[GAME] Conceive a Cross Dimensional Fantasy Milieu

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Question 69 Give a name and brief description of the four other multicosmic polities Calledron is in contact with.

Answer 69 [MV]- Name 4 Multicosmic Polities
69a) The Five Banner Concordat
The Five Banner Concordat is a military and trade alliance of five separate polities. They were brought together by the Knights of the Order of the First, the Eleventh and the Final, an order of militant anti-theistic ogre knights, but the member states hold equal status in the alliance. The Concordat has no capital or central government, but representatives meet regularly on an assembly tor in front of the Ogre Knights' castle, the Citadel Metremete on the Plain of Sepulchre.

The member polities are:
The Knights of the Order of the First, the Eleventh and the Final- based in the realm of Sepulchre, the Ogre Knights have sworn an oath to destroy all gods. They claim to be from a realm across the polycosm that no one has heard of, but also claim they know of the original home realm of humans. With their fire-breathing sabrehorn bison steeds, steel-tipped war lances and ballista chariots, the order are recognised as one of the strongest fighting outfits in the Civilised Realms.

The Kobold City of Niph- known for their skills in crafting, blood sorcery and minor alchemy.

The Nickerling Freholds- Nickerlings are not the lithe, athletic, martial catfolk of other fantasy milieus. These are their overfed, indolent, rotund, epicurean, halfling-sized cousins.

The Pirate Kings of Pit- a mainly human polity, whose secret city rims the walls of a bottomless pit.

The City of Rahalar- a grand cosmopolitan city-state that used to be the capital of a cross-realm empire in its own right, but whose fortunes have now faded somewhat.

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Question 79 [CALHB]- Callous Harbour Underworld
Who rules the criminal underworld of the empire's capital? How many factions are there? What goods are traded on the black market?

Question 80 [MV]- Portal Creation
How are portals created, and why is the technology currently unavailable (or at least, apparently so) to our realm-crossing civilisations?

[patchwork]

Answer 51 the Calledron Imperials have gone from a displaced army of 30,000 to a multicosmic empire with many millions in two centuries. Laying aside for the moment what that says about their family dynamics, "too many archmages" can't even be a theoretical problem; an Archmage assembles a small army-colony plant (with the Emperor's blessing) and carves out a new province at the end of a portal. Indeed, in a culture which lauds strength as much as Calledron's, the trick is convincing a gifted young person to take over the administration of an established cash-crop farming province or trading house rather than become a pioneer hero military-adventurer-entrepreneur. The result is that the "Archmages" in charge of the oldest and most established provinces on Calledron are often the least potent in magical ability. Archmages are improbable enough that even given the power's semi-inheritable nature, parent-child Archmage pairings are rare, much too rare to build policy around. An Archmage's children are probably Mages, however. And the Mage-level children who learned the foundation and governance of their parent's province at their parent's feet is a very practical choice to declare "Archmage" and allow to succeed their parent, or take over an older province without a clear successor. Some Imperials grumble at this, since hereditary rulership is not traditional to them, and mutter that the "real" Empire is out at the pointy end building and forcibly assimilating, not back on the skull.

Question 81 laying aside the training of mages, which was a previous question - what is the education of a typical poor citizen of Calledron like? How about the education of a wealthy or powerful one?

Question 82 where is the Impossible Sea, source of stagfish leather and prawnskin, located? What is it like? Who rules it?

[patchwork]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 80 [MV]- Portal Creation
How are portals created, and why is the technology currently unavailable (or at least, apparently so) to our realm-crossing civilisations?

That's an easy one, although it's likely no one in the Civilized Realms knows the answer in any definitive way. Portal networks are created by the annihilation of true Gods. It's unclear if a Behemophaunt counts, although the presence of many portals on Calledron argue that it does; a mighty spirit such as Mother Plains would not. Portals represent the glitches, errors and overwrites as the polycosm recompiles itself to account for the absence of the now-missing divinity. The nature of the God killed, time, place, method and agent probably all strongly influence the nature, placement and structure of the resulting portals, but there isn't enough data to make definitive conclusions on those points. In any case, few people setting out to kill a god have a wealth of options and choices to make in such matters. The Ogre Knights of the Five Banners Concordat, if they ever actually achieve their aim for real, thus may actually be the root of a new portal network.

Question 83 Describe the Curselands that all Fiend Gates apparently dump travelers into somewhere.

[ericthered]

Answer 25b

The two sets Pelvic bones of Suchus are distinct and separate. the left side is tilted at an angle that makes is difficult for anthing that doesn't fly to live there. The right side of the pelvic girdle is home to a population of Elluumeragh (mer), and has a single portal that opens only intermittently. These mer are skilled with a great number of semi-toxic effects, wielding blowguns capable of inflicting drowsiness, paralysis, nausea, death, and other effects upon victims (including a few benign ones like sleep).

Question 63- Espionage
Does the Calledron Empire, or any groups within it, operate any kind of spy agencies?

There a few kinds of spying sponsored by Calledron governments.

The imperial geographers are charged with knowing whatever the emperor or another archmage needs to know about foreign lands. This includes what the governments of foreign lands are up to. The geographers present themselves as somewhere between scholarly and bureaucratic, always interviewing travelers about what they saw on their latest journey. They may possibly have covert agents in foreign courts.

Each archmage's army has a group of spies responsible for gathering information about the enemy. The size of this force varies with how much trouble the archmage is expecting and on his personality. These units are usually focused on specific military threats.

High Society events in Calledron are either espionage under the guise of partying or partying under the guise of espionage. They are the tool by which archmages keep an eye on what each other are doing. An archmage who isn't represented at such an event risks being in the dark as to what his compatriots are doing. Its also a great place to boast or spread misinformation. Such events fund a feed a number of professional domestic spies.

Question 84: What are the native inhabitants of Gnomon like?

Question 85: Who are the native inhabitants of Eddy?

Originally Posted by patchwork

Portal networks are created by the annihilation of true Gods.

huh. I'm not sure how that fits with everything. Which God died to make the river of seasons, or was that just moved? Are there only 18 god-killing civilizations? I suppose it explains why these civilizations keep falling.

Originally Posted by patchwork

Laying aside for the moment what that says about their family dynamics,

picking it back up again, that's a serious growth curve! watch where you swing that thing!

If a mother and father have 4 surviving children between the ages of 20 and 40 (averaging 30), over the course of 200 years you'll get a x100 increase, which only gives us 3 million imperials (which is a low number for "millions") and 7 full strength archmages.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

huh. I'm not sure how that fits with everything. Which God died to make the river of seasons, or was that just moved? Are there only 18 god-killing civilizations? I suppose it explains why these civilizations keep falling.

Likewise. I'm with the idea of killing gods to make networks, it's pretty metal, but it seems like a chaotic process, whereas the networks would seem to be methodically planned, laid-out and constructed. Perhaps there's a different intermediate step? Non-network, individual portals could still follow their own rules though.

[patchwork]

Originally Posted by ericthered

huh. I'm not sure how that fits with everything. Which God died to make the river of seasons, or was that just moved? Are there only 18 god-killing civilizations? I suppose it explains why these civilizations keep falling.

How the Hoggans manipulated the River of Seasons (and why it wasn't a permanent change, and what else the River of Seasons does) could definitely be a question of its own. I expected the advent of the Imperials and their original homeworld would remain a setting handwave, though. You can't go home again. And only 13; the first 4 ages were the gods themselves using cosmi as melee weapons, and the fifth was the migration of the behemophaunts. I imagined the gradual failure of the portal networks to be a natural process as the multiverse heals itself, but I can see how that seems insufficient and there's probably more to the story. Killing a god more than once every few centuries, in my opinion, devalues the word 'god' into meaninglessness. Your mileage may vary.

picking it back up again, that's a serious growth curve! watch where you swing that thing!

If a mother and father have 4 surviving children between the ages of 20 and 40 (averaging 30), over the course of 200 years you'll get a x100 increase, which only gives us 3 million imperials (which is a low number for "millions") and 7 full strength archmages.

I had something rather more grand in mind >.> one can take 200 years as having only one significant digit, say it's actually 240, and that gives you two more generations of doubling. And at least for the first two generations, I expected you need 6 surviving children per couple, not 4. It can be explained by the advent of a calledronite-rich environment causing growth and health in humans (frequent multiple births?) just as it does plants, at least until they become adjusted and adapted to it. Or you can accept but gloss over the idea that when they first arrived, certain atrocities were committed against the tribal people already on the skull.

My backwards-math is as follows: the Imperials control Calledron, which at a glance seems comparable to South America. They have roughly five similar spaces elsewhere, so let's fudge and say they rule one earth-size of territory. At "fantasy" population densities, that's about 200 million subjects. About half of them are Imperials. a steady curve from 30,000 to 100 million in 200 years requires...the sharp growth curve we're contemplating. Any of my geographic or demographic assumptions could be challenged, of course, but I'm curious which ones you think should be changed.

[patchwork]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Likewise. I'm with the idea of killing gods to make networks, it's pretty metal, but it seems like a chaotic process, whereas the networks would seem to be methodically planned, laid-out and constructed. Perhaps there's a different intermediate step? Non-network, individual portals could still follow their own rules though.

Certainly; after all, the current civilizations do not know how to build a portal network (and if the above assumptions are true,, the notion of the ogres creating an unplanned portal network ought scare some people). Some are better planned than others, though; the Fiend Gates, for example, seem like a network where something went wrong during the creation. Though you also probably imagined them as far more methodical and purposeful than I did.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by patchwork

Killing a god more than once every few centuries, in my opinion, devalues the word 'god' into meaninglessness. Your mileage may vary.

So far our divines have come across as distinctly finite. They each stick to a handful of cosmi, and I'm guessing they're found in pantheons, which means there are rather a lot of them. They also can't see the future, and mortals can enter their realms without their permission (though that's difficult).

To be fair, they seem to be able to form cosmi, have excellent senses, and can grant their followers gifts, so they're not pushovers either. But I'm imagining that most people capable of aiming a God's death will have more than one Divine Conquest to their name.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by patchwork

And only 13; the first 4 ages were the gods themselves using cosmi as melee weapons, and the fifth was the migration of the behemophaunts.

I wasn't too clear in the opening para on A15, but it's meant to be 18 Ages of Civilisation as counted by Calledron scholars, who are relatively new to the game. The Ages of Divinities and Behemophaunts were more portal "creation" than "construction," explaining some of the weirder aspects of portals. Then the Monasts of Halm have their own, different reckoning, and that's the one which starts with 4 Ages of Divinity.

But at the moment that's just background detail, unless we want to go ahead and fill out the other 15 portal networks (after those of the Stone Syndics, the Madrigal and the Fiend Gates), although of course that would be a design goal for a fully fleshed-out setting.

They have roughly five similar spaces elsewhere, so let's fudge and say they rule one earth-size of territory.

We can shave that assumption down a bit. For example, they don't control all of Fragment, so the other realms they "control" could be just talking about their interesting bits, their major cities or their preeminent political units. And like Ton, they could be "significant" without being especially large. I'm looking at the Impossible Sea as being half a Mediterranean, for example.

Originally Posted by ericthered

So far our divines have come across as distinctly finite. They each stick to a handful of cosmi, and I'm guessing they're found in pantheons, which means there are rather a lot of them. They also can't see the future, and mortals can enter their realms without their permission (though that's difficult).

What if they were just a bunch of normal people who figured out the magitech for creating new realities?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

What if they were just a bunch of normal people who figured out the magitech for creating new realities?

Its a possibility, but I feel that would somehow cheapen the setting. Plus that'd be weird when compared to the effects of their death and their inability to leave their divine realms. These divines feel like part of the metaphysics of the setting.

I'm not sure if the primary character point level you'd use in this setting is national level, or focused on the merchants. Right now it supports both, I suppose.