Oligopsony
Explorer
The Lord of the House of Dawn sets down the bone poker and resumes his brush. This mixture will have a little less tar and a little more blood and aspics' spit. He has cried less into it; he thinks perhaps the problem is a surfeit of melodrama. On the skin before him are zigs that ward from fire and zags that ward from rending, whorls that speak of their brief time together, incisions that go all the way down, as his sorrow, and it is in these rivets that a different mix of tar and tear will settle. As always, he is conflicted on the anaesthetic. Doing without makes precision with the brushstrokes more difficult, but its presence unbalances the mixture. The pity to which its lack moves him serves as both inspiration and distraction. This time the poppies stay in their urn; in their place, he lilts of sleep.
In the nursery, he sees smoke rise from the kindling. Soon his messenger will roost. Still, it is important not to hurry the message herself. He doesn't speed brush or bone, but his eyes do flit over, every other moment, to the pterodactyl burning into shape the mountain over.
Before long the pheonix will swoop from the Oriental Peak and rapt the screaming or laughing message; if past results are any indication of future ones, she will be immolated sometime halfway, or the content or form of the message itself will be somehow deficient. But he shall press on, keep tinkering: some dusk, his occidental lady shall recieve his salutation, and exile be exchanged for union.
A league above his city, an infant prince falls into epilepsy, but his jittering body somehow forces him to approach the ledge and look over the smoking metropolis. Mobs are assaulting officers of the law, the Tree of Hope has been chopped down, runes of hate and envy carved into it; a gang is butting its new-shaved head against the wall the separates slavery and freedom. Slavery itself is butting at the wall of freedom; unlike other armies, the Good cultists will not slaughter their victims, unless necessary, but heap upon them greater indigities by far. Architects will be forced from the construction of temples and palaces to that of dams and qanats, great art will be exchanged for folk songs and murals, spires forever skyward for slums forever outward, for rutting will be unchecked by starvation. Concubines trained in the seventy arts of pleasure will be emancipated into the dignity of pulling corn from the soil of kibbutzes. Man will be consigned forever to the ranks of the animal kingdom. It is already happening here, it will happen everywhere if heroes do not take action.
Evil help her! The boy collapses, the Seventh Eye of the Tisroc emerges her head from the blood. She feels drunk. Was she peering into the future or the present? She feels cold, grabs a cloak. Law built civilization, but Law alone cannot preserve it; it has strong hands but it addicted to binding them. This awareness is spreading. She will consult with the Sixteenth Eye; they will find young people of worth, arm them with Evil and hope against Good and despair.
It is the gorgon's hope that this chieftan is either very wise or very foolish. It is the forest's fortune that elf, being just that, is almost certainly both. She doesn't like to lie, it's beneath her duties, but now she feels, as her venom-soaked hands glide over the bones, that they call for it.
"The decree is... that your people, Prince of the Marmoset's Song, shall, upon... the solstice of winter, and the solstice of summer, and the equinox of spring, but upon no other occassions... take exactly three babes, not old enough to walk or speak, from your people, Tzapilicoa, called Mother of the Yapi, that is, three Yapion babes... less, if you choose, but no more than three... no Yapion shall resist this, nor shall either side retaliate... beyond, at least, the borders of their demense... but leave it to me to exact punishment from the traitors in totality. The whole diet of the dryads and neriads and tutelaries of fruit and hind declares this." The locks of her hair bite away her blindfold, and it falls over the castings, which she remains bent over.
"Shake your hands beneath my eyes."
There is a pause. Do they buy it? A woad-drenched hand extends itself, innocent. Will the mortal consent to the theft of her children? She can see the blood seeping slowly into the cloth. Ah. There. A jet hand marked by jewelry and hard work. She thinks the tenor of the grip suggests Tzapilicoa is aware of the secret intentions and can make sacrifices for the long term. But she doesn't know. Perhaps one day she will be worthy of the forest's sorority, or perhaps she will have to be deposed. A tyrant lizard's shattered bones reveal little of the future. Little is known but that more and more of the spirit of this way of life must be smashed, if the form itself is to be preserved.
Each dawn fewer and fewer people remember the cosmogony, and so, naturally, more and more people remember it according to their own prejudice. The Dragonborn say that the world was hatched from an egg; the Dwarves, that it was formless and storming clay and fire and water which, on some ocassion, happened to smudge together some of its substance in the form of a dwarf, who then elected to carve another dwarf, and from whose fabrication is all that is. Humans insist the world developed according to the dialectical logic of sexuality, with Law providing the basic rules of the system and Chaos introducing novelty into it; Evil investing slivers of the creation with individual consciousness and Good making them aware of each other and binding them into communities. Sometimes, in the Tisroc's iconography, the natural world is represented by a four-headed hermaphroditic hydra, cracked egg beneath it, who commands all that is with the four hierotic languages, but whom has been bound him-herself by the Tisroc. If the Elves cared about such things they might say that the world was stolen from somewhere (where? what is outside the world? it would suit their grasp of logic perfectly...), but all they know is hunt and murder and song.
It was inevitable in this yet-cooling world that Law, by its very nature, would be the first to ascend as an organized social philosophy, and it was under that sign that the Tisroc, the forever-dragon-emperor, World-Shaker, conquered, though in his person he upheld it not. A coca-chewing messenger could run for a thousand days and not encircle his realms, if she did, it would have doubled again. But the World-Shaker summoned forces beyond his control; his empire is overstretched. The ascent of Law resulted in counterreactions: Chaos to resist it, Good to overthrow the civilization and rebuild it on new lines, Evil both to resist and to preserve the threat from Good. The center cannot hold. Already bands of violent young men and women are putting down rebellions, performing palace coups, conducting pogroms against their familiies' enemies, and carving out little kingdoms for themselves.
In this thread I'm going to develop this world; it's my hope that I can give it a major update at least thrice a week until I'm fortunate enough to have other responsibilities. I'm aiming for a dark, morally grey setting with a "Lost World" aesthetic. There's no accounting for taste, of course, but I'd appreciate any criticism, suggestions, or additions you have to offer - I have no idea in what order I'll be fleshing aspects out, so if something's uncompelling or could be compelling with a little more work, I want to know. Also, at some point I'll be developing some mechanical additions to the setting (alignment, setting-specific paragon paths...), and I have absolutely no intuition about how to balance things, so any help you could offer on that front would be greatly appreciated. Because I'm greedy there are parallel threads here and here and here.
Setting Assumptions Thus Far:
In the nursery, he sees smoke rise from the kindling. Soon his messenger will roost. Still, it is important not to hurry the message herself. He doesn't speed brush or bone, but his eyes do flit over, every other moment, to the pterodactyl burning into shape the mountain over.
Before long the pheonix will swoop from the Oriental Peak and rapt the screaming or laughing message; if past results are any indication of future ones, she will be immolated sometime halfway, or the content or form of the message itself will be somehow deficient. But he shall press on, keep tinkering: some dusk, his occidental lady shall recieve his salutation, and exile be exchanged for union.
* * *
A league above his city, an infant prince falls into epilepsy, but his jittering body somehow forces him to approach the ledge and look over the smoking metropolis. Mobs are assaulting officers of the law, the Tree of Hope has been chopped down, runes of hate and envy carved into it; a gang is butting its new-shaved head against the wall the separates slavery and freedom. Slavery itself is butting at the wall of freedom; unlike other armies, the Good cultists will not slaughter their victims, unless necessary, but heap upon them greater indigities by far. Architects will be forced from the construction of temples and palaces to that of dams and qanats, great art will be exchanged for folk songs and murals, spires forever skyward for slums forever outward, for rutting will be unchecked by starvation. Concubines trained in the seventy arts of pleasure will be emancipated into the dignity of pulling corn from the soil of kibbutzes. Man will be consigned forever to the ranks of the animal kingdom. It is already happening here, it will happen everywhere if heroes do not take action.
Evil help her! The boy collapses, the Seventh Eye of the Tisroc emerges her head from the blood. She feels drunk. Was she peering into the future or the present? She feels cold, grabs a cloak. Law built civilization, but Law alone cannot preserve it; it has strong hands but it addicted to binding them. This awareness is spreading. She will consult with the Sixteenth Eye; they will find young people of worth, arm them with Evil and hope against Good and despair.
* * *
It is the gorgon's hope that this chieftan is either very wise or very foolish. It is the forest's fortune that elf, being just that, is almost certainly both. She doesn't like to lie, it's beneath her duties, but now she feels, as her venom-soaked hands glide over the bones, that they call for it.
"The decree is... that your people, Prince of the Marmoset's Song, shall, upon... the solstice of winter, and the solstice of summer, and the equinox of spring, but upon no other occassions... take exactly three babes, not old enough to walk or speak, from your people, Tzapilicoa, called Mother of the Yapi, that is, three Yapion babes... less, if you choose, but no more than three... no Yapion shall resist this, nor shall either side retaliate... beyond, at least, the borders of their demense... but leave it to me to exact punishment from the traitors in totality. The whole diet of the dryads and neriads and tutelaries of fruit and hind declares this." The locks of her hair bite away her blindfold, and it falls over the castings, which she remains bent over.
"Shake your hands beneath my eyes."
There is a pause. Do they buy it? A woad-drenched hand extends itself, innocent. Will the mortal consent to the theft of her children? She can see the blood seeping slowly into the cloth. Ah. There. A jet hand marked by jewelry and hard work. She thinks the tenor of the grip suggests Tzapilicoa is aware of the secret intentions and can make sacrifices for the long term. But she doesn't know. Perhaps one day she will be worthy of the forest's sorority, or perhaps she will have to be deposed. A tyrant lizard's shattered bones reveal little of the future. Little is known but that more and more of the spirit of this way of life must be smashed, if the form itself is to be preserved.
* * *
Each dawn fewer and fewer people remember the cosmogony, and so, naturally, more and more people remember it according to their own prejudice. The Dragonborn say that the world was hatched from an egg; the Dwarves, that it was formless and storming clay and fire and water which, on some ocassion, happened to smudge together some of its substance in the form of a dwarf, who then elected to carve another dwarf, and from whose fabrication is all that is. Humans insist the world developed according to the dialectical logic of sexuality, with Law providing the basic rules of the system and Chaos introducing novelty into it; Evil investing slivers of the creation with individual consciousness and Good making them aware of each other and binding them into communities. Sometimes, in the Tisroc's iconography, the natural world is represented by a four-headed hermaphroditic hydra, cracked egg beneath it, who commands all that is with the four hierotic languages, but whom has been bound him-herself by the Tisroc. If the Elves cared about such things they might say that the world was stolen from somewhere (where? what is outside the world? it would suit their grasp of logic perfectly...), but all they know is hunt and murder and song.
It was inevitable in this yet-cooling world that Law, by its very nature, would be the first to ascend as an organized social philosophy, and it was under that sign that the Tisroc, the forever-dragon-emperor, World-Shaker, conquered, though in his person he upheld it not. A coca-chewing messenger could run for a thousand days and not encircle his realms, if she did, it would have doubled again. But the World-Shaker summoned forces beyond his control; his empire is overstretched. The ascent of Law resulted in counterreactions: Chaos to resist it, Good to overthrow the civilization and rebuild it on new lines, Evil both to resist and to preserve the threat from Good. The center cannot hold. Already bands of violent young men and women are putting down rebellions, performing palace coups, conducting pogroms against their familiies' enemies, and carving out little kingdoms for themselves.
* * *
In this thread I'm going to develop this world; it's my hope that I can give it a major update at least thrice a week until I'm fortunate enough to have other responsibilities. I'm aiming for a dark, morally grey setting with a "Lost World" aesthetic. There's no accounting for taste, of course, but I'd appreciate any criticism, suggestions, or additions you have to offer - I have no idea in what order I'll be fleshing aspects out, so if something's uncompelling or could be compelling with a little more work, I want to know. Also, at some point I'll be developing some mechanical additions to the setting (alignment, setting-specific paragon paths...), and I have absolutely no intuition about how to balance things, so any help you could offer on that front would be greatly appreciated. Because I'm greedy there are parallel threads here and here and here.
Setting Assumptions Thus Far:
- The world is young - only a couple hundred years old. People are living in - or in the process of getting conquered by - the very first civilization.
- The division between planes is geographic, not cosmological. If you want to go to the Realm of the Dead, walk there. The sun is literally a pheonix that flies from orient to occident over and over again; if you want to plunge the world into eternal night, go ahead and kill it.
- The world is animistic, and divinity is immanent, not transcendent. There are no gods of abstract concepts; clerics serve Alignments or as intermediaries between tutelary spirits and mortal communities.
- There is no metal. Obsidian, wood, and bone are used for weaponry; bamboo, skins, and magical tattoos are used for armor, most magic items take the form . All materials are frequently magically treated.
- Alignment is an active metaphysical force. There are four: Law, Chaos, Good, and Evil. Good isn't automatically more sympathetic than Evil. Tapping into the power of an Alignment entails ritual obligations, access to new magics, and the ability to speak an alignment language with varying degrees of proficiency.
- No arcane magic. Until PHBII comes out wizards can get reconcepted; Warlocks too (I might want to create or steal some extra pacts for them): in any event, spellbooks, alchemy, orbs, et cetera aren't used as spell foci; drugs, music, yoga, sex, dancing, the keeping and breaking of taboos, negotiation with spirits, and the hierotic (alignment) languages are.
- The landscape is mostly jungle. There aren't any natural open plains; agricultural land is secured milpa-style.
- Dinosaurs are the main fauna. People are probably the only mammals.
- Sources I'm blatantly stealing from: Popul Vuh, the Bible, Tékumel, Exalted, Glorantha, Dark Sun, Planescape, among a bunch I'm probably not aware of.
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