Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tristissima" data-source="post: 7988526" data-attributes="member: 6162">A new chapter means a new, pretty opening page! In the obviously gorgeous art atop the two pages, we see a couple of wagons, brightly lit despite the general gloom in the image, decorated (though not richly) in white and red with flags and banners and awnings. A trail of about fifteen people follow, their postures not as festive as the wagons. I do appreciate that at least one elder is visible among the small figures. The wagon train approaches a city which lies at the end of a winding road between two hills. An odd bright, warm glow from the left intrudes upon the city’s blacks and greys and purples, colors reflected in the giant storm-like cloud above it that appears to be connected to the city in some way by giant chains. The chains dissolve into the cloud atop and have links that appear to be larger than most of the city’s buildings. This procession is being watched by three giant boars and three deers, all six of whom have eyes that glow with a cold blue for some reason.I like this piece ~ it establishes the overall eerie mood of Nidal but also remembers to assert that there are other aspects to this gloomy realm, as well. We see how present the natural world is, even affected by the spiritual reality of the place. We see the common Nidalese pursuing their own lives, as mundane and comprehensible to us as they, by logic, must be, and even that there is a place for the warm and the festive in Nidal. It is not a one-dimensional place, and we are immediately reminded of that on the front page of the gazetteer.Below the art on the first page is, of course, a relatively sizeable in-universe quotation. This one is from a Chelish ambassador to Nidal, writing to the person replacing her in her position. It describes Nidal wonderfully as a “strange and old place, capricious in the way that strange old things often are”, which is a lovely British fantasy author way of describing a place. The quotation establishes that even the Chelish fear Nidal, but it also reasserts the beauty of Nidal, and “fascinations that dig into your soul as surely as the Kuthites’ hooks bite into their skin”, as well as the invaluable knowledge shepherded by these ancient masochistic people.This quotation, more than anything really, is what got me excited about Nidal, pushing past my concerns that its depiction would be one-dimensional, cartoonish, and annoying to me as a lifestyle masochist. But, as Ambassador Thelassia Phandros says, “It is a place, for better or worse, that you will never forget. You can’t. The scars remain forever.”The actual text of the gazetteer opens up with a reminder of just how ancient Nidal is (a topic I’ve harped on as well throughout this Let’s Read). And yet, unlike might be expected in many other times, that antiquity is not locked away in a book on a shelf or a curio in a vault, but a vital part of what it is to be Nidalese, even today. The book tells us that the poorest of peasants will have an item (a pitcher, maybe, or a necklace) old enough to be in a museum. That’s a part of Nidalese culture that deserves even more attention, I feel ~ the idea that literally everyone has been around objects made as long before them as Jesus was to us, has used and worn these objects throughout their lives. The blend of comfort and caretaking they must feel with the physical objects around them must be intriguing, mixed maybe even to an exotic mindset. It’s a detail easily added into the game as well: the Nidalese fighter and the way she takes care of her sword or armor, or the Nidalese wizard who carries their spellbook roughly over the shoulder but always puts gloves on before turning the pages. Of course, Nidalese occultists would be the pinnacle of such a mindset.This constant presence of the ancient even affects language and clothing, where the inclusion of centuries-old elements is considered a sign of sophistication. Pangolais’s fashion is even described as “defiant” in its mix of new, daring trends with ancient materials and techniques. This is another interestingly gameable detail, as the reaction of the rest of Avistan to Nidalese clothing must be confused and even stilted. The final note in the introduction has to do with the homogenizing nature of both Nidal’s historic isolationism and its cosmologically-enforced state religion. Though regional differences do exist ~ a Nidalese could easily tell an Atterani hose-tender from a Pangolaisian aristocrat, for example ~ they tend to be so subtle as to escape the notice of outsiders. This could lead to NPCs (or even PCs!) who have the problematic notion that all Nidalese are exactly alike. Combined with the oddness of their traditional/cutting-edge fashion and distinctly alien philosophy, this probably marks Nidalese as outsiders across Avistan, which could lead to both exoticizing and ostracizing them. Though I hate to apply the word “Orientalism” to an ostensibly faux-European culture, it seems likely that most Avistani (whose culture has been so shaped by the faux-Byzantine Taldans anyway) might take such an attitude to the Nidalese, and this introduction succinctly lays out the reasons why, without ever mentioning such a thing.</blockquote>

Verification