Another of the races that make up the game of Detritus.  It is written from the perspective of a Forgotten, which to us is another human, known as the King of Mayfield.

Lost

I have been asked to pen an introduction to this tome to send back to Earth in the hopes that those of you who could not care for us when we lived there will come to help us now. No chance I say but the Lost that has written most of this is a friend to me somewhat and so I will write this section about his own race so that he is not faced with the Separation.

The Lost were the first of the alien races to arrive in Detritus. They came through the Frizington Street Station. All of them were little spirits – so the Erudite say anyway. I am not sure that I can truly understand how they even knew that they were there until they started to draw the detritus from around them to build their own bodies. Apparently they mainly used a lot of the porcelain doll parts that were laying around, and anything else that was around. Kind of creepy they are to look at but truly they were gifted with hearts of gold.

One by one as the bodies were completed by this telekinetic jumble of limbs, faces and torsos the little spirits would stand up and go about life as though they had always lived here. Apparently it was very disconcerting to the Erudite who approached many of them and offer their assistance. They soon learned that if they pointed to the fact that they were in fact little spirits the parts they had drawn to them would explode outward from the spirit and the process would start again. The catch about it all was that the replacement formed two of the spirits rather than the original one. They would be child sized too, for the Lost that is, and eventually one of the other Lost would come and collect them as if it were all normal.

The physical description of the Lost is going to be lost on a lot of you that read this. It is hard to describe exactly how creepy and weird that these spirits look. They clothe themselves, mainly, in the cast off forgotten dolls and mannequins of our own Earth. Much of the porcelain that make up many of them is cracked or flaking and that mixed with all sorts of other materials creeps you out the first time that you meet one. There are some that are missing large parts of their little doll faces and you can kind of see the animating force shifting about behind it making you get shivers in your brain kind of.

The other thing about it all, and probably the most amazing thing, is that they have no idea that they are not physical beings. I have seen it time and again and even I did it to a few. You point it out to them and they do not believe you but if you insist and make them really take a look at themselves then they just kind of fold up inside of them for a moment and then explode into two or three more little Lost spirits that form from the detritus as little ones and over time “grow” into full Lost. They remember nothing about the one they were previously but it seems to be how they reproduce or something. I don’t know really but I avoid it now. Some of the scum around do it for fun though.

They stand only about a foot and a half to three feet tall, all really dependent on the bits that they make themselves out of and always are humanoid in form. Most of them damage parts of themselves just in the normal part of the day and in the homes that they live in they all keep a bunch of spare parts. These parts just kind of unconsciously move to the body when needed and the little spirits never see it actually happening.

This capability is helped by their native telekinesis that they have. They are at least well aware of this and use it frequently in their daily lives. It is a mistake to think that these little spirits are frail as they pack a solid punch when they need to. They are actually able to form a nice set of armour around themselves too that deflect a lot of the debris that plagues this place.

They are great inventors and some of the creations that I have seen using the junk from Earth would take your breath away. All these things that are purposed for other things in Earth are perfectly put to use in machines that work on clockwork mechanisms and the like. They are a little mistrustful of the electricity that I have shown them, which is great because they bring it to me so that I can keep it safe.

Lost are also exceptionally curious. It is funny to deal with them at times because they are amazed at the simplest thing. One of the first Lost I made a friend of, Kellian, had a house made out of old Encyclopedia Britannica. I told him, or it, whatever, that they were books and it was the way that we stored all of our information. He laughed so hard that he fell off his chair (made from old bed pans I think) until he realised that I was being serious. He could not believe that we were so wasteful of such sturdy materials.

The general Lost is incapable of reading and finds the recording of details to be a wasteful exercise. They make what they need then and there from the parts that are around them. The telekinesis gathers it and bends it to what they need. In this fashion they feel they do not need to record how to make it for next time the parts may be different but the outcome the same.

There are some though that learnt to read and write from some of the earliest of the Forgotten that arrived. These were those that were a little more robust and did not simply explode when facing their own spirituality (yes, a few manage to live past it) and they saw their own selves mirrored by the Erudite. In this they felt that the Erudite were the creators of this race and formed a church, the Church of the Erudite. In this they wanted to record a holy script in much the same form of the Old Testament that litters the detritus here and learnt the skill from the Forgotten.

The priests and holy spirits of the Church have been taught over time how to engage a little of what the Erudite specialise in. On a much smaller scale the Lost spirits in service of the Church of the Erudite are able to perform a ritualised magic on the detritus around them, forming places of worship, defences and sanctuaries.

This belief system is followed by a large majority of the Lost. It is interested to see the enlightened that work inside the Church of the Erudite carefully filter the true information of the nature of the Lost so ninety percent of them don’t immediately explode! In a sense, they are true shepherds of such a large flock.

Problem is that the Lost are just so quick to believe in things and this spiritual nature has some of them worshipping members of the Forgotten, the Church of the Erudite and I have even heard that some of them serve the Jugo. The worst thing about it though is that the Lost actually seem to be major targets for the Consumers and their constructs. Because they are so quick to believe they are susceptible to the Consumer’s possession and many, many Lost are being taken over and used as slaves against the rest of us with seemingly no chance of revival.

If anything, help us for that. These spirits deserve to be saved.

The King of Mayfield