The Cluster Archives / Volume Two

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Myths, Superstitions, and Folklore of the Cluster!

[c]The following is taken from the Cluster’s premier encyclopedia, a community-driven digital archive that collects and catalogues the Cluster’s culture and way of life. The exact author is unknown, as all articles are contributed, fact-checked, and edited by intrepid yet anonymous scholars across the Cluster.[/c]

The Cluster is full of its own particular folklore. Living amongst the stars hasn’t cooled humanity’s inclination to understand the currently unknowable through story and superstition.

The most widely known of the Cluster’s superstitions is, of course, the scrimshaw bone charm! These charms are found everywhere throughout the Cluster as they are tokens of goodwill and good luck!

When the early settlers of the Cluster discovered the asteroids were made of decomposing leviathan, they weren’t repulsed. Instead, they looked to the dead leviathan under their feet as a sign of goodwill and fortune. Early settlers would whittle charms/talismans from exposed pieces of leviathan bone, and these were thought to confer good luck. Those who were less superstitious still collected the charms as a reminder of humanity’s place in the cosmos: we are part of an ecosystem, not masters over it.

These charms were often given as gifts during difficult periods for people, a token of goodwill and a supposed transferral of luck. During the worst days of the crisis, people looked to these charms, carrying them with them, giving them as gifts, or hiding them in corners of the Cluster, hoping the charms would help ward off the fungal contamination.

But what other, lesser-known superstitions persist in the Cluster?

For instance, what about the defensive capabilities of dried Earth flowers?

During the first generation of the Cluster, Earth expats believed that dried flowers, when left at the foot of a door, would ward off certain species of exo-life. While we now know this is entirely folkloric, it was born from a true encounter. One of the original founders of the Cluster wore a dried lavender bundle in his EVA suit. Upon encountering a small, slug-like creature, the creature appeared to exhibit signs of an allergic reaction. The creature ran away from the colonist, and thus was born the myth of exolife’s allergies to pollen! It took humanity a bit to understand that the exo-life could have allergies, and by the time we did, the superstition was already deeply rooted in Cluster culture. Botany students, who learn their craft by growing flowers from seeds, also dry out the flowers they grow, giving them as gifts to their friends and family.

No surprise for an agricultural colony, the Cluster also has superstitions regarding its fungus! It’s widely believed to be bad luck to eat the first fungus you pick during a harvest. Instead, the old wives’ tale asks farmers (or wayward children) to bury this fungus, a symbol of giving back, in order to ensure bountiful harvests and tasty crops. There’s no story here behind this one, folks. It’s just thought to be considerate! But even if there aren’t any reports of bad luck coming to those who don’t, who would want to take the risk?

But it’s not just the soil that the people of the Cluster have superstitions about. During the initial founding, when the ships Dr. Volkov and his peers came here in were being re-purposed to build the homesteads we now live in and the labs we now work in, accidents were common. After one scientist got trapped in a malfunctioning airlock, it became procedure to knock on airlock doors as you passed them. Luckily for our intrepid founding generation, the only things that knocked back were humans (who became trapped thanks to sporadic electricity–good thing our botanists figured that one out).

Just because nothing supernatural ever knocked back, didn’t stop the first generation’s kids from inventing wild stories about monsters! The second and third generations of kids used to tell scary stories, passed down from their parents. These stories were originally designed to keep the kids safe from areas of the colony that were still being built or had yet to be repaired, due to a lack of materials or hands. Some of these scary stories included believing that air vents were a monster’s breath or that the hollowed-out mines held monsters in them.

Another safety procedure that gave rise to children’s fears was the emergency lights on every homestead. These emergency lights shine at all times. They’re basically an “everything is okay” alarm. But kids tell of a wandering homestead, one whose orbit appears to be antithetical to Saturn’s gravity, and whose lights blink on and off throughout the night. Kids scare each other with this “haunted homestead”, warning of monsters and other creatures waiting to eat would-be rescuers. Which is for the best, since homesteads with malfunctioning emergency lights are, in fact, extremely dangerous due to their unstable gravity, uncontrollable growth, and other potential hazards, such as wayward electricity and broken systems.

Despite all this talk of monsters, none of the kids thought to be scared of the leviathan, whose body composed the ground they walked on! Which is probably for the best.

While most of these have fallen out of practice in just one generation’s time, it’s a neat time capsule into the mentality of those who helped build our illustrious agricultural colony! And lest you think Clusterites are the only folklore-prone group. It’s been said that Scarabs carry dirt vials from different places to travel to, so spirits can take a piece of their home with them when they pass.

Thanks for reading the second entry of The Cluster Archives, and we'll continue to unearth the history of the colony and its people. The road to Act Two continues.

✨ See you in the stars,

Colin [Community Manager]