Poolfather

In the first hour of Huetopia’s unwritten dawn, the Poolfather emerged alone from the enchanted pool, slick with its mirrored waters and burdened only by fragments of the Progenitor’s mind—disjointed flashes of invention, a drive like molten gears churning in his chest, but no name, no purpose, no sense of self beyond the raw urge to build. He stumbled across the open field that would one day become the Verdant Circle’s inner pasture, his legs unsteady as if testing gravity for the first time, until he reached the wild forest line where the land still whispered secrets to itself. There, a lone Goloma stepped from the shadows, his eight mask-eyes gleaming with suspicion, and in broken Trade Speak (the common tongue of Tressovar’s human visitors that the Goloma have occasionally crossed paths with and most recently met with violence) rasped, “No hu-man. You go. You not wanted. You, Hu-Man. Leave.” The newborn Hue paused, tilting his head as the words echoed in his empty mind like the first stroke of a chisel on blank stone. “Is that who I am?” he asked, voice steady despite the void within. The Goloma nodded curtly: “Yes, hu-man. You Go.” And so, as the stranger melted back into the trees, the Hue turned away, whispering to the wind, “I am Hue... Hue Mann.” In that moment, the identity of all who would follow was forged, not from memory, but from the simplest act of claiming a shape from nothing.

By the time he circled back to the pool’s edge, drawn by an instinct he could not yet name, the waters had already birthed dozens more: brothers identical in form and fire, each clawing their way from confusion with the same skills, the same relentless drive to create, but no shared past to bind them. They gathered instinctively, drawn to one another like filings to a magnet, and under the Poolfather’s quiet guidance began to shape the world around them. Crude shelters rose first from scavenged stone and fallen branches, then tools hammered from raw ore unearthed nearby, and soon the first gears turned in what would become Cogbloom’s beating heart. As the city took form, walls etched with the symmetrical sigil that mirrored their shared origin, districts blooming one by one like ideas unfurling, they wove a culture from their exile-born wisdom: the lottery to scatter and gather knowledge (as every Hue is birthed with the same mind, unmolded but curious. They would all choose the same destination, so the lottery was born to give every Hue their own life experience to build the future), the Presentation to prove one’s growth, and above all, Huemanity itself, the faith that declared their Progenitor not lost but waiting, his return promised when their innovations finally completed the masterpiece he began.

Over the century that followed, as Huetopia’s sundial-tower cast longer shadows and the pool birthed millions more sons, the first Hue became the steady anchor of it all. He mediated the first district claims, etched the Consortium’s charter into the Alabaster Frame’s base, and stood vigil through every failed return until his brothers learned to celebrate even the smallest steps forward. When the shimmer first bloomed beneath his skin, faint and opalescent, a sign of devotion so deep it reshaped flesh itself, the city knew him no longer as Hue Mann, but as the Poolfather: the eldest brother who had named them all, the living bridge between the Progenitor’s fall and their endless becoming. To this day he leads Huemanity not from a throne but from the pool’s edge, whispering to every new Starter Hue the same words he once spoke to himself: “We are not finished yet. Watch us keep becoming. Tomorrow is our Masterpiece, today we only add wonder."