Ade M. Campbell
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Welcome, again, fellow players (and keepers)... 'into' the artificially-evolving, autonomous, persistent online world... with a living biome for planting into - and growing up through - the spiritual game set within it...
What is the ‘Fountellion Project’? Does it exist, really...? How would you 'complete' such a 'game'...?
Like all art, yes it exists - virtually - or living here through words, and through this extra companion to a game concept designed to be 'ultimate'.
For Fountellion need not be just a game… but also a way back from where we have arrived…
It is an alternative world for all players of Nature to escape into, its emphasis centred around a living reality, an artificial biome…
So the game is in the being there, the working closely again with the elements…
It might be the first truly regenerative game within a game of life, for life...
Intrigued? Hopefully by reading (or 'completing') fragments and stories can the doors open or the concepts and visions become more clear...
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Keep green-wise...
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Introductory ramblings by a human...
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I've been struggling with various online platforms and distractions, but I reckon I've now found a 'decent' home for Spiral/Fountellion writings, here on Paragraph, including this collection of short pieces mostly written 2022.
[Just a reminder: these NFT-collectible 'books' / posts are stored on Arweave, the permaweb (you can view transaction details at the base of this entry). It makes Fountellion already a permaworld, or perma-game, in some sense, in that the seeds are stored and scattered and cannot be removed, though they may not (yet) be planted by developers, growers...]
As people play around more and more with AI and chatbot generators I also wanted to get back to beginnings and just write, or rewrite, for myself... short fragments from different angles - shards - to convey personal, still-burning excitement - like the excitement for a new game powering up for the first time. The potential in it. You might recall (especially kids of the 1980s to 90s) some excitement for those early games which were so immersive and looked forward to. They arrived in a box with discs and manuals and promised the hungry mind a whole world, with favourite characters or universes you could soon play out and escape into again. These were alternative worlds of possibilities and choices opening up...
I recall I was set to become a star pilot, in Microprose flying simulations or in a campaign mode like Origin's 'Wing Commander'. In this early space game, your performance in space dogfights determined what course the war would take, leading players to different endings of the main storyline (whether you were losing or winning the conflict). This was game-changing! For once, player conduct across several missions could affect a story, character(s) and overall war effort. A 'game' started to become a relevant experience, via RPG threads just like the Fighting Fantasy books.
Later, games like 'Red Dead Redemption' offered a huge map of cowboy terrain and experiences which were all pre-set, but again influenced the rate at which you could complete the story.
And then, how would games evolve....? Procedural generated adventure space sims... social gardening games on Facebook... AI-generation...
A.I. will possibly create many artificially living Fabrics and Garden Worlds.
We love change, and we are hungry for experiences. But we don't want things to change too fast, because we want to feel invested in something, invested in a kind of relevance - be it war, history (as in 'Assassin's Creed'), or... nature...
But we will only remain invested and retain patience for it (as with this text you're reading) if there is something relevant, promising.... or even, more so, an evolving, ultimate relevance....
I believe we need places like Fountellion as much as we need the nature of the planet, to keep a permanent, spiritual bridge open between the real and the virtual…
All kinds of virtual Spiral Towers have existed, for some time, across our societies and most recent centuries. They have not all been spiritual, or very natural ones...
As I write this, most ‘big’ or successful video games imitate - of course - the exciting allure of hunting and surviving that exists within us, mostly played on small screens. This element will likely stick around for some time. (There is hunting in Fountellion, and it can be done alone or in groups, but it must be done with more care, since there are consequences for the ecosystem).
So what does a human sci-fi writer or creator need to provide to make their concept unique and hopefully relevant to our current existence and civilisation?
Soon, there could be endless movies and stories and new art ‘generated’ via AI from a just a few core aspects or concepts, ones which change or evolve every time they play out. The following outlines, too: they could also be like simple seeds or acorns for future ‘entertainment’ - human or AI - to go and visit and explore Fountellion.
So then, these are some extra fragments which may provide more context (and also because I'm just too impatient and wanted to skip into this future already. I'm afraid though, that it might be this same impatience which also inhibits my career as a writer).
In terms of AI, which I've seen can come up with good ideas, there's something to be said for using one's own human imagination, which has its own context or knowledge base to draw upon, at first.
But I have found it hard going. Writing. Ideas. I think I'm increasingly outside of the tower, or Dreamspire you see, and living in a larger world. However, it's thanks partly to a process which I hope you will also ‘complete’...
For lately it's thanks to AI, and Fountellion as a text-based game, that I'm beginning to explore my own local environment better, and work with it.
But I feel lucky I was able to seize some slow time and use words to conjure what was needed, firstly, for myself. Perhaps none of this needs to exist for you, dear reader or player, at all.
But what else can any creator - grower, shaper and seed-scatterer - hope for, than to see - witness - the results, and inherent messages, prove helpful in some way - useful, or applicable to others; for fellow comrades of this planet, and even to see their creations hold the power to move - or realign - them for a time in closer harmony again to its great system and fabric... Help people evolve, adapt...
On the surface a good player just plays to play… and win treasure…
So, fellow conjurors and keepers... let's give them a confluent, persistent world so they can always go back there and find or learn something hands-on.... things which matter to something there and here in RL, and by experience, bring that all back out.....
Now that, fellow players, is a game-world.... truly confluent...
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Surely, games are set to become pretty complex and diverse, but we mustn't let go of that early excitement for character and open world...
I wanted to revisit this eager space - a time where I'd just ordered a new game in the mail and had to wait for the package to arrive. The anticipation gives you time to wonder why and what your young self is looking for in that one title you selected.... Or was something in the game selecting you....?
Just '/imagine'... that you have ordered a game called Fountellion, and must now wait for it to arrive... Perhaps, it's already here, in many senses, and perhaps just as permanent, persistent - and under the care of - all of us.
Simply by reading the following you may gain deeper ‘awareness’ and 'insight' as to the nature of a mystical VR game, and gain new perspectives on its history, and possible, personal legacy…
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Stay with me folks.
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- ade mc, '24
Featuring :
- Lost + Found Fragments
- Notes on Progressions & Insights
- Related Passages and Quotations
- Concepts and Ideas still to be Implemented
- Other Hints and Tricks, AI prompt ideas
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...for persistent players (or readers) of the Persistently-Evolving Adventure 'Game’....
Can you read + 'complete' (in any order) the following Shards of Insight...?
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Pieces of Seven
New Introduction to written ‘Fragments of Fountellion’ collection (c. 2045)
Start Here... where a Game starts You!
One INSTANCE, many ITERATIONS
QUOTES for Context
To Keep Playing the Green Game
The Break
Entertainment: Passive or Active, Mixed or Interwoven
Anonymous Note by a former Fountellion Teller
The Reality of Change
PROMO
Beyond a Game
Fountellion - The Escape We All Needed....
Playing with Nature and Balance
The Simple Story of Two Gamers who became the First Pioneers of Fountellion
Stones Around the Heart (featuring hints)
The Confluence of Fountellion
Something Virtual Worth Keeping
Fountellion Chooses You!
The Real Permaculture of Fountellion
The Key
More Reflections on the Reflection of Fountellion
A (Real) Dream of a Dream
All of us in This Game
Reflections on the Impact of the First 'Green Game' Fountellion
Some Potential Interactions or Prompts in A.I.
The Purpose of Fountellion (and Games?)
The Sound of Waves
An Island, Burning...
Spiral Times, A Super-World VLOG (by Dan Harvester)
Just One Damselfly / The Reboot
Reflections of a Game-Keeper
Final Entry?
A Personal Message of Farewell from the Island
The Fielding Fragments, scattered across Worlds in the Tower
Just who are the Keepers of Fountellion?
Teacher
What it Means to be a Keeper-Teller of Fountellion
To the Player of the New Turn
On NEWorld Assets or 'A-Life NFTs'
The True Treasure of Fountellion
Warning!
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLETION : Readership Progression
Image: Later Pioneer Map of Dan H. and Jon D.
Other images from Fountellion Tarot Decks
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‘No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main…’
John Donne
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Fountellion… I think of when I first encountered - stumbled upon - the Fountain from which it takes its name, and stared up alone into its strange, exotic colours; the glittering, scattering pieces of seven, streaming its jewel-like ribbons up into the virtual, black night. And so many of the other sights and sounds which fill so many moments of my dreams these days. Sometimes I get confused between realities; the dreams are so real. A side-effect of the immersion. Perhaps those who've not yet played this Spiral world will be reading this and now be intrigued. So I will tell you more...
For me - now… here… back in the Source again - with the wind in my garden finding the leaves of many trees and swaying the soft fruit, I can truly say that my game has ended. It has brought me here - washed up, happily I suppose, to appreciate slow time and simple things. To relinquish any struggle for power, fortune or glory. To read old words, carve new ones - just for the sake of the process - and to simply exist in the seasons, in amongst the shapes and forms of slow Time and what can be created here, annually and perennially.
But it is no easy thing... surrendering one's will to power... to lay down arms in the mind and especially, to return 'back into the marketplace with open hands'...
Old Ben Fielding - the founding father I suppose - would be glad of this, and pleased to hear I'm sounding so much like him and his writings. What a legacy. I was lucky enough to find a key, and be an early beta tester, a pioneer, and now a keeper.
Indeed, I have much to thank his 'game' - Fountellion - for, although he'd never claim it was ever his.
For it has given me the skills and awareness to - never - be bored here in RL. To always grow and protect. A true grower and permaculturalist…
I think back over so many sessions spent being so involved within its vibrant super-nature, its reflection and amplification of our shared natural world… What a game to play, and what a preparation, a path that led me here.
I can read back over the transcripts to some of my early avalogs; they’re filled with an infectious wonder and excitement; the gift of sight without truly seeing, of gaining knowledge and fast XP but without the wisdom of insight, I suppose…
Anyway… so I remember the Fountain, when it flowed most fiercely from within the clearing of the forest, within the silent company of the stones, which a player can only find…when they are ready… when they have gained enough awareness. The fountain flows upwards with such light, it produces an effect like a lion’s mane; an orangey shimmering glow against the constellations of the game. More real than real…
Since it’s an island - a large one at that - the name became easier to say than Fountain island, or Fountellia, which was perhaps its initial name. But Fountellion also suits its savagery. For it’s not a magical place. In fact, this game will teach you about loss, need, and true co-operation. More of that later...
Right now, let me summon again the Tree of Eyes within the ruins of the Monastery, the shadows and bright music in the Village of Embertime, where I lived amongst fellow players and the flicker-folk for so long. Of course, how I miss the wielding of the powers and energy which are the marks each player carry on the backs of their hands.
I can't escape fierce moments of longing to be back. But when you are old and tired trust me you're alright not to bare the burdens you know come with them.
But I can think, and I can imagine… of my many thrilling encounters, of much time hunting - and being hunted. Even in the village, those wretched Stokers keep you wide awake alright!
I think of the Insights… revealed from Progression. No, I cannot explain them easily - or at all. Words are powerful but they still require masters to wield them, and I'm sure I'm not one of them. But I may try…
What else can I recall...?
I remember the first time I stared up at the high Spire, in its different manifestations; a true marvel, of a different kind. Dan’s tower of Babel…
But then, overwhelmingly almost, there is the Nature itself.. growing on... artificially, persistently, all around its meta-players all the time. Even now, it must be changing the island into something unique that I'm curious to guess at how it may have changed. Its regions of sheer, breath-taking beauty and its darkest, most intimate forest depths… Those sound effects that bewitch and beguile… Like a great dream of Nature… or as though Nature itself were dreaming of Nature!
Yes, some nights I still wake to the sound of the soft boom of surf only to quickly realise I do not live near the sea. And all kinds of memories come back of that island littered with buried treasure even its multitude of fresh players have no idea they are actually in the throes of finding it or digging it up.
And there are the different kinds of eyes beholding me... those ever-appearing on the old Tree near the Monastery, the squinting, jolly-old hermit / farmer eyes of Greenwise, and, most vividly, those deep, vacant, hungry eyes of the Lord Bleakmuse, before they are changed through every revolution that stirs over the leaves on Fountellion.
-from 'Slow-Written Recollections of Fountellion (from RL)' by Early Pioneer Jon Davies
completed.
The year now is 2045. I’m glad I’ve lived to see it; to have made it this far. But to the natural world this year number means nothing, of course. It’s just another day, and we assist, like so many species, to spread our seeds and add our decompositions to the soil. New trees and plants will grow forth. I am glad to still be a part of this process! Our ‘culture’ makes a lot of noise but it merely attempts to manage resources efficiently for the maximum amount of us. There is the old fighting for ideologies in this respect, for ‘power’ and territory. But it is pleasing to note, how most of society and culture has ‘gone green’, that is to say, we are engaged heavily with efforts to re-stabilise ecosystems across the biomes of planet Earth - for our own survival mostly, but also, now at least, with a larger dose of respect for its ecosystems.
Nature still finds ways to help itself; not necessarily with us in mind. Mosquitoes are doing well, and so are the diseases they carry. So it could be said that we have, as a species gone through a period of reassessment; re-defining what it means to be human which now means to prove more how we can realign our activities - food, resource management, agriculture, energy capture etc. etc. - with the great outside, the ‘Source’, ‘the great outdoors’. We have simplified ourselves towards re-wilding, re-planting, re-applying our science and technology for less personal wealth and status, and far more for group survival and an older, slower lifestyle.
It was not always this way. And the transition has not been without… pain... effort.
But a VR game - ‘Fountellion’ - appeared out of nowhere and went ‘viral’. It went further than many other sources or projects of ‘influence’, to steer humanity faster onto greener tracks. If ever a game grew to become much more than just a game, then it was this.
The following extracts and fragments; some have been gathered from across diverse corners of the web, to help preserve some picture of this treasured super-creation. A virtual reflection (although with enhancements) with a ground-breaking model of artificial life, and magical powers, of symbolic spirituality, ‘insights’ which have brought a kind of ‘naturalist enlightenment’ into the hearts and minds of its early players, the more patient explorers and, later on, a dedicated movement of protective ‘keepers’. Although, many of these folk were already trying to save us and our real, natural world.
And may its light, burning brightly still as I write this, grow on as long as our species struggles on with its search for a perfect management of its affairs, and for meaning and connection with a Nature we have attempted to recklessly over-control for so long.
Let this be dedicated to the brave builders of that early, Fountellion beta. Professor Ben Fielding and his developers from across the globe shared an idea; they saw something which could help awaken us; to ourselves and to the treasure of Nature; to restore some balance.
Complete the reading of all fragments to gain your own personal ‘awareness’ of the world… enough, perhaps, to even want to (re-) visit it yourself, and to check in to see if its fixed but evolving ecosystem remains in balance. It persists as a reflection, perhaps, of how much we ourselves, are in balance.
And after all, Fountellion need not be confined just to virtual reality, but can be accessed also by a far older form of metaverse and imaginative reality - that of letters and writing, flowing through the eyes and deep into the eyes of the mind…. where it all started.
- D.H. an early beta pioneer, former Teller and forever a Keeper of Fountellion.
completed.
I was at work, in a shared office. I work for an online perma-publication where we meet and discuss what games and what topics we are to promote and explore. The office is all virtual: a shared online workspace in The Spiral. The space actually resembles a round castle table like we were knights of information.
We’d just been discussing online rumours about some ‘secret, evolving, nature’ game: how a bunch of early access players had been given access by being sent a rare key, right out of the blue. These players didn’t have to use their key; shortly after they were somehow ‘sucked in’ to its ‘hidden’ world in the metaverse. And they could use their keys if they wished to go back… and apparently they were….
I was just on a RL break, checking messages, when I got a notification: My avatar had received one of these keys. I felt a strange excitement, like being a lucky chosen winner. Immediately, I wondered how many others had now got one, or still how few…
Shortly after, I was looking at the virtual representation of it, turning the rusty old thing over in my spiral gloves. If it had been real it would’ve felt heavy, like iron. Nothing glitzy at all. It was a key to make you wonder what the door it was made for looked like! So, I sent it to my PIP (avatar) pocket for exploring later.
But I never got that chance. In the continued meeting, back in the virtual again I glanced down at my avatar legs. Something was growing up them, very vivid green and sending small chutes off just like ivy or a pea plant. I was telling everyone at the table what was happening to me, which drew their attention, however they were beginning to dissolve and their voices were getting quieter so only their mouths were moving. In the place of voices I could hear birdsong and the sound of waves steadily breaking...
I was sinking into the office floor - down through it - and was just considering whether or not to jack out and reboot the office sim, when instead I just decided: I’d go with it. It was a conscious decision, and quite a relaxing one too. The sound of the ivy growing quickly enveloped every part of me and made me sit far back in my chair…
Everything faded out to a light blue in the visor…
When the environment returned I was before a dark green, intricately-designed iron gate floating just above grassy ground high up on a hill. Everything was blowing in this breeze coming in with the sea below, for the hill overlooked a beautiful tidal estuary with very blue water moving into a bay of wide sand.
The detail was incredible: you noticed how the wind affected the waves and could even see tiny white crests on their tops. It drew the eyes so beautifully rendered and you could just stare at that scene. That iron door swung closed with a satisfying metal ‘clink’ and I knew I must be inside this new game, this secret world connected somehow to The Spiral, even the office where I had just been sitting.
Shortly after I would meet the game-keeper, a monkish figure who I found out was called ‘Greenwise’ to act as my guide and companion.
He had a lot of things to tell me which would end up changing my life significantly.
I hope this entry finds those who are still resisting the flow and power of this very new ‘nature game’.
Believe me, you too will be drawn down this rabbit hole, at any moment….
Environment rules… especially this one….
-from collected online articles on early Fountellion (Alex Archive, permaweb).
completed.
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The decentralised island supports many thousands of players, but not all are active at the same time. There are also iterations. If a player achieves all Insights then the game is completed for all players... then trapped players are released and access to the last insight is prohibited until new Stokermen / Stokers arrive.
In your session you are given access for as long as you like. The game is for everyone. But… many will play at different times and in different ways. There are no winners or losers, only those more accustomed to playing, and who know nature and how to survive.
Due to the immersive nature of the island, it was expected that players who find their way into Fountellion play considerably to begin with, but may later start to replace reality (RL) with the virtual. The more they learn of the simulated nature, you see, the more they become interested in real nature. If there are many players, then more of them will be trapped by the Stokermen and imprisoned. It also means that more players will have to work together in the Village, so as not to harm or reduce the resources of the island.
Greenwise the Guardian AI NPC manages the resources, and will intervene to stop excessive cutting or burning. This leaves players with a choice: survive carefully together and in harmony with the island, or risk energy depletion and imprisonment in the Spire. There are many players imprisoned, but only a few players who will make it to the last insight to set them free, and this road to saving them is variable.
Such interwoven design elements are really to ensure one thing: that Fountellion is a treasured island, and we are kept non-invasive.
-from 'Original Notes on Fountellion Design' by Zack Collins, D.D.
completed.
‘For the Spire must fall in Fountellion..’
- a saying of the Flicker-folk in Embertime
‘If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.’
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, 'The Secret Garden'
‘She made herself stronger by fighting with the wind.’
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, 'The Secret Garden'
‘In Which the Player Sets Out on a Path and Becomes Half-Lost in the World….’
-outline for possible ‘Progression’ - Orig. Fountellion game-book.
'Nature is bigger than art. Get back into Nature.'
-Prof. Benjamin Fielding, 'Green Game' founder.
‘Fountellion: where visions can be found and revealed with a word…. but where players must first earn such words by learning how Nature works, and how we ourselves work there and with each other…. What a game to play in tandem with this game of Life, this Death, eh?’
- A decentralised Teller blocktweet found onchain
‘An understanding of evolution can teach us our true place in nature, as part of the immense array of living forms which the impersonal forces of evolution have produced.’
- Brian and Deborah Charlesworth: 'Evolution, A Very Short Introduction'
completed.
Players who have unlocked the final Insight are no longer ‘seen’ by the raggedy Stokers (when next Stokers begin to appear, in whatever form). This allows Pioneers (and Tellers) to Free Roam across the island, and enjoy simple things such as the act of living, teaching, survival and maintenance of energy. They frequently study the evolving nature, craft creatively, learn or teach skills and practice ways of living sustainably. However, they are only able to visit for certain periods of time.
The Stokers feed especially on those who shed more dust. These are players who make noise or dream loudest. They will probably be taken.
-Immersive Feedback post, hints article
completed.
Dan Harvester was finally moving under the radar. Off-grid. Disconnecting… back to the Source. The 'meat-averse'. He was fed up with gadgets, apps, updates, mods, games and, even… virtual worlds. Yeah, even the latest NEWorlds. He was fed up too, of sharing space and time with avatars, even when modelled to exact details, because it was still like being a puppet on a string talking to other puppets. No one seemed free; from the potential of hiding behind their persona. And by being in this abstract space, it meant no one was weighed down by the mutual pressure and stress of living in reality. He was also fed up with messages, invites, notifications and missed calls. True, a phone or video call was direct and personal, but it was still, well, an abstract. Maybe it was something to do with the people he thought he ‘knew’ online - or didn’t know, or perhaps never had known. And surely his life was more than the next promise of slick complexity with fresh, potent powers of ‘control’ over the simple aspect of life and living in a moment. Actually, such powers were keeping him from the simple aspects of life, and living in a moment.
Nothing was slow anymore. Nothing was enjoyed or appreciated or handled with care.
Our eyes see more than our hearts know….
He knew that his course of action was an extreme one. A reaction. He knew it wouldn’t be so simple. He would have to keep one home phone. But it had come to this now. It was set. And within him, he felt confidence stir. He felt the desire to find a real garden of his own, to spend the rest of his days working harmoniously with the things he wanted to grow and cook and eat. He would use the ancient language of gardening vocabulary, with names that applied to the process of working with the land and trees. He might find neighbors who were used to such a life too, and who took the time to stop by, talk and help out, or laugh with him at a modern world always hoping to harness nature, and never let it run wild and free.
He knew this attitude was mostly thanks to the island. Fountellion. The skills he’d acquired there, and his deep love of the place; all it had shown to him. The great confidence in himself that he’d extracted from time spent there playing. He’d been able to give some things back too, offering it some protection from the threats of harm and degradation, just as with The Source.
Now to break off was the only way to focus completely; to change and transform into someone new, beyond the spaces or environment he’d lived in previously. And after all, one’s environment is everything to a body in nature, and to its well-being. Therefore the solution was - this trip. A break. A journey of the self, for experience, personal adventure and growth.
It would not be a retreat. Because he had tried to retreat. Oh yeah. And that had failed. How it had failed, he mused, strange memories filling his mind. But maybe this time he would find a girl who shared his dream to get out, but a more realistic dream. A dream to not be completely free or cut off but just, to be freer. Simpler.
We assume we are all gods in our own ways but we are tools of a universe that flows through our natures. We’re systems within systems working in unison for a shared survival, control and sense of ownership. We are not islands but dark, hungry, needful beings. We thrive best in the proximity, the mutual dependence and company of others - and also a respectful distance from others.
He knew something of this already. The presence of a certain game character called Greenwise would surely accompany him on his break, in his thoughts. And his time studying and inhabiting the biodiversity and the work in permaculture. He had met many companions on Fountellion, bound as they were by so many elements of its game and its nature. These would be the only people he would stay in contact with, certainly. Sure, he might try and bring some back with him, out into the Source. Again he thought of the Monastery….
His mind; he knew it would still wander into virtual realms and metaverses, but these would have to be in his imagination, or memories of which now there were many, or in his dreams, since he’d go to bed earlier, physically tired from outdoor work.
He would find a new balance away from the ‘brave new world’ where indeed some sense of ‘balance’ existed but it fluctuated so readily. This time, the technology in this new balance would meet his needs again instead of leading him towards things he really didn’t need.
He would begin the process of ‘the break’, as he called it, today.
The only way he’d return to the virtual is if the best thing that had come out of it - Fountellion - had a need for him.
Or if he had any need of that wide, shining island again, perpetually freeing more washed-up players from their own dark spiral towers and deamspires...
completed.
When we are young, we are at the mercy of the game of Life; its rules and its limits.
Once we learn some of these, we can, perhaps, overcome some of them, such as our environment. Luck and attitude might also have a part to play; our general outlook as people; how collaborative we are, how good we can be at certain things in the prevailing winds of the day.
I do not know the end of this ‘story’ about an evolving, persistent game, which is just another mirror of Life. We seem to need these great, elaborate mirrors, and stories, so we can explore concepts and aspects from a safe distance, passively or immersively, or to share or promote an awareness, and perhaps move onwards… towards a greater power over the world - or even - in better balance with it.
The reflections, perspectives… there are many. Books, films, television, games offer a stream of passive or active entertainment.
What about a ‘game’ or world that manages to truly enhance or leverage the good aspects deep within us? Firstly, its setting might be a beautiful world, wild and evolving that is both an escapist simulation and a platform for other games and stories to unfold.
It was never hard to reach. Then, it became a seamless transition, and, thanks to advanced technology, more and more present, accessible…
So now, it’s a parallel realm… where you can ‘find yourself’ there, preferably before the real thing finds you…
- from 'The Green Game and a new Green Age' by Jon Davies
completed.
The details of a life don’t matter. Get that into your thick heads. Who was I? My life doesn’t matter and I know it. I’ve accepted it. I’m just someone who lived as another avatar of nature for a time. I’m reaching out here only so as to clarify some thoughts and observations about Nature. Permanence.
The rest is none of your damn business. Now move on. Stop hanging onto things. Stop searching for familiar cultural references, for intriguing stories with grand openings, exciting events and thoughtful endings. Stop reading those abstract books. They are lies. The truth is out there and it’s Nature. Environment. Where we make our plans, collaborate in a moment, for future moments, and stay for death.
Some folks, they’ll read a book just so they can finish it. ‘Yeah, I read that book.’ Completed.
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Well, this isn’t a book. It’s a bunch of notes and fragments. You should feel free to open or scroll through to anywhere you like and read or extract something. It should never end. It's eternal. It only ‘ends’ because I’m out of energy. This book is the world. It lives there. And in Fountellion.
Keep it for a while and pass it on, to the next avatars...
Keep playing, keep keeping, keep telling it… But Life is for living. Live close to the earth and you’ll live well.
You do not need to 'complete' anything, that was all just part of the device.
completed.
Due to the persistent nature of the game, players of Fountellion become acquainted with the reality of change, both positive and negative. The island world becomes a home with a habitat providing energy and shelter. Things live and die, people may be ‘stolen’ by preying ‘Stokers’, avatars change and grow stronger and better at reacting to changes in weather and vegetation, or they stagnate and often perish. There is a need to manage resources, flora and fauna - other boreal animals. It’s ideal to understand the connections between them. Then there are the ever-surprising attacks by the Stokermen, which serves to foster a real sense of fear. They ensure players eyesight and awareness - even behind the interface - remains sharp over short and long distances. There is the binding need to work together to provide shelters and distractions in the wake of a sudden attack. These external forces promote a pressure missing from modern society, beside that of territorial war. But in Fountellion the people and players surivive together, think and build and craft and grow together. If players are captured for ignoring these forces or through bad luck then there is the chance of redemption for their avatar and Insights already obtained. And then there is the Spire which both attracts and repels until a time when someone reaches to its peak and confronts the Lord of the Stokermen.
In short, Fountellion might be seen as a test to see if humanity can survive and manage resources in a finite landscape of great and fascinating - artificial - depth and beauty. Virtually everything we imagine there, is real.
-from 'Original Notes on Fountellion Design' by Zack Collins, D.D.
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Fountellion? We can only try and describe it, or show you it, via words, recordings or screenshots, but… really, it must be virtually lived, experienced…
It’s a beautiful VR simulation of the natural world : a boreal forest biome… (and later, lots of biomes...)
Super-advanced, artificial flora & fauna 'live' and evolve there, based on existing food chain interactions. From mammals like wolves, bears, deer, squirrels, to the flowers and mushroom layer in the forest soil system. This.. is the ‘fabric’.
On top of this, integrated gameplay 'progressions' allow for both a fantastic and spiritual rite-of-passage trend which make it a first 'green game' :a base layer for players to unlock 'Insights' into Nature itself and a purer form of what might constitute 'humanity' alongside it.
Search ‘Fountellion’ online and engage with written fragments which explore the concept, and just how its players are being changed by its early, mysterious existence, growth and later on, its harsh green wisdom (and even... salvation?).
What are the colors of Progression? The seven Insights? Will society - strengthened via their soulbound legacies - ever be the same again? What does the fountain at the heart of the island tell you about yourself and your own priority to Life and to others? Will the village force players together to live and belong and manage the island resources in a sustainable way?
Earn its soulbound assets or 'Insights', collect its NFTs, contribute your own fragments and creations as NFTs tagged #fountellion. Bring value to the movement towards a truly green, evolving, Ai-enabled metaverse...
How are Nature's ways revealed to players of this 'ultimate' mirror-world + life-changing, life-enhancing ‘green game’ adventure?
To explore Fountellion is to explore the limits of yourself in a truly ‘ultimate’ game… In fact, the only ‘game’ a human player of Life would ever need to play… to prepare for it, to escape it, but then to survive and progress with skill, exchange and online comradery...
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'The concept of gaming as it is used in the following pages goes beyond games, in the same way that learning goes beyond the configuration of a classroom. Gaming constitutes the sum total of activities, literacies, knowledge, and practices activated in and around any instance of a game. Gaming is play across media, time, social spaces, and networks of meaning; it includes engagement with digital FAQs, paper game guides, parents and siblings, the history of games,other players, as well as the games themselves. It requires players to be fluent in a series of connected literacies that are multimodal, performative, productive, and participatory in nature. It requires an attitude oriented toward risk taking, meaning creation, nonlinear navigation, problem solving, an understanding of rule structures, and an acknowledgment of agency within that structure, to name but a few.'
-from ‘Toward an Ecology of Gaming’ by Katie Salen
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When you experience Fountellion - through the Spiral Interface - you are firstly… unsettled…
Because it's just so... distracting... (as if there weren't enough of this in our lives)...
But it's like being led somewhere you didn't really have any time for... until... you quickly start to realise... that it's actually revealing things - feelings, instincts, an awareness only possible through the latest immersion tech - that were sleeping...
Or, that were like, missing pieces, that again... gradually... it makes you begin to feel were missing and which then you must start working to reassemble… just by spending time there.
I suppose it's called reconnection... restoration... regeneration....
.
- from 'The Green Game and a new Green Age' by Jon Davies
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Things soon became interesting, and when we began to inject a human-orientated game into this model of artificial life.
Fountellion allowed people to 'play' in a growing, hazardous, ever-changing landscape, at survival and self-discovery. The results, and the emergent game behavior they were interacting with, were unpredictable and exciting to be immersed in. And all of it 'safe' from a fundamental physical perspective. The ‘price’ of virtual game-death was only Time and a lack of progression and insight, and a separation from the life-cycle of the game. But we had to include something to cull player numbers and maintain - and promote - a balance. Something intrinsic and permanent. Also, something to concern players, and to drive them towards each other again and towards being creative and alert. Greenwise, the Stokermen, etc…
Of course, the model or ‘Fabric’ took us the most time, tweaking and working on the variables to create a complete, artificial simulation of the Taiga biome on an island. Even then, you will find some species only native to Fountellion. They are impossible to predict, and you could argue why they've not evolved in reality, but the variables and code used in development can never be so exact in their replication of our natural world.
In fact, you could start up a new iteration or genesis of Fountellion - a Fountellion v2 - with the same coding we used but soon arrive at different results, albeit with similarities. Later on, with so many player interactions and involvement added - plus with people following the mindset and learnings in the game - you’d see differences in how we’d affect or invade the island.
Likewise in reality, with so much complexity from simple variables, we cannot truly know how far we've tipped the balance of the planet far and wide nor how the planet's complex, interacting systems will continue to react to our presence.
However, in Fountellion, via this advanced simulation and 'game', indeed, we could really show some trends, and reveal some things....
The most important result, perhaps, or the most ‘ultimate’, was how Fountellion distracted players from immediacy - or immediate things - once again, via this mirror-world of nature. It would make them work for things, to learn how to grow and build things carefully, and appreciate the fragility and sources of life and food again.
It was a way to re-balance the mind and reconfigure the lifestyle of our restless, ape-like, versatile species already searching for more sustainable, harmonious, enjoyable meaning…
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The story of Jon and Dan, the first pioneers to reset the 'revolutionary' circular system of Fountellion, was really a perfect case. It's really what we made Fountellion to be, in at least one major way: A way to reset the soul.
Society, both online and offline had really reached a point of disconnection, in a gradual, subtle way Philip K Dick and the creators of the movie Blade Runner had foreseen. But there were also just endless games, and then monetisation and tokenisation of games... Fountellion had to be a way back.
Games are distracting. Addictive. Shiny and new. Like sex and sugar-addiction, where pornographers for one thing are all drug pushers, pushing the objective visions that arrive to exert a control and fixation. Game studios and movie makers too are pushing experience and promise of relaxation and emotion. It's the Soma of today. In the old days, confectioners and sweet-shop owners were a worry. Teeth had to be protected. Willy Wonka’s character is the greatest of them all, partly why there's such a powerful story there. He's the game-keeper, to catch the players. Only, Wonka comes with his own disclaimer: the Oompa Loompas will take away the greedy ones and remind us all we need to be 'more Charlie...' So will the Stokers....
So, Fountellion is a new Charlie... and it's here to save you from addiction and even more, pull you back into a a tribe of survivors.
Gardening, growing, surviving… is certainly more pure. It's a pure connection with effort and result.
I even remember Farmville. It pulled people into Facebook in the early days of social media. There was a dim effort to reconnect and connect people before being swallowed by the birth of an internet site which many, you might say, serves only to keep people in their places.
So Dan Harvester was in fact a victim, a Charlie gone wrong, and it took his friend - a more fortunate or balanced individual - to go in and find him again. But he couldn't just find him, he had to have help from the game itself - that old, uniting presence of the ancient nature that originally created our spirit of comradeship, and togetherness.
Their story really lies at the heart of why Fountellion was created.
Fountellion would grow on to set off a new wave of green worlds: autonomous, unstoppable and well cared-for, which would serve a growing desire in humanity to reunite and live more fully and with respect - or at least understanding - for the real forces flowing, within and without.
Fountellion is treasured but it wasn't perfect, no. It still contained many traces of addiction...
Which is why the Reset was built in, the 'Unravelling', much to the dismay of many.
But look... I write this contently, for we built something people needed, and, in fact, beyond people, or bigger then people. It was more the antidote with a few side-effects.
And we did make it back there… somewhere… changed….
At night, I still hear those waves, and feel the tingling...
I'm still a Keeper.
I'm still needed by my tribe.
And by the great garden outside.
Be well. Play well, friends-in-the-Game....
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These great, looming presences are positioned like frozen lords or protectors of the Fountain, gazing up into its glittering brilliance, just like any player who finds themselves in that forest clearing. They’re so large, like Easter Island statues, and perhaps serve the same kind of warning. Standing near or beside them is to mimic them, for one’s avatar body is frozen too, and one’s eyes are also drawn into the flowing streams of coloured light. Just like in a cinema when one gazes around and sees so many faces transfixed by a glowing screen, you feel like you are in a large company, but of an ancient, more selected kind. The stones do not feel dark or strange, but friendly, and this is what they represent: the stones are the friends and family who are there throughout one’s life, and the game of life. You feel like you can lean on them and that’s exactly what you do when you seek a renewal of Energy in that place. In fact it’s one of the whispers you can hear in the grasses near the estuary: ‘Lean on the stones in the clearing of the Great Forest…’
Game hint: There are seven stones around the Fountain, as there are seven Insights, seven chakras, seven ‘areas’ to the island… If you have unlocked an Insight, then the corresponding stone will glow vibrantly when you place your hand on one, and trigger visions in the Fountain, replays of how you unlocked it, and it will restore your Power. Placing your hand on a stone for an Insight not yet unlocked, may reveal a vision acting as a clue as to its nature, inspiring you to search for your next Progressions. It's another cool, regenerative feature.
The fountain of Fountellion is a digital work of art in itself. Some kind of clever AI coding generates visions and re-plays from your personal experiences and time spent on the island. In this way, players can draw strength and motivation from the things they’ve seen and achieved.
The guardian, Greenwise is clearly part of such AI - if and when he is not ‘inhabited’ possibly by a real game-mage (a keeper). It’s said that he wanders in this place and if you go near him, you will see some of the visions played out since the genesis of the island. It feels like he genuinely does look over and protect the island. If ever mankind was to receive its first sentient being, I hope it will be Greenwise. He is the steadiest stone in Fountellion.
Game hint: Tap your open palm with two fingers of the other, to reveal a navigable tree of boreal flora and fauna suspended in the air before you. This will come to be a vital source of reference as it reveals how all animals interconnect on the island.
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Part of the beauty of Fountellion was its ground-breaking fluidity, even today, and despite its huge, underlying complexity. Players go there and they play and they grow; they unlock wonder, wisdom, nature affinity and skills... They are part of something bigger, but not infinite. It has universal appeal, tapping into our instincts for adults, young adults, even pre-teens. It’s both an experience and a game - a game parents are happy for their kids to play, under some supervision or with the new ‘region lock’ feature. Every session they learn something that translates to ‘our’ natural world.
The next layer, the fantasy and spiritual element, only serves to empower this ‘progression’. Thrilling action comes from encounters and evasions with the ‘hunters’, the Stokermen. Ambition comes with the looming presence of a tower. Everything else serves the basic needs and desires of people - their interdependence. What emerges is a deep reconnection with landscape, within and without, and a desire to visit only to gain in energy, skills, experience - and friendship.
What other - confluent - games are there to play better than this?
Let the NEWorlds - and a new, (perma)-cultural world (re-)emerge…. Living within limits. Now more than ever.
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Knowledge is Power
Fountellion. The word conjures something flowing and eternal. I will tell you more about what this word means to me, but you’ll have to stay with me.
I’m grateful about just how it has overtaken my life and my very being! In fact, I was downright lost before it found me, like some religion which unlocks what we truly are without any great sermons or songs. And there is no God, I’m afraid, only the world itself... and its super-worlds...
Fountellion is also now a place I must protect with my life, like any home or village in real wars of old. I love it as much as I love planet Earth, and that was its purpose: to awaken such feelings in us - its present merry band of ‘keepers’.
How can it do this? Well, because it too is part of the world. We created it, but it is very much an extension of what exists. And it’s this extension which has saved it.
‘Everything you can imagine is real.’ What a quote, if you didn’t already know it by Picasso. And how true.
What is Fountellion? It started as a game; another advanced game. In truth, I was getting tired of playing any game, or all games, and like most, then, I had played a few... Yeah, I was ready to detach and submit to more passive forms of entertainment. Games are so demanding, after all, like reality, like dealing with nature, our own temperaments, changing like the weather, sleeping, waking, adapting, evolving...
But very quickly you realise that Fountellion is more than just a game. It’s more than just some ‘open world’ survival game. It’s an evolving world, like our own. A true simulation, which offers spiritual insight into Nature, which allow players to think less about… even forget…our more fragile human preoccupations.
And how we needed this heightened awareness of Nature... for we were surely on the brink of self-destruction….
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People began to hear rumours of a ‘green’ game-world inside the Spiral which was locking up avatars instead of letting them progress through this game. No one knew how to reach this world except by chance, or by the finding, or reception of, one of the few - or overlooked - NFT keys. In most cases these virtual keys once rendered, resembled old, battered iron-like keys as though matching some disused, rusty gate into some overgrown, secret garden. This was suitably symbolic.
Players of this early access, closed beta were at first selected or invited personally by top developers, for relevant contributions to games or to green projects. Some received email invitations, some were given clues to follow, some were brought in, as though accidentally.
Next the rumours became real: that the Spiral Interface with its towering gateway to worlds - the Spiral Tower - did in fact hide such a unique, ‘base-layer’, natural world inside it. Not only this, but one which was intrinsically connected to all The Spiral worlds.
The tricky part at that time was finding a way in. Or, if it suddenly were to find you, to react accordingly when it did invite - or summon - you. If this had been an actual marketing trick, it would have been the best ever. However, the creators had hard-wired this aspect as a side-effect of its interconnection with all Spiral worlds, and as a genuine strategy of opening up the world gateway to Fountellion carefully, before it could be opened wider - and be found - by everyone. This effect was brilliant, as though the body was calling the mind back to a purer reality.
And what of the locked-up avatars? The ‘soul-stokers’ - again, a fitting name. Well, they weren’t entirely prisoners. They still got to play and experience a certain aspect of the game. But there was really only one way to be set free, and that would take a little longer. The reason it would take so long? It was really because the Bleak Lord character who held them captive could always use restless prisoners to carry out his bidding, and to feed his ingrained obsession to never visit Fountellion’s nature for himself… but stay locked away in its very midst.
-from ‘Mind and Body: A Brief History of Fountellion’ by Peter Dawkins
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One of the most successful and popular aspects of the ‘green game’ was the gardening. Just like Farmville in the early days of social media, it tapped right into the timeless trait of tending the gardens of friends and neighbors as a way of social reinforcement. In Fountellion, with such a vivid evolving model of nature, players would spend the bulk of their time close to the Village lands, tending to fruit forests and permaculture vegetable beds. The fabric resides truly in the soil simulation, allowing players to plant and grow and experiment with agroforestry and even syntropy.
The Village was the true heart of the game. The impulse to progress - search for the Insights - would slow down or cease for many a player here. Rightly so. The game promoted a liveable way of life and a connection with the virtual landscape, with a wealth of translatable mini-skills to be learned from fellow players and NPCs. If they were able to evade the attacks of Stokers outside the Village then they could learn much that fed into the new culture of gardening and homesteading that were a response to threats to society’s infrastructure caused by climate change. You could ask the question as to why bother with the more spiritual or fantastical aspects of the ‘game’? Water management is a far greater feature reward to apply to RL.
But it’s no simple thing to try and separate the game-world of Fountellion from this ancient style of gardening. The nature of the land was also very interconnected with its artificial animals and wildlife, its diverse range of farming techniques and the shared necessity to maintain energy levels.
Would players have been so willing or motivated to grow and survive if there wasn’t a movement towards progression, or an attacking threat from the skies reducing the population? This was what was so great about Fountellion. There was fear and a necessity to learn and co-operate. The true permaculture was the awareness of what really achieves things: Mother Nature’s drive, its burning fear, necessity, collaboration and competition… truly are potent mothers of invention. But, invention only in harmony and confluence, and which doesn’t separate its inhabitants too far from a close physical connection.
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My hand, I remember, trembled slightly as I walked away from my home 3d printer, holding the physical key in my palm.
It was not as heavy as an actual old garden key might have been, but it looked like it would fit into an old, heavy wooden door or gate. Or gateway...
It had arrived as an encrypted attachment. An intangible, digital file of data. But having read the message that accompanied it, I'd wasted no time.
I sent the attachment straight to the printer, and had watched as the dark object appeared, made manifest in RL. It would never open any real door (I don’t think). However, only by printing it would the key become active in the virtual. It was another security step (and it also gave us pioneers a valuable souvenir). They were rare too, because you could only print the file once.
Putting on my visor I looked down at the key and saw it appear in the virtual. I was expecting its appearance to become something ornate, polished, shiny; a golden, intricately carved object glowing with some kind of green power or glow.
But no, it was just a rusty old key in the virtual world too. I had to wipe some old vines that were wrapped around it in order to read the one, faded word ‘Fountellion’ there inscribed. But this worn, used appearance did nothing to calm my excitement and at being such an early key-holder. Also, it did glint slightly with a green light, when you turned it over in your palm. And it was intricately carved, just like a secret garden key for some heavy wooden door in some large, overgrown, evergreen hedgerow. It had a small fork-like rune at one end emerging from a small spiral decoration. What would it lead to? Where would it lead me and its many players to come? How would it change me….? I would find out, of course. We all would…
But at that magical point, it was just a key into a place. All I had to do was speak the activation phrase and insert it into the door in The Spiral Tower, and it would open the gateway. Did I know the activation phrase? No, because I had to press the key in a certain way with my virtual hands for the words to appear before me.
Some might say it was all a gimmick. But it served to highlight the reality of the situation. The rare key was in my hand, before the world knew much about what it would lead into.
Sometimes I take it out and hold it again and it catches the light of the real sun.
What would lie on the other side at that point, I had only an idea, a sense of excitement, for some promise of wonder that has flowed through my mind ever since...
A world of enhanced nature. A thrilling game of life within this game of life itself.
And its progression? Simply to lead players through its fabric in stages until one arrives back where we all started.. into the Source again, with wider and greener eyes.
An ultimate game, indeed, as no game has ever interested me since...
Why should it? Fountellion is a parallel universe, a reflection, that need only be played for a certain time, and which owes its existence entirely to planet Earth, to nature, to science, and those who shared their love of all this, by filling a digital realm with our childlike wonder for it, our forgotten awe and respect for its... power... both light and dark...
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Life moves so fast these days but reading other accounts appearing on various online platforms has encouraged me now to lay down some stories from my own sessions within the ‘Green Game’, as it is becoming known. Memories may contradict or overlap but it’s no matter to me or to it.
How I still recall the first taste of its rich, virtual wildness, the immersion into its lucid grip, its vivid ‘aliveness’ that mimics - extends - our precious natural world. But just as much as the traditional joy of reading and writing slows down the mind is the memories of that ‘game’ itself. Fountellion forced me to slow down; stopping me throwing away virtual experiences and just let its world - being in that world - immerse me, anew. Indeed, it also teaches us to speed up at times - that’s for sure - but overall it has a pace; an ancient, timeless pace - that binds you to it. Its insights - I did ‘achieve’ a few, if that matters - still comfort and come back to me in how I accept my existence within the Source, where I work now as a gardener.
Yes, it’s probably because I spent so much time ‘gardening’ in the game. Only there it was much more like surviving….
I was so intrigued from the outset…. I remember feeling really thrilled by the concept of a world with real mystery again, and just wanting to get there like to enter a dream, or a brand new country, researching how to get there. I excited by the notion of games again.
And it was different. It was nothing real or fantastical but something in between, something fantastical but based - rooted - in the real; something that could empower and energize me. And this still sends me back; informs my deep attachment to its status today - growing eternally, eternally renewing itself - a man-made creation like no other game, like Nature wished to talk to itself through us; to celebrate itself and its great range of emotions that teach us to take, give back, relax and be oneself, changing and dynamic and close to all its other creations. Fountellion is permaculture.
I think there were many other players but it is a very large island. In fact, the map doesn’t show just how big and how dense it is.
And yes, I have met Dan Harvester in the village and we spent a lot of time there.
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Last night I dreamt I went to Fountellion again… and I am young and free and learning... everything… either directly in the village in the deep pine forests, or just intuitively via movement and world-roaming.
And those visions, the ‘Insights’….
Insightful, certainly... all about what, and who, and where I am… at night with the sound of lonely, game wolves howling. Some of these creatures were ‘born’ here, all their evolutionary variables forging their scavenger movements and interactions. Next, I am gazing out from the conifer tree-tops, to the call of the sharp Spire - a fierce needle - distracting my attention in the hazy distance...
I have some control. I am in control. But I have not found and owned that control, so my being is open….
This was the emotion in my dream… a youthful fire gaining in heat and power; a formation to feel a part of a great game of Life, of living, and being alive. And my comrades, and lovers, lost and found who I still keep in contact with.
Yet... the dream is done and… gone…
Was none of it real, this island, this virtual reality simulation of nature, filled with growing, artificial life? And, my dream: nothing but a dream, of a dream… Indeed, all those sessions immersed in it like a diver… into pure coding and graphics. And yet… no… it was real. 'Everything we imagine is real', and I am changed.
Certainly this one special, ultimate game world - which I will never play again - has changed me irrevocably; forged my mind and senses, grown some skills and my character - and a deep awareness of what I am to this life all around me.
Am I brainwashed? Super-washed, they call it. No... I think not. I think that I am free... of the burden we once placed on ourselves as a species. I think that I am an animal alive, vital to the soil in my role as a spreader of seeds and growth. I live close to the land these days, and simple. I use technology daily but I don’t forget how natural work and living is who we are: growers, hunters, gatherers, preparers of food and soil nurturers. We are mind and (more so?) body. Our work defines our meaning and wholeness. This is the greenwise way…
I have known faces of other avatars in Embertime (the Village), and we have grown together in its sanctuary from the more dangerous animals, and from encounters with the ‘Captured’, who are ourselves but… shadows. They’ve turned into stealers of players known as the Stokers of the Blue Forge. They are part of the wildness too I suppose, herding players into finding one another, like the wolves. But no longer are we howling. The virtual wind of gameplay, science, and our deeper, ancient natures brought us back together to show us how to confront and kill our minds from over-thinking, and how to live again. Take us back to the earth and rivers and glassy lakes, through the power of its diverting, transfixing vision - its watery reflection. For in my dream I saw the bleak lord Muse once again, cast himself down from his Spire… giving up his obsessive race at building his way through clouds that obscure a purer view of the land… A land which we roamed, freely.
I can go back and see how it has all changed… Fountellion…. how it has grown. Fire up my old Spiral interface again. I could see and hear it all again; the glittering Fountain flowing out its colours into the blackness unto strange constellations. I could behold in the late morning, that potent blue of its stark moving sea, so dark blue beyond my small existence and so exciting against the green of the long, flowing grass along the coast…
It feels like a beloved, wild realm of youth shared with friends or family members now gone, or changed, and abandoned for other realms, though it was never fully explored. Why do we abandon such realms, we are clearly such a part of? It was never discussed, or understood, such subtle abandonment. So we store them up inside us, vowing to return and when we do, they are less exciting next to others we may have since found for ourselves...
But, no, I don't need to go back.
Though last night I dreamt of the exhilaration again… of jumping, soaring over terrain and into trees, grabbing the branches of conifers… I dreamt of switching in and out of its persistent presence, checking what I’d grown and shared for energy there, binding me to my companions. They were companions through environment and context. We needed one another like no other ‘game’ I know, has fostered. I dreamt of some of those simpler pleasures which I now enjoy in RL, if not more so.
There will be more games, great games of artificial nature, and more alien imaginings to chain up all our senses...
But my heart was lost to that harsh, boreal beauty.
So last night I was back in the wild Island of this last game I would ever play. And yet, it was reconciliation. I am reconciled to relinquish such a dream.
It has enabled me to fashion a fresh, new dream! My own piece of RL land to work on, grow food, and promote contact and awareness of the biodiversity of the region where I am settled.
I am a child of Fountellion, and I am awake - awakened - and alive.
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Some final entries are all I can to offer... to explore some things I'm finding meaningful in my day and age. Such as... the direct power of Nature and nurture… harmony… permaculture… games… as our culture perpetually shifts or reshuffles its priorities according to the prevailing winds.
A guy called Juan Montalvo said: ‘Old age is an island surrounded by death’. It sounds grim, and is supposed to: it does a good job of highlighting the potential for isolation and fear in old age. Sure, from one sense we are islands, ever since our awareness about death’s existence in childhood began to increase, but also, our islands would not be what they are without death, shaping our shorelines. It’s also true - more so - that ‘No man is an island’, actually interconnected, and right where Fountellion was to be of help. For remember how it shows we are all on one great island together, and it is one filled with an ecosystem which we are a part of, just as in RL, on Earth.
Technology and metaverses will make disconnecting from their spaces harder as we grow older. Technology invades our environments more and more, to be more immediate, alluring and controlling, as much as we control it. It is replacing real memories in younger users. Yes, there are ways to limit it but... our nature has no great track record for limiting itself.
As a much older man now, I feel the real nature wanting me to feel more a part of it, and less a part of ‘a self’. My mind is beating less, getting bored quicker and my body is beating louder. I like to stare more at willow trees, and just connect to their tendrils moving and flowing in breezes just like they move the barley in a field. Perhaps it is true that we become more part of nature again as we get older, and strive for more minimalism and the appreciation of simple things - the reaper and his harvest - to enjoy thinking for its own sake, sifting through and reflecting upon the treasures garnered in our minds.
I was re-reading some lines to Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where Prospero speaks about a ‘play within a play’ he summons for guests who have washed up on his magical island. Such lines!
‘These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air…
…We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.’
I recall catching a real performance of this play once in London, where the English actor Derek Jacobi played an amazing Prospero. The stage had been transformed magically for the (magical) island scenery.
But before any of this technology or special effects, it was just language power which held the attention, were the effects, delivered by actors in certain ways and with certain emphasis being the spells to transfix and inspire or spread ideas of reflection into the audience.
(I actually have an idea to change some of these lines to suit Fountellion, offering them as some parting lines for those who manage to find or unlock all of the Insights).
The power of 'games' I realise (especially the immersive kind) have impaired my concentration to a degree, but they didn't stop me thinking, or stop me selecting and placing value in certain ideas; nor in carrying these ideas around with me in the back of my mind, waiting for a chance to express them in some form.
Ideas, after all: are they not like seeds in search of fertile soil; a right place, time and ideal conditions? But my ‘seeds’ exist in pieces and extracts, for written fragments are the only form I have left now, since there are not too many mediums open to me anymore, that I can harness effectively. I just can’t think straight for very long. I guess Nature is beginning to reshuffle me closer to it. And there’s just too much going on in my real garden.
So I will just offer these pieces up unto you, dear readers, to extract or to mine any value from them; to piece them together, just as I will try in my limited capacity, to do so, after their completion, and edit or update them to a point where I understand them myself, as best I can. To see a vision slowly and from different angles. It's a process, a little crude I know. Even then, the pieces may not carry the weight they deserve, or appear how I'd want them to be.
But here they are... Let's peer into them together… even make something out of them. They are my last message or meaning I can pass on to you from this time.
We can read slowly, and tread softly at least. That's the beauty of language, thoughts, and ideas: you can play games with them, in your own time. Use AI with them. Mine them perpetually for some gold. They rest in your hands now…
I, simply, am done with them, as far as I can see. But please play around with them. Complete them. Discuss them. They are mine and yours.
For we are all in this game - on this island Earth - together, and with roles we are all playing naturally, without thinking about them, just as we have always been traveling without moving.
-from ‘Last RL Writings of Ben Fielding (founder of the Fountellion Beta).’
completed.
I don’t believe we should limit or confine ourselves as a species, or - define -ourselves too greatly. We can be anything we want to be (albeit within earthly limits). But if we ignore the Nature which flows within and all around us, and which has shaped our behaviors and our bodies over a long, long period of time, then that is a dangerous, possibly unsustainable trend which leads away from personal fulfilment and worldly connection. Too much science has proven to be no way to go, as has too little (perhaps, although go try to explain that to an Australian aboriginal. We fear Nature’s processes and its diseases because they apppear detrimental to us, in the short term.) Science and fear cannot be removed, but they can be lessened in the cause of rewilding our homes.
Fountellion only attempted to re-align realities and to rekindle connections. This Spiral world continues to achieve this today; a relevant creation for humanity.
In short, in order to re-wild the planet, we first had to re-wild ourselves, to some degree. This meant casting out many of the preoccupations we thought we cherished, but in fact had begun to hold us prisoners, via our eyes and our minds.
Before the age of the mobile device, notions of working the land how we once used to, or working in offices to make life easier, were seen as extremes that did not lead us to more fulfilled existences. But the ‘green game’ managed to mix the two and promote - via a virtual experience - a middle path - a timeless, tech-aided permaculture one - and with spiritual and evolutionary ‘greenwise awareness’ included in the package. Such a package; it took hold at no better moment. Finally, something virtual but sustainable had arrived to be the ‘killer’ app, digging into the past, the present - and the fantastical - to forge a way ahead for the future of reality - the ‘meataverse’ - whatever that would soon become in its wake.
-from 'Reflections on the impact of the first ‘Green Game’ Fountellion'
by Rebecca Harris.
completed.
Oh great gods of AI…. Create or imagine a virtual world imitation, a simulation or model of a boreal forest biome similar to existing islands such as Sakhalin Island. The island must have an evolving natural ecosystem via Artificial Life with a fully functioning food chain.
Now give me 10 story outlines about characters finding their way to this virtual island through a vivid new VR headset with advanced immersive capabilities. Players mainly access Fountellion via an old wooden doorway overgrown with vines inside the Spiral Tower, a ‘gateway of gateways’ (within The Spiral Metaverse), created specially for VR worlds taking full advantage of the headset. main route is via this gateway which appears for a time connected to a Spiral staircase.
In some cases characters are summoned to trial this ‘game’ by the mysterious creator, one professor Benjamin Fielding. In other cases, they find a secret way inside through other types of worlds which lead them into the Closed Beta. These ‘pioneers’ are the first to play the game and experience the evolving nature.
Story outlines can depict how players must learn to survive but also depend on each other once again.
The unlocking of 7 special ‘Insights’ linked to the chakra concept of the human spirit. These form the ‘human’ aspect of the game.
Inherent Themes to Explore:
Players emerge with a greater awareness of the natural world and the human spiritual one. They come to appreciate and reconcile the one with the other : the animal and collaborative spiritual.
Our connection with Nature:
The dangers in the tower of the mind which can mislead and ‘brainwash’ people since their concepts have no interconnection or contact with the Source, the island, or with nature.
Fountellion is a mirror and a Gameworld with potentially endless related stories. These can also include stories about the creation and protection of it, its relevance and its affects either positive or negative.
There can also be stories about other worlds created in The Spiral but which suddenly leave people on the shores of Fountellion…
Stories of deep bonds of friendships formed...
Stories of problems with the addictive nature of the game but which ultimately can be a cure…
Stories about the Keepers of Fountellion and their struggle to protect the Fabric from spiritual cults which do not agree with its Insights etc…
Stories about one central theme : the importance of people to always connect with the natural world, in a simple hands-on way, and to feel some control, belonging and security there.
We once were tribal and as our close cousins in the animal kingdom recognise more clearly, territory and environment are rulers which have caused huge amounts of killing and argument. They have honed our history.
If, however, we can find some way of sharing the environments of the planet without bloodshed and all have the option to engage in ‘interventions’ to harness the natural world directly (eg. gardening) then we can also be part of an Age of Regeneration, for the planet and for ourselves.
Yes, we can explore outer space too, and create advanced technology, but only after this simulation is back firmly in the mainframe of our minds.
completed.
I think what you might be asking is: 'What is the purpose of Fountellion'?
Really, we just wanted players to do all the things natural to a person.
That is to say: To awaken their instincts.
We wanted people to open their windows or doors after a session engrossed in the game... and realise what they are a part of... how connected they are (again) to the ecosystem of the planet... and how small...
To see through the eyes of nature is to look far beyond ourselves... far beyond our vain struggles to be 'independent' or 'widely known'... with an awareness of our inherent value to the world and our to a collective, like an island village...
And if this purpose changes the values - or the vanity - in our culture, or what's left of it (in the wake of climate change)... then certainly, so be it...
completed.
He took some time to think. Deep, system level thinking. About the whole world, and the great balance.
He had gazed into inky darkness at the bleak boom of waves beneath the edge of cliffs both real and virtual, along the coast of Britain, and inside the simulation ‘game’ of Fountellion. Their incessant power attacked or crashed up against the land as much as molded it, persistently. He had heard the sound; that thunderous, animal roar they could make… ‘Boom!’. He had stood too, at the top of the Spire and gazed out across the wild island, with the voice of the dark AI character in his ears. It was all a mad dream, within a dream…
‘That looks so many fathoms to the deep….’
Something, he knew, was wrong in the foundations of the system. He did like to think of it as a system: more than any game or distraction. They had made it to be a system. An enabling technology; a dream to invent a world to enhance or overlay onto this one. An evolving platform to lead players back into the light and out into the boon of Reality, the Source.
He watched leaves beginning to fall outside in his garden. But it wasn’t quite Autumn yet…
It was the purpose of the Insights too. To provide the basis for a new perspective for humanity less governed by their minds, and more in harmony with their hearts, and their environment. Some of this was working..
But, lately, the Insights were being neglected and people were becoming lost to the wilder aspects of the game, or to other Spiral worlds. To their own minds… and to easier choices. There were far too many Stokers roaming the skies. And at the centre of it all: the Tower. The end of the green VR pilgrimage, but where none could reach beyond this it seemed, up into the Spire itself.
The immensity of the Spiral Tower filled his mind and he felt his fingers quaking slightly against the coffee cup. There were certainly some thrilling worlds there now. He had tasted some of them via the latest Spiral headset.
Seeing too deep…
They needed someone to find the seventh insight soon or the artificial life they had conjured so carefully - the ecosystem they had spent so many hours developing - would begin to suffer and in many cases die out. The balance could break just as in The Source. The destiny of Fountellion would become a virtual Easter Island visited only by wind variables.
But changes could be made before this happened. There was still time to adjust… something. Some hope lay in the AI (NPC) characters… These settings could be changed.
If you want something done then do it yourself…
He hadn’t been in Fountellion for a long time. But perhaps he was ready now, to go back…
…and be Greenwise again…
.
But just then, a message pinged up at the edge of his glasses, in green writing. It was an article, sent to him by an old friend. He swiped a finger across and the message opened: ‘Fountellion Player finds the Last Insight. But what is happening to the Spiral Tower?!’
He inhaled a big breath, and exhaled slowly, in relief. Then he smiled, just for himself.
Thank goodness….
completed.
[transcript]
‘Many of us are… recovering… from ourselves…
We spend the lifetime that is our youth exposed to and searching through all kinds of signals and mediums of reception. All kinds of worlds. Thrills and distractions, reflections and magnifications… but mostly I think we find ourselves back in the arms of nature. Back in the arms of Fountellion…
What else can I relate to you that will tempt you away from these words and into this game-world?
Look, it is no paradise. It is a game, just like the Source world is one big, gripping game. But it was also meant to be a refuge from it. A place to see again…
Let me not keep you. I have nothing more to add. It is not such a world for spoken thoughts anymore. Or old avlogs try hard, but I - personally - would not begin to describe the Source. You have - hopefully - known enough of it, despite our fear and retreat from it. And now you may visit its magnificent, shining mirror…
This mirror-world is not mine in that I did not create it; a team of my fellow homo sapiens created it. But in that sense it is my world. Just as much as it is yours.
You must find it. You must play it. It will enrich you, because it is very much not, just as much as it is, - out of this world…
Oh, and before you go: Yes, I have completed it. As if that matters - to it. And what comes next? Well… it is connected to the Source, so it is always changing. But the worlds are merging… The source and the super shall merge together and mankind will move seamlessly between them.
But, like all things we must... In the end, let go… Realise when our own game is up….focus, on what is important - in the first world, the natural world…
But it took, luckily, this one, great reflection... to make me see this….and help me to return, to this pure Source… its struggle that we have risen so far beyond... and yet still strive for harmony with; a respect; a process; a true reconciliation…
An ultimate game… a game of games…?
Yes...
-Dan Harvester, Game-Keeper and Teller.
completed.
At first I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the island was burning. Fountellion…my precious world.
I was high up in one of the tree ‘houses’ on the edge of the village, and could see fire and thick smoke down in one of the valleys, spreading quickly. But it might not have been the source of the smoke. Greenwise 'the guardian' - the NPC or mysterious AI? avatar or whatever - normally wouldn’t have let the fire spread so far. He has some kind of special abilities no player possesses, but I feared he’d either been too late on the scene, or the world itself had been hacked. Maybe he’d been captured or erased by someone, after all. It felt like terrorism had arrived in our wild gem of a game.
The smoke - it might’ve been coming from further north, from the blue mountains and the realm of the Spire in the distance. By the way, you can’t take photographs in Fountellion, but you can make avalogs. I don’t make them myself, I’m still getting to grips with everything to explore, in many ways. But I will add this text to the many accounts now emerging on social platforms from the island.
Why worry? None of this is real… or is it? Of course, it was real… It’s been real enough for me these last weeks. I had sunk hours into searching for the Insights, to progress and unlock more powers or something. For once in a long time playing a game felt… worthwhile. Why? Non-players out there might be wondering, reading this. Well, in Fountellion, the nature and environment feel real. It’s artificial for one thing; changing and growing around you with its smaller creatures. And you are part of the environment. You affect it. It’s persistent. Consequently you learn a whole bunch of stuff. How to survive in a harsh biome. How to hunt, fish, lay traps…. and how your very presence affects your environment. Then there is the Spire, and the Stokers…. They are hunting you always, and you have to be ready to run or to jump…. Outside the village especially this does keep you… involved…
But I’m starting to agree with what they say: Our species will only ever save Earth - RL - from ourselves and for ourselves, if we can keep Fountellion’s ecosystem safe too. There’s now this link, or connection people are making.
And this great fire… for an island of limited resources… is not a good sign…
- from 'Collected Entries and Accounts of the second Fountellion Iteration’ by an anon. Teller
completed.
Was all it would take...
This delicate species that existed and thrived in the origin boreal landscape.
I remember once watching them land expertly on the end of grass stems moving in the milder breezes away from the coast...
No, the world was not lost… as was assumed by so many…..
For….
In this one, particular, fragile A-Life NFT fossil lay hidden the seed and data that would reboot the Fabric....
It was a hidden gem - the other treasure - in The Spiral, protecting that island treasure itself from oblivion or from destruction by Man, even if they no longer had a use for it.
It could reboot a version of Fountellion in its early days, via procedural generation.
It held the key in re-setting the super-world in case it collapsed or became ruined via a failure in humanity to ensure its decentralised persistence....
Or from any deeper unravelling... even by its original creators should its landscape ever prove to become too... addictive for its players.... or fail in its mission to inform, enlighten, reveal, and restore balance in people.
completed.
Entry 1: My Dream…
They say: ‘No man is an island…’
I was an artist once, before virtual reality games took over.
I was addicted, you could say, but aren’t we all, to something?
So it was just ‘farewell’ to art and reflection, and ‘hello’ to... survival, nature, crafting, permaculture, ‘ultimate’ gaming inside the NEWorlds. Indeed, these days I mainly ‘live’ on - in - Fountellion.
But now, it seems, I’m taking a couple of days break, just to spend time ‘artistically’ again, outside in my garden, or writing this. I am changed, and I do see this world with wiser eyes…
I need to talk - write - about Fountellion. I guess, the dream was a factor...
Last night I was dreaming of its virtual shoreline, respawning here like I once did, after game death. I was face down on the sand, washed up in the game, almost feeling the waves wash around me, pulling back… and I was losing my grip. I couldn't summon the urge - the urgency - to return to the village again.
Both in the dream, and now, I did understand something: I wasn’t losing a grip on reality, but losing a grip on... the island. That island which has filled so many hours. At last I can see it's possible that I am changed, or changing, and may soon become free, if ever we are truly 'free' of what we live through...
You see, Fountellion is leading me out of my addiction. Sure, I have found ‘insights’ and these have shown me about the persistence of nature, and what I mean to it.
Scenes from the gameworld fill my mind. My great fear of the Stokers you should know first. They can appear at any time, and they want your ‘fire’, your energy, for their blue forge. They come from the sky like ringwraiths but they carry long lances for pulling at a player’s fire and depleting them. Or, they’ll just catch you with one throw like a giant pin. I have spent much time hiding from or escaping them.
You see, all of us are burning with a desire to survive and control a piece of this island, but the Stokers want it. They follow your dust. You have to learn enough from the hermit Greenwise, and at Embertime, the village of the natives. There’s more than just skills, there’s progression there, where you can fall deep into the island, and how it works. The fabric…
If ever there was a game of Nature, it’s Fountellion. I’ve even lost worrying about the Spire and what it might contain. I may never get in, but I can always revisit my secret gardens, learn how to grow new things and talk to AI characters who ‘know’ me well, like some close RL comrades.
We will always be bound to that shoreline, even as we work now to help this shoreline, with everything we’ve learned about Nature, and what we mean for it.
I live near the sea, and as I write this I gaze out at a rocky shoreline, grey and battered, and nothing compared to what it could be.
But I now know why I exist, you could say, which is more than could be said for many folk, still bewitched by other worlds, or by their own.
I can see the end coming, now, to my life as a player in-world, and feel a stronger pull to bring out the skills and share some of the things I have seen and built - within this one.
I may write more of what I've seen, and what I know....
completed.
'For the N.E.W. virtual players....'
Today I've finished reading through, once again, these collection of fragments. Together they will form the Gamebook of Fountellion, my last thoughts and ramblings about a world that you, reader and/or player, may hopefully find some relevance to your struggle and your existence.
Yes, ramblings are what I care for these days. For I am dying. In a way...or subtle ways... No more for me the immediacy of the Focus, or new illusions, or new powers of control over the habits of our connected days. I continue my path to a simpler world that has no more use for such things. Disconnection. The surrender to nature and simpler - more direct - powers of control. Come with me. Ultimately, you have little choice, in fact.
Many of the fragments have been written with paper and pen. They might include a drawing or a design. They might have a tendency to repeat themselves. Or be poorly written. How little I care.
You’re only reading them because you have passed through the final progression and have been given the code to unlock them.
So... read on, please... read as slowly as you possibly can....
For this will mean that you have done well. That you are nearly ready to truly reclaim your life. A life connected to the world and not driven ever to master it in unsustainable Dreamspires.
This idea. This vision. It has only been successful because it was never mine. It has come from within me which means it has come from within you too. I have simply found the opportunity to share it where many others have carried it too - all their lives - and even now help to keep it growing and alive.
But here, in this reality where I write these words it does not exist. This reality exists.
And it is why I make this fragment.
Human effort is what gives us meaning. Culture is our hope for our own future: our love of some future, more control.
But there is, first and finally, the present, and the path to appreciating and respecting it, once our dreams have bled out of ourselves.
The struggle to survive. The finding and gathering of wood that must be carried to the fire and kept burning for warmth. And If you take away that struggle? That game? You have an emptiness that many struggle to fill and make sense of. They need to change their games and it would be no easy thing. We all have been there. And perhaps it was here that Fountellion came from. Perhaps it was here that it now scores.
We are all playing games. Or we are remembering them... We’re all ghosts of such games even when we’re burning most brightly.
I am not dead, perhaps, but I'm becoming a ghost, day by day, and as I write these fragments.
And I write them for you too... future players.
I've seen many realities. I’ve seen the inspiration. And through our game: for it is ours now - people may find a place; an understanding of what life's game is about. The big picture and the small. And by playing a reflection, they may - it is hoped - find themselves able to return to its source again. Nature. Reality.
.
Where do I write this fragment ? In the early morning, looking out into a real garden and computing through my senses all the evidence I see and understand, needed for my temporary survival within its processes.
You may find this fragment. It is one of many I intend to write and leave as some sort of farewell. In them you will experience something of the immediate virtual reality that was me, or my life and my time with the game.
The world burns on.
I am not dead yet, no, and it does not matter. I am changed. And if you found me what would you say to me? Everything I leave, or am, is here and in the world I want to live in - more truly - after spending such time in the stars.
In these extras you will find hidden the completion of the path beyond the last Insight. You’ll find my memories of the stars and my own fading. As I become anonymous and disconnect. For they are moments of reflection that come from my disconnection... and my reconnection with everything that is real and happening now, beyond this window…. You too, can see through...
.
completed.
‘No man is an island…’
Well done player, you have ‘completed’ the game from just one sense… and perhaps calmed that hungry tempest of fire inside you, for a time…
The game may never leave you or cease evolving but it served to move you closer again to its original production… the beyond… the great outdoors…
So I’ve asked Greenwise to rewrite the lines of Prospero from Shakespeare’s The Tempest a little so you can feel content in the turning away from our distracting pageant... and begin the art of unplugging yourself from it, so as to allow both the new and older doors in the mind to re-open… however widely…
Whatever! But, may your beating mind be more stilled, and more in balance…
'Player you do look, ... in a moved sort,
As if you were dismay’d: be cheerful...
Our turn now is ended. These our creatures,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into real air:
And, like the rooted Fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tower, the forged hills,
The high tree temples, the green game itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall not dissolve
And, like this ultimate pageant fading,
Leave much more than a rack behind....
We are such stuff
As dreams and processes, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Fellows, I am no longer vex’d;
Bear with my weakness; my brain should be less troubled:
Be not disturb’d with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell
And there repose: a turn or two I’ve walked;
To still my beating mind.'
completed.
Imagine... what might be better than accessing a new world and experiencing its overpowering, thrilling... life-changing... power of nature.
You really live it, for days on end...
And, after it has changed you, on some deep levels, it is suddenly closed to you.
You cannot get back there... You cannot find it!
Then, one day... it can be found again, and assembled... out of fragments written about its very invention, creation... how it was conceived...
and how it was to end...
These are the scattered writings and fragments by Professor Fielding and which have now been collected, fully....
And I hold that final book in my living hands and I open it...
It is not yet shared....
For a small time again it is a vision... private... individual… universal...
Parts of it are known, certainly and the experience is not forgotten but these days simply more out of mind...
But everything that Fountellion was, and later came to be... began… here...
And can live again to grow on, and on....
completed.
Keepers are all those who’ve spent enough time in the world to want to preserve it.
There are many games within the game Fountellion. Firstly, it’s a complex system like Earth. Weather patterns, and lifeforms evolving, slowly. This has all been generated by code, models and mathematics.
Getting there is seamless. Traversing its terrain is exhilarating. Surviving is continual, but as intuitive as real-world survival.
And the Insights… these are demonstrated by the demands of the game: i.e. staying alive. They show us the qualities which have made us ‘human’ in all this Nature. Realising just how small we are, and yet how powerful at times: this is a quick way to describe how ‘completed’ players will emerge from their experience of Fountellion.
completed.
I tell all my students to ‘play’ Fountellion… or that is to say, to go there, ‘be’ there, explore…
I’m a teacher of Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology… and this game does some vital work.
The soulbound NFTs the player ‘achieves’ or unlocks certainly portray something towards an awareness of Life and our living within it… or, what our lives really means to Nature, from a natural perspective (many still struggle to appreciate, or be reconciled to).
So this ‘game’ is a teacher and I simply take things further, expand on the science in greater detail.
Environment shapes us… but game environments shape us too, altering us physically, mentally, culturally and helping us to adapt and to learn… They can help us to value what we are to an ecosystem, and to value that ecosystem to avoid another Easter Island…
Indeed, the new lesson is Fountain Island… on many levels, it clearly fills and occupies our emotions, our desires….on levels I’ve never seen before in a simulation or ‘game’, if that’s what it is.
-from ‘Collected Feedback on Fountellion (Today)’ by anon.
completed.
To be a Keeper-Teller of Fountellion is to carry its Nature around with you in your pocket. You are its Keeper and it is your keeper. The seven Insights have shown you a way to wisdom and respect for nature and our true, basic needs and natures, often buried beneath the mental entanglements of modern life.
This includes… an awareness of a lack of Insight in others: those trying to escape fear and nature, including their own. Certainly, you are more aware of transient things as opposed to permanence.
'Soulbound tokens' help to ensure that you can never lose the proof of having found at least six Insights.
It is a priceless thing, the experience in Fountellion.
To be a ‘keeper’ you do not need to have found all Insights but by now you might have witnessed one of the game cycles and understood something of the nature of the last Insight.
Game Keepers also protect the Fabric. They monitor its growth and balance. A few Tellers are even able to adjust settings in the A.I. of Greenwise, to help ensure the protection of the island from arguably its greatest threat: its own players.
As with its flora and fauna, a player's avatar can grow old in Fountellion. Dying of old age is possible and it means a player can never return. If they do - using another kind of account - then they will have to begin from scratch. Effectively, this is like having to live a life all over.
What else? Keeping an element of reserve so other players can now enjoy the game. Tellers often visit just to dwell on the island and practice or learn new skills.
Bringing permaculture into the Source: Many Tellers are anonymous and like it this way. They have often retreated from games and work to use their survival and skills with nature to work in harmony with the Source.
completed.
If you're reading this, it's because you've found my old words, ramblings perhaps, which, I suppose, I left for someone to find. Some are buried in my virtual dream-world, that result of so many dreams… and will need careful excavating…
But… an entry from the Gamebook of Fountellion now lies before your eyes. Bravo. How could so many people be searching for an old book?
I suppose because these will be my last words, though that doesn't matter. Not so many things really matter.
I'm little more than a ghost now, not completely dead maybe, but certainly... changed. Perhaps I died a long time ago.
These slowly-written words are the best form of virtual legacy I can ultimately provide in this late stage of the game of Life.
I've been on a final personal quest you see, for some time, and am now nearing the end. It is a quest to become anonymous, and it hasn't been easy for me, a big dreamer. But it could be every man's mission: this journey through power and survival towards rest, anonymity, peace and reconciliation - subjugation - to the powers of the world, and of nature. You give something of yourself, an energy; carving some place out, or helping simply to turn the wheel....
We have all played a game. Some of us got to play a lead role, a good role, a bad or deluded role, or a simple one. Nothing matters, but what we find is that goodness, love, is what evolves better…
I hope this book may lead you near to where I am standing, or at least a place such as this… For it's a book about the past, present and future.
Today, I helped a neighbor to cut wood for his fire. We chatted about wildlife and about his position on the island. I forgot even to be amazed at how little I minded how he will never know who I am.
And he never will, just as you will never find me. And if you were to, it would matter little. What would you say to me? Like I said, I am changed.
No, this book is all you will need to know. And you can read it in one time; in one fleeting time. Its words may cast light and shadows on the cave walls while they are read.
I have stood on the shores of a world I helped to create… In Fountellion…
It will evolve and it will pass, as all things must… but it has shined and brought people together in peace and harmony... What can any man ever hope or dream enough to see, eh?
This is my gift to you and my children. Take care of it. And keep the fires burning, ok? Yes, the blue forge beneath your tower, the campfires where players meet and share stories and skills, and those great merry fire-pits that inspire improvised songs in Embertime…
The book is to be read only in Reality, for that is the place it was designed for.
I'm free now, in a way that is very personal. In a way that I myself must get used to, chewing on the very word as I find myself doing at various, random moments in the course of a day. It's been a process to arrive at this word 'free'; and freedom.
Everything you see or encounter culturally in all realities: are words and concepts, most are not the voice of Nature, but they rise and they fall with the landscape of our culture.
Are you fulfilled? Really? In the brave new world that beckons you into its virtual windows during the course of one single day?
I have been a master of my own Game. It has shown me wonders and revelations, comrades and powers. Now I am ready for the bigger game only: Life.
How will technology save us?... It won't. It’s maybe too late. But some technologies can inspire us to salvage and preserve our desire for a closer harmony with our world. When we all realize this we will begin to make progress…
These are some human thoughts in the ocean of ideas, outputs and stories now manifesting in this brave future we've created, dependent on digital connection and Artificial Intelligence. I say created as though anyone ever intended this future. No, our dependence on technology just started to grow because of the great trend towards escape and convenience after one has ceased to be young….
Let’s be young again, go and pick fruit with our hands and bring it back for preparation and conservation.
Winter is coming…
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'The things that you own, end up owning you.'
No-one 'owns' any NFTs or Assets in Fountellion, or any of the bound and open NEWorlds (or NEP-Worlds) of nature, but they are assigned to owners temporarily as they are interacted with.
Player avatars or bodies are also temporary in this respect. However, player avatars are the only 'alien' item in the game-scape. They are the only presence 'injected' into the evolving fabric according to the 'fantastic aspect' of the game.
They are the most invasive (and not wholly predictable) presence on the island.
Otherwise, all of the interactions ongoing in the persistent game-state are 'current', and exist due to all interactions in the past which have contributed towards this current state of the living world.
Note: The state seems to assume its own balance in all this chaos and that has been one of the more wondrous discoveries of the technological 'apparition' that is a NEWorld model.
Inside a NEWorld Asset itself there are complex properties akin to DNA, such as genus, type, color etc. This will determine much of its expected characteristics, behaviors and life-expectancy in the game.
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What really shone out is how the early, legendary developers integrated Fountellion with The Spiral Tower, and how it brought so much organic, viral attention to the game (and to The Spiral). It was unreal, the FOMO it instilled.
Rare keys: You’d either find one, be bestowed one, or else, based on your interests and history, the world would come to you... a lot like a kind of green matrix, overgrowing and pulling certain users into its orbit.
Fountellion 'Spoilers'
There are always spoilers about video games. Cheats and hints. It's unavoidable. You can seek them out, or just choose to play the game for yourself. A bit like Life really. Spirituality, for one thing, offers up spoilers for all those seeking 'guidance' at various points in their lives.
With Fountellion, no player can really get 'stuck' searching for Insights. They either will, or they won't.
Despite in-built restrictions on casting etc. there are tons of avalogs, video logs, writings about Fountellion, but mostly they fall flat. Unless you actually play the game, unearth the full impact of the Insights - like 'virtual visions' - and see how they relate to you and your relationship with the game and environment - it's all very removed, or out of context. The affect is just not the same.
Fountellion offered a truly unique, long-lasting, experiential form of learning that could be lived, virtually... And that was before the virtual began to overspill heavily into the Source, through the next generation AR and Mixed Reality technologies. That revolution was like the Spiral Tower falling, unleashing all of its visions into RL and Fountellion, and changing the fabric of those realities deeply and for a long time.
-from 'On the Fate of Fountellion' by 'greengameguru88'
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Art… is our connection to the world. But it is also Control and Power - our obsessive impulse towards, our hands reaching out at the landscape. It is also this will to build great Towers and Dreamspires.
We should recognise and retire more from Art, in this age. Simplify. Or, we can at least create more here, in the present, for the present, and not for ‘great’ futures.
What is this ‘present’ again? It is the music that requires listening to, the garden, land or home that requires tending...
It is the care-taking in life and it can be a group activity (garden together, share food, games….)
Live in the now, for the day, today…
Fountellion bears this message… Return there, when you need to, and see how it has changed… and how you have changed….
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Congratulations! You have reached ‘the end’ of these further fragments as to the nature of the ‘game’ world island, Fountellion.
But the game goes on… with the insight you have acquired you may enhance your learning about the game, and apply it, or join others to discuss or piece together the fragments, creating new ideas towards its virtual keeping and development, or else… turn your back and return - albeit changed - into the Source. Use the change and its harsh lessons wisely, to explore and understand your own ecosystems....
Whatever you decide, Fountellion and its meaning will live on, the time you have now spent ‘within it’ to an extent - it’s hoped shall stay with you and be printed and ‘completed’ again should you have need of it.
‘And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.’
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, 'The Secret Garden'
‘The fate of Fountellion, just as with our planetary platform and with all this Natural Energy surrounding us and binding us… lies on the backs of all our hands….’
(post found online, c. 2050)
'There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' - from 'Hamlet', Shakespeare
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Collectors are Keepers....
