into their fibrous maze, making it one more point of solid ground suspended in the sky. 

 For many years, Featherfair watched his beautiful dream grow in utter contentment, welcoming newcomers and helping to build new sections of the web when more were needed. However, after the passage of many years he could sense himself growing old. So he left the Knotted Heart, as its citizens had begun to call it, and began to climb upward. You see, Featherfair was no fool, and he had begun his city in the place of the 4 Spires for a very specific reason. As a young man he had once heard tell, in the wee hours of morning in a tavern on the edge of the Southern Reach, of the three trolls who had long ago dared to climb the first spire. It was for this reason that he understood the magic of that place, and while he was overjoyed to share this magic with those that came to join him, Featherfair always burned with a great curiosity for what one might see atop the 4 Spires, at the very summit of the world. So, without so much as a goodbye or a heartfelt note, he began to climb. He has never been seen since, but some say that if you find yourself in a particularly desolate alley in the Heart, on a particularly cold and windy summer night, you just might come across a rope dangling straight from the sky itself, and if you are particularly brave and a little bit foolish, you might climb that rope and join Featherfair at the top of the world.

*****

These days, the Knotted Heart of Odd is a bustling city, home to all kinds of Oddities from storytellers to merchants to pirates. To gain entry to the Heart, your ship must sail beneath its web and call up to the dockhands with the password, which is a seven stanza ode to ropes written by a very famous poet. If you get the poem right, and your delivery is sufficiently dramatic, the dockhands will lower down a giant pail for you and your crew, and hoist you up into the city. It is a city of wood and ropes, of strange structures clinging to the 4 sheer spires of rock and knots large enough to house a pirate’s hoard. It is a haven for Oddities across the wide seas, and while no one has ever labeled it as such on any formal map, every citizen of the Knotted Heart knows that it is the very center of the Isles of Odd.