Isane the Beauty’s Treatise on Salt
Isane the Beauty recently published a historical and scientific treatise on salt, drawing on her snake library to find obscure details. She starts by examining ancient poems that employ salt as a metaphor for purity. This jars the folk in the Shrouded Lands, who view the mineral with caution because they suspect it could provoke deep sorrow, strict obedience, or the loss of their deepest passion.
She asserts that salt was once the purest substance in the Shrouded Lands. It formed from angels that fell from the sky during a forgotten war. Upon hitting the ground, their bodies turned to salt and shattered. Legends tell that the first salt was pure enough to neutralize poison or halt aging. But the salt absorbed the world’s impurities, and its powers became diluted. Today, common salt is only potent enough to preserve food and ward away minor demons.
Occasionally, she states, salt absorbs powerful magic and fundamentally changes. She theorizes that the salt in the Ocean of Bitter Regrets became tainted when the Green Lady sat on the shore and wept during the Great Divorce. When Princess Agnothene, the last of Othonoi’s First Dynasty, leaped off of a cliff at her father’s orders, her spirit may have entered the salt that is now mined at Fallsalt (44.03). As for the salt of the Least Ocean (12.29), some believe it is merely poisoned by the Breath of the Earth, although that doesn’t explain the statues sunken in the sand around it. Her treatise is hazy in this section, and she would generously reward more information about the Least Ocean.
Hooks
- How has the academic community and the public reacted to her treatise?
- What were the angels? Why did they fall?
- Does any pure, primordial salt survive in the Shrouded Lands?
- Tell me more about the legends that Isane claims changed the salt.
- What’s with the statues surrounding the Least Ocean?