De chelonian mobile. The turtle moves. A belief that runs the life force of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. (If you haven't read them, this is a good time to bookmark this page, read all 41 novels plus Good Omens, and return to comment "thanks" in six months or so.) The tree falls even if you're not there to hear it.

Over the course of that massive body of work, deep-browed Pterry zoomed from the absolute macro of Time itself down to the Death of Rats, a monosyllabic bescythed skeleton who can but squeak spectrally. I've spent some of the best years of my life wandering into foreign lands within this foreign universe where a turtle sits on the shoulders of four titanic elephants where Captain Vimes ends a thousand years of war with "WHERE'S MY COW?" There's always something going on in Ankh-Morpork. The novels just happen to talk about whatever's going on in that specific zoomed-in spot in spacetime.

This is where we, and I use the royal we here to imply an infinity of monkeys toiling away at a coequal infinity versus a wet-handed nerd, want to begin world-building. It's gonna be us against Terry Pratchett, the greatest fantasy writer of the last of any century. He has the Order of the British Empire, decades of influence, millions of money, billions of fans, and a fleshed out universe with novels, games, and movies. We have an app. Well, we have an app and a secret weapon. Unlike Sir Pterry, we ain't dead.

So now we have a world, a universe. The idea is, everything is happening in this universe all the time. But we can't know all of it. What we will do is slowly examine this universe, get to know its characters, learn the stories both in grand tidal waves and humble rippling eddies. Let's start here, with Maverick and Goose fishing. It's a comical interchange with a punchline that relates to corporate life. Okay. Now before they had this conversation, it's heavily implied that they've been fishing for a while. Common sense--this is not the kind of universe where aliens invade--tells us that they will likely enjoy this day filled with friendship and camaraderie. Nobody's going to find a ring in the riverbank and thereby start a world war against Sauron.

But hey. This world is our world. We may not exist within it, but we have agency in this world. So let's say they do find a ring. Do they, or do they not? If there's a way to let you decide from within the app, and if you guys think it's fun, we'll figure it out. Right now we're moving the circles of possibility, hope, and conjecture in the diagram of UX, trying to find if there's a way to venn it up. It doesn't have to be a ring either. It can be a code to find the giant rat of Sumatra. It could be a secret set of stamps! (Update: our graphics guy told us it can't be a secret set of stamps.) Or maybe they don't find a ring. Maybe what they find is a lesson on floating down the river of time.

In the background, we see Dexter's laboratory. Dexter, as you know, is a genius. Dexter is a past master of technology. Exegetically, Dexter is also a current master of technology. Dexter may or may not have command over time travel, which would create an additional layer of technological mastery. But we have not reached that level of compendiousness. (Forgive the verbosity. I'm at the chapter in HMS Surprise where Jack Aubrey gets Stephen's sloth drunk and that scoundrel Napoleon is still at large!) Dexter's lab is magical, not in the sense that you can conjure unicorns, but in the sense that it has an uncanny habit of changing to suit the occasion. You know, the kind of thaumaturgy that enables branded calendared content. What's going on in the treehouse right now, as you read this? We're not sure, because we haven't looked. Like every outcome ever, we can change it by observing it. And that is the point. We can add any story we want.

Let's brainstorm together. What day is it? Are the two friends Maverick and Goose enjoying a weekend fishing trip or is it a work day? Is it a tradition or a one time thing? Who is impatient and who wants to keep fishing? Are fish sentient in this universe? If so, how do we deal with the moral implications of eating fish or even of fishing? Will we choose to anthropomorphize some animals and not others which is how Goofy has a pet dog? If fishing is a longstanding tradition, that brings with it a whole group of other longstanding traditions. Maybe there's a worm shop that they like to visit on their way to the fishing spot, but they never get A stock cause an archeopteryx always comes before them and gets the best worms. (Archeopteryx being an early bird....)

And what of Pippin's postal HQ? That will be the focal point for so many stories. Our camelot! Will Pippin be visited by Moist Von Lipwig, Terry Pratchett's Postmaster General? Will the post office become social hub, will it have to serve other functions such as auditorium, ad hoc banquet kitchen, quiz nights and other ludological adventures, and so on? Do they pay taxes?

We will, ceteris paribus, create a whole ass map. (As opposed to a whole assmap, which you need a PillCam Colon camera.) Every item on the map will have a back story. Every back story is a tiny peek into the universe, one pixel in a vast palimpsest of, well, I don't want to say something corny like fun!!! but it's certainly not going to be a Greek tragedy.

Join us as we make this world. We're figuring this out and it'll be more fun if we do it together. If we can make it work, we'll make a book. Maybe. If we can make it work. Let's start with this letter.

Warm regards, Your pals at Lettre

Turtles all the way down

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