Introduction
Cover for Tasakeru Book I: Without a Name
Art by Chris Flemming (http://thenekostar.deviantart.com), design by BHS
「出る釘は打たれる。」
“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”
– Japanese proverb
Somewhere far away, on another Earth, devoid of humankind…
There was once an island country without a name, alone in the vast ocean, isolated by storms and deadly currents. Its inhabitants knew nothing of any land or people outside of their own, so to them, their island was simply “the world”.
In the place of humankind, the animals grew and changed, becoming like man… and yet not like man. Faint echoes of human cultures and ideas unknowingly bled across reality from our Earth to theirs, shaping the growth of the island’s civilization.
There were eight of them, eight intelligent species that called themselves “sentients”… eight species sharing a world that became too small for their differing ways of life.
It was a world of ancient gods, of long-remembered wars and the heroes that fought them. It was a world of magic and science, logic and emotion, faith and proof clashing against one another.
It was a world where the only way to enforce order and stability was to keep the many different cultures separate… and to exile any people deemed too dangerous to coexist with the rest of sentientkind.
Unknown to the world, the very exiles they shunned and feared had a part in saving civilization itself. They should have quietly faded from history… but their story refused to be forgotten. They live on as legends, whispers in the wind.
These are those legends, the tales of the Outcasts of TASAKERU…
