The Eve-of-Fall Taboos

Traces of a Shared Trauma

The Great Fall is a shared trauma for both sides, and because of this there are rare cultural elements that both hold in nearly the same form.

The Taboo "Do Not Point at the Sky"

The most widely known is the taboo "Do not point at the sky on the night of The Fall." In The Canopy Isles, pointing at the sky is said to invite misfortune; in The Root Realm it is deeply reviled as "summoning the sky." Researchers speculate that different cultures on the same earth share the same taboo because it is a memory from the time when they were one that has survived in changed form.

The Night of Silence as Strange Truce

On the "Night of Silence" — once a year, on the date corresponding to The Great Fall — both sides avoid making loud sounds. On this day alone, regular trade and skirmishes halt, and a strange truce state emerges between both sides. Even the Mist Trading Company does not move on this night.

Researchers point to this as "proof that both sides' ancestors once lived in the same world," but this view is politically sensitive in both camps. Acknowledging a shared past could shake current political structures that justify division.

Fear Carved into Height and Depth

The details of taboos differ slightly between the two sides. In The Canopy Isles it is passed down as "on the day stones weep, do not go to high places" — and there is actually a custom on the Night of Silence of avoiding movement to upper islands. In The Root Realm it is said "on the day the earth trembles, do not go deep" — forbidding entry to the deepest areas. The same event has been carved into the sky-dwellers as "fear of height" and the earth-dwellers as "fear of depth."

Shimobe hold their own interpretation of this taboo. "On the Night of Silence, the correct thing is to drift in the Middle Sky" — being of neither sky nor earth, simply existing in the wind is, they say, the proper way to mourn that day. On this night Shimobe spread their wings and drift on air currents for hours without making a sound. Records remain of multiple instances where Canopy and Root Realm people who saw this said "that is the true requiem."

The taboo system functions as a cultural safety net that maintains contact even in the most difficult circumstances for dialogue between both sides. The "strange truce" of the Night of Silence has been observed more reliably than any treaty politics ever produced.