Gosh I am sorry the story is moving at a snail’s pace right now, I promise to speed up. We’re getting close to the end of this arc anyway, that will hopefully be fun for everyone involved. After that only two story arcs until the end of part 1. To make up for these short pages, here is some bonus art and some text about some stuff, reposted from my tumblr:

So I decided to do a series of blog posts, with ideas that aren’t going to make it into Floatillion, but are still part of the universe. I know Floatillion isn’t very far along, and it’s probably incredibly premature for something like this, but I figure I can do this along the course of the entire series, bit by bit. There’s actually quite a lot of side story, because this comic is based on an aborted novel I was working on called ROTOR, and very little of it actually made it into Floatillion. So here goes, today I will talk about: The Book of Three Rivers

 

I don’t know if I made it clear in the comic yet, but the cult all the characters belong to is called The Church of Three Rivers. (I think I explain the Three Rivers concept in the comic well enough so I won’t go into that.) And their gospel is called The Book of Three Rivers. In my mind this is the book Mask Boy is reading at the end of this comic. Not the right color but I’ll fix that later on.

 

There on top is what the cover of The Book of Three Rivers looks like. In the center are the Three Symbols, which will continue popping up all over the place in the comic. The first is the symbol of the Three Rivers themselves, as well as the main symbol of the Church, much like a cross. The moon symbol represents Project ROTOR, among other things. And the third I won’t talk about just yet. Then of course there are the Three Rivers flowing around the Symbols, with the Third River kind of separate from the first two.

 

Prefacing the main content of the book is this poem (seen in this comic):

 

The First River is water, normal and pure, of which everything else is composed.

 

The Second runs with the dreams of the First, three thousand times simpler, and superimposed.

 

And in the Third River, reaching six feet tall, are the wicked fires that will burn us all.

 

The Book of Three Rivers is split up into three parts, just like pretty much everything else in this world. The first part of the book is a diary, detailing very everyday events, in the context of the Church of Three Rivers. The writer of the diary is an upstanding citizen, they work at ROTOR every day, they listen to Astrid’s broadcasts and agree with them unconditionally. Nothing very exciting happens, it’s just a window into the life of an unknown cult member.

 

The second part is a dream journal of the same unknown person. For the most part the dreams are strange but calm. No nightmares. Some entries parallel events in the first part of the book. Some dreams are interesting, but there doesn’t seem to be much of consequence in the second part either. This part of the book is not to be confused with the dream journals which the Red Kids carry around. Those are their own dream journals, following in the tradition of this one, the original.

 

The third part is said to describe the End of the World, and to add context and significance to the first two parts of the book. However, only Children of the Third River are allowed to read the third part of the book, as according to Astrid you cannot read the third part without being infected by the Third River. This is used as part of the justification for why Blue Kids have authority over everyone else: only they can know about the approaching End of the World and only they know how it can be stopped. The Yellow and Red Kids have incomplete versions of the text.

 

I think that about does it for the Book of Three Rivers. Next time: The Truth Ulcer