The Flint

ASPECTS
FLINT?
GENERAL INFORMATION
ARCANA	-
ORIGIN	Stone
PRONOUNS	She/Her
"The Forge first eclipsed then shattered Flint" 'In Memory of Gods'
OTHER TITLES
- The Old Fire
WF Catalogue Entry

'This is only a stone, though it is smoothed and sharpened to a midnight point, but look closer. Each of its facets shows a single point of light. It might be the glint of firelight. It might be each a different Star.'

The Flint was one of the old gods-from-stone worshipped before humanity and slain in the Lithomachy. She is described as a smooth stone sharpened to a midnight point, whose facets glint with light. It seems to have filled a similar role to the Forge, the Hour which killed her, as an Hour of fire and creation. The Flint is believed to be some some sort of proto-Forge, due to her connection to fire and “the arts of shaping and remaking”.

Events

• Lithomachy: The Flint was killed and sent to Nowhere by the Forge, who “eclipsed and shattered” her.

Servants

• Antaios: The Son of Earth, Antaois the Opponent was a hero-king and a great enemy of the Lionsmith, acknowledged and respected even today by the initiates of the Antaeum. Antaios’s line is said to be the “Blood of the Earth”, and the line of the Wheel and the Flint. Both the player and the Foe in Exile are Antaean, descendants of Antaios.

• Carapace Cross: The Carapace Cross are the predecessors to humanity, who worshiped the gods-from-stone such as the Flint. They are believed to be extinct, though in truth, “the Carapace-cross did not perish but passed within”.

Relationships

• The Watchman: The Unwise Mortal, who likely was the Watchman before he ascended, first learned from the Flint before entering the service of the Egg Unhatching.

• The Forge of Days: The Hour which shattered and eclipsed the Flint, sending it to Nowhere and taking their place in the Mansus. A golden memory of the Flint still resides within King Crucible, a Name of the Forge.

• The Horned Axe: The last surviving god-from-stone, who eventually made a treaty with the newer Hours that involved the Thunderskin’s sacrifice as restitution for the deaths for her siblings.

• The Sun-in-Rags: In one of possible Histories there is the cage of glass the Sun-in-Rags built in the southmost reaches of the world and it will be his cell "when the sunset comes". The Sun-in-Rags will be free again when "the earth contorts" but this event will also herald the vengeance of the Flint.

Real-World References

• The Flint may have connections to Gaea, the Earth Goddess who is the mother of Antaios. So long as he remained in contact with the earth, Antaios was invincible. While the Flint is primarily presented as an Hour of fire and shaping, “in fire are all the treasures of the earth revealed”, and so they are also tied to the earth, which may be part of the reason why Antaeans are called “Blood of the Earth”.
• One interpretation of the death of the gods-from-stone connects them to the rise of human civilization and a transition to a “higher” state of being. One of the more obvious cases is with the Flint being replaced with the Forge, marking a transition from the use of stone tools to metals in the Bronze Age, the beginning of which is generally assumed to be the time period around which the Lithomachy takes place.

Other Notes

• The Flint appears in one of the memories for the Palest Painting of the Ghoul Legacy, the Colours of the Old Fire.
• They can also be seen in the Priest Legacy in the Vision of Flint, which seems to present the Flint residing in Nowhere soon after their death at the hands of the Forge.

Theories and Questions

• A common theory is that the “first Forbidden Acts of the Forge” were the shattering of the Flint, causing the creation of the Flowermaker.
• While the Flint’s gender has never been explicitly stated, it was speculated for a while that they were male, based on the logic that if the Forge’s sparks of delight which birthed the Flowermaker were a result of the shattering of the Flint, then it would make sense for the two Hours to be of opposite genders to result in a child.
• Conversely, an argument for the Flint being female could be that the gods-from-stone are all called “sisters and brothers” of the Horned Axe, and the Seven-Coils, Wheel, and Egg Unhatching are all mentioned at least once as male, implying that the Flint and the Tide are the female sisters. This would also support a connection between the Flint and Gaea, Mother Earth.
• What being of the line of Antaios and the Blood of the Earth means exactly is unclear. It suggests that the Wheel and the Flint had mortal descendants somehow, but how that affects Antaeans exactly is never explained beyond a mention that their births are difficult for normal humans, as well as a claim in the Kinship ending that the player will become a Name of the Wheel when it returns.
• In the phases of alchemy, the Flint is theorized to have been Nigredo, like the Forge is in modern day. Nigredo was symbolized by lead, night, and the color black, and it meant to “[destroy] the old nature of things, [to reduce] them to the primal state, and then [to transmute] them into a new state of being”. These match with the Flint’s memory being dark grey in color, their status as an Hour of “shaping and remaking”, and the various allusions to the night within their description with having a “midnight point” and the light in the Flint’s facets each being called “a different Star”. The latter also meshes with the concept of Nigredo being when something is purified into its essence (star) before ascending higher into the Great Work.