Timeline

Fundamental aspects of the greater narrative of Hastam:

1. It is a story about deciding factors, and why we act the way we do. This decisive part of us that compels us to actively participate in life rather than letting it pass us by is the individual self, which in the world of Hastam is represented as the Refractive lens allowing people to project their vision onto the world, at the risk of only seeing what they wish to see. In a world where people can theoretically rise to meet any challenge through the assertion of their individual spirit onto reality, the main issue of the world is not 'how to survive' like in a gritty medieval fantasy world but 'how to live' and benefit from participating in the human experience without letting it hold you down.
2. Related to this, it is a story about societal interactions, trying to cover the full breadth of political and spiritual ways of thinking as well as the 'collective unconscious' that conditions the weak to inaction through ideological heavy-handedness or assertions that certain parts of life have forgone conclusions (and that this is somehow deserved, e.g. original sin). Reality in Hastam effectively works by consensus, with the strongest combinations of evidence and belief taking precedence over weaker ones as the truth (see the 'genetic evolution' of memes as ideas), although unlike in the real world this truth is shattered and multiple can exist at once (representing the massive divergence of ideas in the modern world, as certain perspectives on the world will always be irreconcilable with other perspectives whilst still representing the 'objective' truth to a number of people, or at least as close as they will ever get). The 'Refraction' of reality represents projecting one's own way of seeing the world onto it, and a massive level of societal anxiety exists around the 'Final Refraction' of which worldview will win out in the end and become the ultimate truth. Though this is concept is what drives many of the grander visionary actors in the storyline (such as the Conducator's worldview that all of humanity should think with one mind, Maximilian Minimus' that people should become as ideas and intensify their struggle to conquer, or Ambrose's that life is an endless struggle of suffering and putting an end to it all will finally let the world rest), it is in many ways an entirely illusory concept - though reality in Hastam is perceived as a broken mirror, shattered into millions of pieces as the consequence of the freedom people have to decide their own truth, gluing the mirror back together in a different formation of pieces does not mean what it shows is any closer to objective reality (it may be a funhouse mirror, always destined to distort things, or a magic mirror that only shows people what they want to see - this is what makes the Final Refraction illusory).
3. It is a story about conflict, and how humans conflict and triumph over other humans. The existential anxiety humans feel in order to achieve
4. Each decision that moves us forward also instinctively causes our cognition to visualise what could have been, splitting the temporal and spiritual aspects of the self in ways that might lead one to lose themselves in escapism or
5. There are great forces at work in the world, but the greatest of all is the individual self in its struggle to exist and achieve contentment/satisfaction. Due to the aforementioned broken mirror of reality, each person is effectively at the centre of their own world,
6. It is also a set of statements about the nature of fiction itself, effectively serving as the creator's Refraction of the reality presented by his own experiences. Perhaps

Current Date 336 ARK