Founder

Those that have brought something of the Paths into reality, twisting it in turn. A descriptor for a type of Lost that can take a huge variety of forms.

Particulars

Founders are those Lost that have found their way out of The Paths. They tend to gather up real-world items they find on the Paths that still have ties to Earth, so not having been lost items, and use these to bring the Paths down to Earth as well.<ref>There are some others that might interest you, once Lost, now called Found or Founders. They gather up mundane objects on the Paths that aren’t entirely Lost and that have traces of Earth on them, and like someone tied to a thousand balloons that picks up enough heavy stuff they can start drifting to solid Earth. Some make craters on impact, and craters can be like depressions. - [12.7 spoilers] Knots and Depressions</ref><ref name="DWB">Founders are those who once were Lost but have 'found' their way back to the realm of man, sometimes by way of collecting things or people that are on their way to becoming lost and tracing their way back to reality. They tend to settle in knotted and isolated places; islands or places in deep forest. Scholars have debated whether they create their own special rules by some mechanism, or naturally find their way to suitable locations. A decrepit boarding school in deep forest overgrown with moss where the children rule and the 'staff' are little more than animals, including the bound and barely tame that children keep as pets and work animals, and the ones who escaped that roam the woods, the most aged periodically giving birth to full-grown adults. There, time doesn't properly pass - children stay children and adults get older by the day until they don't even resemble humans. A town in the desert where karmic rules are reversed and practice is impossible, where the masked inhabitants will punish truth-tellers and those not able to commit their daily violations with death - if they can't, then the knotted place itself will, often hurting both the truth teller and the locals both.

There are a few elements very common to founders and their regions (though no rule is ever 100%); they (singular or plural) are often camouflaged among others who've adapted to the area. If they didn't collect people on their way out of the Paths, as some of their breadcrumbs, then people will often get trapped there and adapt to the environment. They may maintain peculiar powers or have certain prominence, they play into the nature of knotted spaces and areas already hard to access and harder to escape, helping those areas become hard to escape. And for those who can't adapt or escape, both of which oft require dealing with the founder in some fashion, there is often only a harsh fate as the region turns against them, killing them or turning them monstrous. - Wildbow on Discord</ref> While these can be traded or collected, Founders have a reputation as the type of Lost that murder Finders and similar practitioners and take their stuff for their own.<ref name=":0">“And then you have Founders,” Verona said.

“Which are Others that collect enough mundane items that they can bring themselves down to Earth. And they tend to arrive with a whole lot of knotting and Lostness following them. The impact sites becomes these little closed off areas that are hard to get to by conventional means, with their own rules inside, and Others who fit that ecosystem, usually. Like, children never grow up, and the ones that dare to decide to grow up get murdered by the Founder.”

“That sounds familiar,” Lucy said.

“Yeah, probably. Jude had a mini-freakout when I told him what we wanted to do, but I think a lot of that is because the kinds of Others who collect mundane items are also the kinds of Others who murder Finders, take their stuff, and end up drifting down to Earth as Founders because they’ve accumulated so much ordinary Earth stuff around them.” - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.6</ref>

It should be explicitly stated that the Founder in question can be a singular Lost, a singular Lost that is many people, a group of Lost that cooperates together,<ref name="DWB" /> or a powerful item on the paths that has found it's way back to Earth.<ref>Founders capitalize on the fact that Pathstuff that is sufficiently laden-down with mundanity can drop from the Paths and back to Earth. A powerful Lost or item dropped to Earth can create a lot of destruction or a localized realm with its own rules, the dropped Lost or item deciding the theming. - PACT DICE: Paths</ref>

A human of any stripe can not be a Founder as they have too many Connections to reality and other people.<ref>“Hopefully nothing.  So um, just running a quick question by you guys.  Can a human become a Founder?”
[...]
“I don’t think a human, practitioner or otherwise, could become a founder,” Jude’s mom said.  “I think it comes down to connections.  They absorb the impact, and humans have too many, while something Lost has very few.  If you had a human with that small a number of connections, they probably wouldn’t be human anymore.” - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.6</ref> A practitioner can be called a "Founder" but such people usually try to work with a specific Founded realm that is already established.<ref>“Okay. You think they might do associated work? There’s other stuff that ties into Paths. So long as you’ve got resources, it’d be easy to sort out. Gatherers, grounded, whimsies, Lost souls, dream gardeners, the transient, Losers, the Curious. Hell, you’ve made your mark as a Founder, essentially. There’s some that do that professionally. Different scenario, usually they’re trying to capture and divert the power, not encourage it, but…” - Excerpt from Let Slip 20.9</ref><ref name="WK">“Yes,” she replied, with Margot’s mouth. “Under the guise of idle research. Say it’s because of the founding in Kennet. A big, reckless ritual that happened to go well. What if others emulate it?”

“Wonderkand is.”

She let out a rueful chuckle. “Weren’t they already founding places?”

“Different capacity. Different mentality. I was talking to Milton, and they want to talk to someone, you’d know who she is. One of your opponents, I think.” - Excerpt from Hard Pass 22.a</ref> Trying to intentionally "Found" a place is an act rare enough that the Page of Suns takes an interest.<ref>The Page of Suns is theorized to appear when someone approaches the unprecedented or when one is about to fall victim to the Paths. The unprecedented action may be an action with wide-reaching implications, a discovery, a record, or a force defeated. - Excerpt from 100 Years Lost</ref><ref>“Do you know who I am?” the Page of Suns asked.
[...]
“I think so,” Avery replied. “I’ve read you appear to Finders and key Lost when something very great or something very terrible is going to happen.”
[...]
“I stopped in to see the Other you call Miss, first. The task before me is both massive and delicate. I have a system for finding candidates, and that starts with the extraordinary. Those who do new things, or set a new bar.” - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.10</ref>

They are somewhat related to Path heavies in that they collect items to fall to Earth while a Lost can collect lost things to forge their own path.<ref>“The first Lost you meet there get to dictate the rules. Try to make that meeting a positive one,” Sootsleeves said. “Even when I visited, I was prominent enough they didn’t dare get on my bad side with cruel rules.”

“I was curious how that works,” Avery remarked. “Did you leave your kingdom?”

“Sometimes, but this was a place I visited on my way to forging my kingdom.”

“Same deal as Founding,” Jude explained. “A Lost collects enough Lost stuff, develops a kind of gravity…”

“Right. Except wait, I thought a Lost had trouble holding onto a lot of stuff.”

“They do. It’s my understanding it helps if they collect fitting allies or people in your orbit, and if they collect items that group together or form little collections with a theme. Those that are bigger and more powerful tend to get a headstart.”

“Just so,” Sootsleeves said. - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.10</ref>

Realm

The limited amount of space to hide a Knotted Place has lead to the creation of entire archipelagos of Found islands, each with their own set of rules.<ref>Because there’s a narrow band of places that fit the bill of being remote enough but not too distant from humans + human sentiment, they tend to cluster. This can give us Founder-inhabited island chains where each island has a rule, or areas with rules that overlap - [12.7 spoilers] Knots and Depressions</ref>

The effects on a specific realm are in large part based on what Path the Founder descended from. The founder, singular or plural, is then the lenses though which the Founded realm is created.

Related phenomena

A path that has been traveled too many times can lead to that path falling down to earth.<ref>Research is still being done, more is being discovered, and these realms, dubbed Paths, may sometimes manifest or ‘fall to Earth’, disconnecting from this odd cosmos. [...] As the Path is experienced by more and more practitioners, the Paths seem to learn how to balance themselves out and things fall in line, but cumulative experience of many Path Runners and Finders on the path help to unravel it and any secondary benefits it may be hiding- routes to other Paths, more treasures, other boons, or ways the Path interacts with Earth.Path Runner</ref> The inhabitants and local path Bosses do not become founders in this case as they do not have the weight to create a realm around themselves. Similarly sometimes pieces of paths, if not entire paths, are excised from the wider "network" if they prove too dangerous. As Queen Sootsleeves and her Run-Down Kingdom were prior to being bound<ref>“This was true when we had our own dream, it was true when we founded a kingdom on this Earth, in a patch of remote forest.”

“You had a Path of your own?” Avery asked.

“You had a kingdom on Earth?” Verona asked.
[...]
“A story for another time, as is the kingdom we founded on Earth before we were attacked and bound.”
[...]
“Yeah, except I think they tried other things first. She was brought down to Earth, that’s a whole thing where Path practitioners can try to bring a path or a key component of a path down to earth to try to create an effect, or remove it from the network of the Paths. So if they find a path that’s easy to stumble onto where every option is bad, or things aren’t doable, they move it out of the network. The situation she described sounds like a good case for that.” - Excerpt from Playing a Part 15.7</ref>

Foundlings

Lost created in the knotted places that Founders settle in, can become people themselves.<ref>“This is a founded location,” Mrs. Driscoll said. “We’ll give the rundown after, but understand, these are Foundlings, not Lost, they’re citizens, they’re props that will become people. I imagine a select few have. Control how much you interact with them.” - Excerpt from Gone and Done It 17.x</ref> Going through the motions of being a person helps them to grow. <ref> - Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.a</ref>

Known Examples

• Others
  • Archipelago
  • Miss of Kennet Found<ref>Gone and Done It 17.15</ref>
• Practitioners
  • Peter Garrick (possibly)<ref>“Hello? Peter Garrick. Finder, friend of founder, ferrier. Avery Kelly and opossum I assume?” - Excerpt from Wild Abandon 18.9</ref>
  • Kennet Trio of Kennet Found
  • Wonderkand<ref name="WK"/>

Trivia

• An example brought up in story is Peter Pan<ref>How the fantasy of Peter Pan turned sinister, Vox.com </ref><ref name=":1">“I’ll make you a deal,” Marlen told Cherrypop. “I’ll tell you a way you can make a little Lost realm, but you need to leave me alone forever. [...] Some Lost exit the Paths and create impact zones. Ones they decorate and empower with Lost things.”
  
  “Oh right, the Neverland type places? Our friend read up on those.”
  
  Marlen shrugged. “I thought it’d get her attention. Maybe I could tell her she had to find enough Lost things and give her a reason not to sit here and prattle at me.” - Excerpt from Left in the Dust 16.4</ref>

References

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