‘O’ is for ‘Optimism.’

‘O’ is for ‘Optimism.’ If the apocalypses have revealed one thing about sentient life, it’s that the optimists are the only ones worth paying attention to. Pessimists and optimists die alike, but the former die having accomplished less, and having been far less entertaining to watch.

This perspective formally began under the Gremlin Empire, who used spores to observe the behaviors of lesser beings. Triclopes, nine-legs, centaurs and the like were reality television, and gremlins would drop supplies on tribes that behaved in entertaining fashion.

Since then, it’s been the optimists who made things work. They renovated the destroyed remains of old cities into new shelters. They scavenged the last technology, pushed progress, and in the Frontier, have even gotten old species to cooperate. You’d never have expected humans to forgive the imps for enslaving them, yet now they are routinely traveling partners. Those who think the struggle is worthless perish. Those who embrace it might change the world for the brief time they live in it.

Nowhere is optimism more embraced than The Empire of Gold and Jade. Despite its tyrannical reputation, it has done more for the study of external magic and formal physics than any culture in hundreds of years. They possess the only cities where the sun never sets, and command the weather to serve their crops, and their military squads, like the Storm Guard. That they frequently use their optimism for their gain at the expense of others reveals a little something about optimism: menace is just fear of someone else’s optimism.