A bit of speculation on the identity of the Mother of Mountains (MoM? I like it). I’m throwing all of it behind a spoiler tag in respect of the fact that Skies just came out a few days ago and many people (including myself) haven’t even been to all the ports yet. Personally, I hate accidentally spoiling things for myself, even if it’s minor. There’s spoilers in here for a lot of the Elder Continent stuff from Sunless Sea/FL, some things about the Bazaar from FL, and Lustrum from Skies, so don’t open it up if you want to avoid spoilers of that type!
The plural is throwing me off a little (mountains vs the singular) but I think this is probably Stone.
No idea at all how a mountain gets from the Neath to the High Wilderness, but I actually have a couple arguments for this one:
Mother of mountains is the mountain which Lustrum was built on top of, where people flock to mine hours. The only mountains (with personalities) that I know of so far are the Mountain of Light on the Elder Continent (aka Stone) and Mt. Nomad. Stone’s parents are the Bazaar and our Sun; both not mountains. So that leaves Mt. Nomad’s parents: Stone and the Thief of Faces (the original snuffer, IIRC). Stone, a mountain herself, is also the mother of Mt. Nomad (the floating mountain that you battle in Sunless Seas), so that would make her a mother of (a) mountain.
People are mining the MoM for hours. In the conversation with the lady who you take to Port Prosper while she’s fixing your clock (I forgot her name, oops), she mentions that the Traitor Empress has a huge trove of hours that she won during her battle for the sky. She also alludes to the fact that the sun who previously ruled over this section of the Wilderness maybe isn’t alive anymore. Victoria could have just taken this sun’s (hopefully not our Sun’s) trove of hours, or gotten them through some other means, but I think it’s more likely that she killed him/her/it and is somehow harvesting that sun for hours, which is probably related to the sun’s nature as a Judgement. (Are Judgements immortal? Or do they just live a lot longer than us because they’re way higher on the Chain?) This supports my next point:
The Mother of Mountains has veins of hour ore, but the mountain is not completely hours (and is also running out of hours). Stone is half Judgement, being a daughter of our Sun, who was a full Judgement, so it makes sense that she would have hours ore in her, but not be completely hours, as I think the sun that Victoria killed was.
In Sunless Seas, when the Merchant Venturer goes through the Avid Horizon to the High Wilderness, there is a flash of jealousy from the South. Stone/The Elder Continent is the south edge of the map, so I presume that Stone wants to leave the Neath for the Wilderness. Maybe because she’s half Judgement, and wants to fly free. But again, I’m not exactly sure how a mountain uproots herself and fits through that gate at Avid Horizon.
Please feel free to correct me if any of this is wrong! I have a hazy memory of a lot of the lore, so it’s possibly that I totally mis-remembered some stuff, or that I’m just way off-base.
Edit: grammar (I am a comma addict) edited by Kloxe on 9/3/2017
In the L&S Nature Reserve, the R.O. is searching for a mythical bird that flies to the Mountain of Mothers and takes a grain off of the top. tbeaz161 mentioned in another topic that this is very similar to some info given in Seas about the Garden on the Elder Continent:
This is the garden that grows on the Elder Continent in the light from Stone, so there’s definitely a connection there as well.
Stone is associated with longevity with being closer to her seemingly bringing more vitality. This fits with the MoM being full of hours which is basically life I suppose. Also as for the relocating. I wouldn’t be too surprised if the neath and high wilderness are maybe metaphysically connected in other ways besides Avid Horizon. Space and time can be pretty weird in the FL world so whos to say Stone doesn’t even exist in same places at the same time? With a bird sneaking into the elder continent to steal her seeds while it’s mirror steals things in the high wilderness?
Also I hope that the sun Victoria beat up isn’t ours as that is very sad for the love story behind it and the Bazaar lol
There’s a bit of flavour text I think when you drink the cider in Port Avon? referencing earth to be "on the otherside of the universe" or something like that. So I don’t know if that’s hyperbole but it seems pretty probable that Avid Horizon just spit them out gods knows where and Earth is absolutely nowhere near here. edited by tbeaz161 on 9/3/2017
The text says nothing about when the space bats holed up inside the mountain. It seems like the light/law of a Judgement plus the filtration of the Red Science is keeping the bats alive. I mean, Skies takes place ten years after Victoria moved to the Wilderness, right? I’d say that’s enough time for the old bats to get sick and close to death, and take shelter in Stone. I wonder how Mr Pennies got the Science, though. Axile, maybe? It does say that he made a trade for it (centuries?) ago, but I don’t think that necessarily means that the bats have been inside the Mountain for centuries, just that he picked up an interesting treasure. I mean, space bats are capitalist hoarders, so I think it’s possible.
Also, I’m even more convinced after reading about the wound. "The wound casts the light, and the walls writhe at its touch." The wound is definitely Stone’s thing, and I suppose what manifests as blood in the Neath becomes light in the Wilderness.
edited by Kloxe on 9/3/2017 edited by Kloxe on 9/3/2017
[quote=tbeaz161]Also I hope that the sun Victoria beat up isn’t ours as that is very sad for the love story behind it and the Bazaar lol
There’s a bit of flavour text I think when you drink the cider in Port Avon? referencing earth to be "on the otherside of the universe" or something like that. So I don’t know if that’s hyperbole but it seems pretty probable that Avid Horizon just spit them out gods knows where and Earth is absolutely nowhere near here. edited by tbeaz161 on 9/3/2017[/quote]
Ooh, that’s interesting. I haven’t spend too much time at Port Avon yet, as they’re terribly quick to kick me out, but I’ll have to check it out later.
[quote=tbeaz161]Also I hope that the sun Victoria beat up isn’t ours as that is very sad for the love story behind it and the Bazaar lol
There’s a bit of flavour text I think when you drink the cider in Port Avon? referencing earth to be "on the otherside of the universe" or something like that. So I don’t know if that’s hyperbole but it seems pretty probable that Avid Horizon just spit them out gods knows where and Earth is absolutely nowhere near here. edited by tbeaz161 on 9/3/2017[/quote]
I would prefer it if it’s nearby, and the stars we find are real, known stars. But hey, you can’t have everything.
It’s been mentioned somewhere - I remember it from a twitch stream - that we’re indeed somewhere else entirely, Avid Horizon acting as some manner of worm hole through vast distances of space. How far exactly is anyone’s guess, the best we have is that in one of the destinies the courier and bats have already been travelling 15 years from Avid to the Sun, and it seems they’re at that point starting to be close-ish.