The Shrine at the End of Imagination

Mullangi Meda, the Shrine at the End of Imagination.

When I first started playing Glitch, one of the things I liked about it was the vast mythology behind it. The world of Glitch, call Ur, was said to have been created by 11 giants. In game, the Giant/Glitch relationship is one of basic primal worship. Each street has a shrine to one of the 11. The shrines serve as places to offer donation, meet up with other Glitches, and as a way to protect the world from the Rooks, big evil birds that destroy imagination and creation. The Giants also help with quests and skills, as each Giant is over certain realms of influence.

As soon as I started the game, I found myself drawn to the Giant called Lem. This didn't surprise me for several reasons. First of all, Lem's symbol was two arrows facing in different directions. Ever since reading Michael Moorecock, I've had a thing for mythological beings that use arrows in their symbolism. Second of all, Lem is a god of practical jokes . . . in other words, he was the Trickster of the bunch. I love Tricksters.

Lem was also the Giant who resided over exploration, travel, and navigation. Fundamentally, in my mind, this made him the most important Giant, as Glitch was a game about traveling and exploring. From Lem stemmed two of the most important powers in the game, teleportation (the ability to teleport from one location to anywhere else on the maps) and eyeballery (the ability to hold still and look at the totality of a location all at once).

So my little Glitch became a Lemmite. When the old housing system was in place, I had her purchase a house that connected to a street with a Lem shrine. Every day, she would gather up things in a travel bag and place it out by that shrine. It could be picked up by anyone. I never even saw who got them. The bag would have things for traveling in it. Food, drinks, usually an expensive item or two. It would also have teleportation scripts to various places.

I would change up what places I would link to, except in one case. I always included a script that would take you to Mullangi Meda. In the little story I wove about my Glitch and her travels, this street was the most holy of all Lem shrines. It was located as far North as the glitches had explored in the region of Aranna. On the map at that time, everything past Aranna was called "the end of imagination."  It was said that Rooks lived in the mountains past Aranna. The shrines there were the first line of defense.

I always found Mullangi Meda to be the most beautiful of streets. The way it was constructed, you could just imagine the pure, crisp air. You could almost feel the chill in the air that mingled with the heat of the sun, as one tried to melt the snow and the other tried to preserve it. If you went on foot to this shrine, there was a lot of climbing and jumping involved. It was both very much North and very high in the mountains. It was always worth the climb though, as there was a bit of extra favor from the Giants located on the street.

So in every bag I donated, I always had a script to there. The note I would leave with the script would read, "Travel to Mullangi Meda, a bastion against those who seek to destroy our world, a holy place to Lem and to all Giants.  A place of beauty, secured by brave little glitches who wanted to keep us all safe. The Shrine at the End of Imagination."

Mullangi Meda, in the region of Aranna, in the land called Ur, isn't physically a real place. Soon, because Glitch is closing, it won't even be an accessible place online. But in my mind, in my imagination, it is real and it will always be real. Until I have lost all memory and all thought, I will be able to imagine what is like to stand there, to listen to the birds call out and hoping none of them are too dangerous. I will smell the snow around me and hear the drip of icicles as the bright sun melts them.

Because in the end, what Tiny Speck was able to do with Glitch was to truly create a world so vivid and so visceral that it will never leave the people who played there, the people who loved it. Mullagni Meda may be an imaginary place, but it is also, truly, a place of pure imagination, a place that has inspired much inside of me.