How the World Was Formed

First, the Naacals discovered, in the ancient continent of Mu, that there was a portal into another reality. They called it The Navel. Through The Navel, they found oceans, mountains, forests, rivers, glaciers, volcanoes and deserts: a new verdant fertile world populated by creatures which had never existed in their own. They built a city there on an island in the middle of a vast sea. It was only hundreds of years later that they discovered what this new world was, or what it meant: they had found a pathway into the antique past through the memories of a being which had been alive at the dawn of creation. Realizing that they had found a world composed of memories, they called their city from that time onwards, "The Unremembered City", and the sea on which it floated, "The Remembered Ocean".

The Unremembered City prospered in that virgin memory-world, and its people grew fat and decadent. Gradually the Naacals living there stopped visiting the "real world" in the belief that it had grown staid and uninspiring. They had fallen in love with the infinite depth and variety in the vividness of the crocodile's dreams, and lost interest in the lives of their fellows who stayed behind on the continent of Mu. Eventually they decided that no more of the ignorant kinsfolk should be allowed to join them in The Unremembered City, and they closed The Navel for what they thought would be eternity.

But nothing lasts forever. The Naacals in The Unremembered City grew ever-more idle and hedonistic in their imaginary paradise, and their civilization slowly sank into decay. Over thousands of years they became ever more cruel and strange, and closed themselves off in their urban kingdom with its pyramids, gardens and plazas. Their horizons closed inwards, and they ceased crossing The Remembered Ocean or exploring the lands beyond it. Eons passed as they played, warred, laughed, and slept. The lands of the memory-world beyond The Remembered Ocean became ancient history, and the "real world" on the other side of the Navel a mere myth when it was spoken of at all.

The population of The Unremembered City had no idea, then, that in that "real world" the continent of Mu had mostly sunk beneath the ocean and their kinsfolk were long dispersed or disappeared. They did not know that the primordial reptile whose memory world they inhabited now lived in an isolated fragment of what had once been Mu. They did not know that new civilizations had grown up in the "real world" and colonised its every corner. They did not know that in their eons of introversion eternity had caught up with them.

So it came as a complete surprise one day to discover that some other people - humans, young and vigorous - had somehow found their way into their memory-world and begun to make it their own. Seven explorers, refugees, adventurers and thinkers, who had discovered "navels" of their own into the crocodile's mind. Seven of them who, while the people of The Unremembered City slumbered, had gradually conquered and transformed the untouched paradise of the lands surrounding The Remembered Ocean and made themselves kings and queens. Rulers whose emissaries were now landing on the shores of The Unremembered City and announcing themselves to the inbred, twisted princelings of what had once been the Naacals.

The first ruler is Sese-Mahuru-Bau, the hunter, who rules the dreams of ice.

The second ruler is Jorge de Menezez, the conqueror, who rules the infinite city.

The third ruler is Xu Fu, the wizard, who rules Mount Penglai in the middle of the great and peaceful sea.

The fourth is Abu-Yaqub Al-Sijistani, the philosopher, who rules the world of ruin,

The fifth is Pape Jan, the missionary, who rules the dreamtime of man.

The sixth is Anak Wungsu, the trader, who rules the ziggurats on the sea-bed.

The seventh is Ebu Gogo, the mother, who rules the primordial swamp.

The Naacals of The Unremembered City have found that they are no longer the exclusive owners of paradise.