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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tristissima" data-source="post: 8108173" data-attributes="member: 6162">Pangolais’s main temple is a contender for the title of main Kuthite temple across the Inner Sea. Called the Cathedral of Exquisite Agony and built of marble and steel in the grandest Brutalist fashion, it resembles nothing so much as a plague-hallucination of a monster in a spiked carapace. We are directed to Inner Sea Temples for more details.This grand city is haunted by a city watch called the Chainguard, and they are headquartered in a building known creatively as the Chainhouse. Three stories tall, ths urban fortress squats near the Cathedral of Exquisite Agony. This is where Captain Irciele of Ridwan commands the day-to-day operations of the Chainguard. Interestingly enough, Captain Irciele is no true believer of her people’s national faith, merely a “pragmatist with no use for extremism or pretension” who uses the title of Captain instead of her official title, Commander of Chains, Guardian of Shade, and Exalted Keeper of the Midnight Lord’s Silenced Agonies.Beneath the Chainhouse hides a dungeon of its own for witnesses who aren’t cooperating and those in protective custody. Instead of being kept here, actual criminals are sent to the Cathedral of Exquisite Agony if their torture is considered to have a chance of yielding information or to the public squares if the torture is merely to entertain the populace. Captain Irciele doesn’t really trust the latter, however, and so will sometimes keep them in her own custody until her own investigation is complete, considering it her duty to enforce the law with fairness and dispassion, despite the cruelties of Nidalese law generally privileging the powerful.OK, so this hits upon a bit of a bugaboo for me in world creation, though there’s a bit of tension within it. I am not one to argue, as some do, that D&D-style or Tolkien-style fantasy worlds need to try to hew as closely as possible to the actual development of societies in Earth’s history. Where is the fantasy in that, for one? Sure, it can be fun sometimes, and really test one’s mythopoetic abilities, but it is by no means a universal good. On the other hand, ignoring the reality that everything that exists has a specific and at least semi-intentional origin point with a context weakens the power of one’s mythopoetic narrative, strains immersionism, cuts off creative possibilities, and runs the risk of accidentally furthering oppression in your work.I like Captain Irciele. A lot. She feels very much like a young adult cartoon character in a good way ~ the stern and seemingly evil apparent opponent who turns out to be both a good person and an ally to the main character. On the other hand, she could easily be an Inspector Javert and still fit the description. Which, crucially, means you can tell very different stories about her and then tell other stories explaining how the two parts fit together, resulting in a complex and nuanced character. Her existence furthermore opens up a whole realm of noir-ish possibilities for stories set in Pangolais, which was unexpected in such a genteel and cultured faux-Paris. Putting these two elements together, I am reminded of several of the episodes (called “affairs”) of Man From U.N.C.L.E. Frankly, I never expected that show (which should have been subtitled “Getting naughty word Past the Censors”), but the thought that I could pull on it for inspiration in Nidal, where I can also shunt the story off to “What if Susan Cooper wrote The Prisoner”ville makes me REALLY happy!However, this kind of policing, with a focus on investigation and crime-solving is a very new phenomenon that did not exist in the Middle Ages, where any investigation that occurred happened in the court where the peasants were pleading their case before their lord. It was certainly not dispassionate, but highly bent towards the disposition of that lord. This is what lies behind a lot of those imprecations in chivalric codes and the like to develop justice as an individual noble ~ because if you were unjust, so was your court. Doing a little bit of quick Wiki research so I could quote the right timeframe for its development, I note that this kind of forensics has roots way back in antiquity and even in the 13th century, so I myself may have been imagining an ahistorical distinction in the process of arguing against them >.< Nonetheless, forensic science as we know it has its origins in the 18th century as part of the explosion of Enlightenment ideas. Taking that into account can deeply enrich one’s depiction of Captain Irciele. The Enlightenment seems to be represented on Golarion primarily by Galt and Andoran, which means that other Chelish splinter-states can be seen as encoding Enlightenment ideas as well, though significantly less so. That adds Molthune and Nirmathas to the list.In my Nidal, Irciele has an interest in Andoren philosophy and has read some of the Galtan philosophy that undergirds it. Though not a particularly zealous Kuthite, she still is a worshiper of the Midnight Lord and a believer in the ethics encoded in Nidalese law and functioning. Its cruelty is appropriate, when it is called for. She seeks to weld Andoren emphasis on logic and evidence with Galtan ideals of fairness, each equal in front of the law. It’s a hard row to hoe, and no doubt much of her sternness and plain-spoken nature is due to the stress she faces from trying to unite these two ideas.More D&D needs to involve this kind of sweeping sociocultural change embodied into its characters, monsters, and plot, in my not-so-humble opinion. All the greatest literature has something like it, after all ~ Romeo and Juliet’s famous palmer’s speech can be read as an exploration of the shifting role of carnality in courtly gender relations, for instance.Dusk Hall is a narrow building of looming points and gothic architecture. Its smoky glass hides one of Pangolais’s magical schools that teaches Nidalese children both arcane and divine magicks so that they might serve the nation and its Sadomasochistic Lord in the greater world beyond Nidal’s borders. It’s another shout out to the author’s two novels set in Nidal. I still need to read these.</blockquote>

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