[GAME] Conceive a Cross Dimensional Fantasy Milieu

[patchwork]

I avoided 55 because I didn't want to claim sole "ownership" of the Lokou. However, if no one else is terribly interested I'll take it up soon.

Answer 62 Imperials mostly can reach the Oppuhan gods via the distorted lands, but mostly don't. The old gods were not known for their reasonableness or even-handedness; the Sovereign of the Heavens declared that they were no longer under the sky he knew and thus could not reach them. The Keeper of Graves was upset that they were residing on a monstrous unburied (and likely unburiable) skeleton, and didn't want to let them speak with their dead. The Warbringer held that they had abandoned the field of a just war and their descendants would be anathema to him for seven generations, and the maintainers of clan and hold spoke likewise. The Clever Three pronounced no curses, but none of them welcomed the lost lambs with open arms either. The court of the Oceans could not be reached at all. Only the Debauched Reveler was pleased to see them, and that one has never been a deity of the majority. Faced with such a reception, devotees of the Debauched Reveler kept on doing what they had been doing, and everyone else tried to learn the new gods of their home in exile. Suchos was easy, but it provides no guidance beyond, perhaps, "avoid eating your own young if possible". The deity of the Lokou was apparently not receptive. Most current Imperial gods were thus once local tribal gods that the Imperials were able to contact and reach an agreement with.

Of course, the seven generations are now past. The large majority of Imperials have a skeptical attitude towards deities that rejected their ancestors (and a skeptical attitude toward the Debauched Reveler), but the Warbringer was true to its word this time, and some reactionary elements among Imperial society have attempted to restart the Warbringer's cult with lip service to the deities of clan and hold and the clever three. Mystically, it works fine, but popular opinion is not currently with them.

Question 95 What does the rest of the Concordat of Five Banners think of gods in general? If they are in disagreement with the ogre knights, what is the basis of the concordat? How much of a distinction do the ogres make between a god and its mortal cult? What virtues or qualities do the ogres prize in themselves, and what in allies? (since they're apparently capable of working with allies very different from themselves).

[sinleqiunnini]

Question 87:
What shape is the Pirate City of Pit? Does it ring the entire pit? Is it long and vertical, all on a few levels, or just a big blob? How do people get up and down from one level to another?

Answer 87:

The pit of the eponymous city is bottomless, but that does not mean it is infinite. In fact, it is quite small. Smaller than Calledron's capital area, at any rate.

If you looked down from the city's many decks, in a particularly clear location and on a particularly clear day, you could see the back of your own head looking down. If you looked up, you would see the back of your head looking up. It loops, despite the fact that it is vertical and without curves.

The Pirate City, more commonly called the Pit by outsiders, and the Wind by the natives, is a medium sized settlement that lines the entirety of the cosm's inner walls. The central shaft has regular winds, and the people here use these to both tell time and travel quickly. During the first half of the day, the winds blow up. In the second half, they go down. Regardless of direction, wind speed is constant. The switch is sudden and it often disorients newcomers. Parachutes and gliders are a common sight here, as are small airships.

The cloud-portals to and from the Pit come and go at random, though they tend to stay for a couple weeks. The shortest lived portal on record was five days, the longest sixty-seven. This allows for piracy to be a common and relatively consequence free-profession. The Pit has no consistent neighbors, so it does not need to worry about invasion, or foreign relations in general. Going out with an airship crew, flying through a cloud, and then coming back with loot - the most valuable of which are captives - is a coming of age ritual for both men and women here.

Despite the city's tenuous connection to the rest of the Polycosm, it is nominally with the Five Banners. There's usually a portal to a Five Banner's realm here, and vessels from here are the only reliable trade partners the city has. This doesn't stop the City's anarchic population from trying to raid the other states under the Banners, and this is usually only stopped by foreign occupation. Those always fail when there isn't a portal to a Banner's realm in the Shaft - which happens often enough.

Those captives are slaves, but their children are by right free persons, and expected to participate in Pit society as anyone else would. In fact they, more than anything else, are the reason Pit society continues as it does. Honor duels, vendettas, and other violence is common here, and free people tend not to have many children. Curiously, the law shields slaves from this culture of violence. More than ordinary property, they are proof of one's deeds, and their loss can spark the violence previously described.

The Pit's portals serve another purpose. Other worlds' suns shine through them, and without this the city would have no natural light. This is essential for the city's meager agricultural production, and prevents the humans and other light adapted races here from getting too weird without it.

Question 96: What wildlife lives in the Pit and the Pirate City? How does the citizenry interact with these creatures?

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm a little unsure exactly where the billboard pretending to be a sun is located in that cosm. The center of the ocean? above one of the corners? orbited around by the tetrahedron?

The seas are on the inside of the tetrahedron, like you were standing inside a pyramid. If you look up, you see the other 3 walls covered with ocean. The sun is at the centre of the volume, which is 204 miles from the centre of each face, at point O in this diagram. So, one face of the sun lights up to illuminate one internal face of the world.

Gravity acts perpendicular to each local surface, so it doesn't matter which face you're on, gravity is down for you. The edges and vertices are going to have some weird gravity effects.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by sinleqiunnini

Answer 87:

The pit of the eponymous city is bottomless...

And another player enters the game! Welcome, fellow polycosmic traveller!

[patchwork]

Answer 65 Prevailing alchemical theory holds that every formula has four elements, one material, one mental and one vital. The fourth is the Temper of the performing alchemist, which is why alchemy involves both a high degree of self-reflection and individual study; one can simply copy formulae only from alchemists whose Tempers are very similar to yours. Ton and other reputable sources of instruction insist on learning many possible interactions with multiple Tempers because they can change; a highly Sanguine alchemist whose lover commits suicide while blaming them may shift permanently to Melancholic or some other sort of balance, necessitating a reformulation of all their life's work to date. And you aren't going to get very far if you don't accurately know your own Temper. The rapidly changing Tempers of children makes it nearly impossible for them to use alchemy deliberately and successfully.

But to give a specific example of a summoning; an alchemist of highly Choleric Temper uses eight ounces of fine dust they ground themself (glass works best, but bone and reflective stone can also be used for this) as the material, manacles that once held a murderer as the mental, and a vole burned alive as the vital to summon a Mote of the Lifebringer. A Phlegmatic alchemist would use 8 ounces of water lily pollen, a simple set of veves drawn with a quill no other sapient has ever seen or touched, and a small quantity of tears shed over a wrong that has since been righted to summon the same Mote.

Question 97 what happens when an alchemist uses close-but-not-quite components for a summoning, particularly if they misunderstand their own Temper?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by sinleqiunnini

Answer 87:

The pit of the eponymous city is bottomless, but that does not mean it is infinite. In fact, it is quite small. Smaller than Calledron's capital area, at any rate.

Welcome! We are glad to have you. Also, thank you for including that idea! I've been biting back my urge to include it because some people really don't like non-planar topography, but I have a soft spot for it!

Originally Posted by patchwork

Question 56 Who, in the Calledron Empire, is permitted to use the Distorted Lands to reach the dead, and what purposes are considered legitimate? Does it matter who is reaching which dead? What about accidents or explorations of the realms of the dead? What does the Imperium think is the appropriate relations between living and dead, and who, if anyone, disagrees?

The distorted lands are in theory open to all inhabitants of the empire. In practice, its time consuming and difficult to successfully navigate the distorted lands to useful locations. There are a few different groups who do so routinely.

Imperials have a long tradition of "God-hunting", which is essentially taking a hiking trip through the distorted lands looking for divine realms. God hunters are almost a religion unto themselves, making a study of how to approach the divine and overcome the obstacles of the distorted lands. Many acquire odd gifts or curses in this pursuit. 200 years after loosing their Gods, the Calledronians know quite a bit about the local dieties, and some go on pilgrimages to other realms to find New Gods. Showing the new Gods proper respect and offering gifts is of the utmost importance, but it would be a mistake to consider this behavior worship, and God hunters care more about how many gods or afterlives they've visited, rather than how devoted they are to one. Most of them have the sense to stay away from the realm of Lokou God, but incidents happen with fair regularity. Rumor has it that all Arch-mages were once God-hunters who received a boon from a secret diety. There are a fair number of flaws with this theory, but it persists regardless.

The realm of the Dead attached to Fragment is a blooming garden full of ponds, streams, and reptiles. Wild game rises from the ground periodically and walks around until caught and eaten. The realm seems to cater more to the population of deceased snakes and crocodiles than to its human inhabitants, though there is an odd truce between the dead and the crocodiles (They happily eat living visitors). Its a difficult journey to Fragment's afterlife, and making many trips to see loved ones is discouraged. Most cannot make the trip there in the first place, and among those that can more than a single trip is considered distasteful. Trying to bring the dead back is a sacrilegious crime.

Professional messengers to the dead ply a not inconsiderable trade, delivering messages back and forth, and asking questions of the dead. One of the hardest aspects of such a job is getting the dead to speak when you have nothing you can give them. Once again, more than one set of messages in considered Gauche, but questions of history, secret knowledge, and criminal behavior are fair game for more extensive questioning.

Traditional Priests, especially of subject peoples, often go to the distorted lands to commune with their dieties. They generally have well established routes and protocols for doing so. Only the most devoted of practitioners walk these routes, and such a journey is not required for divine abilities, though some gods require it. Its unknown how or even if the Lokou Priests enter their divine realm.

Entering a portal directly to the distorted realms is considered the equivalent of dying, and it usually ends that way, as portals to the distorted realm are notoriously short-lived, the terrain treacherous, and food scarce. A few groups usually do this: Some worshipers who know the route to their divine's realm well will enter with physical sacrifices, which can't be brought via summoning. They deliver their offering, stay in their realm for a time, and rely on the diety to tell them when a portal can return them. The second group are those who wish for more than 24 hours to make a journey. These trips were much more common shortly after the Turtle fleet arrived, and most of the Oppuhan Gods must be found this way. These trips are very dangerous, and most do not return.

Originally Posted by patchwork

But to give a specific example of a summoning; an alchemist of highly Choleric Temper uses eight ounces of fine dust they ground themself (glass works best, but bone and reflective stone can also be used for this) as the material, manacles that once held a murderer as the mental, and a vole burned alive as the vital to summon a Mote of the Lifebringer.

Where is the magic coming from in this case? We've established that you need either an innate ability, a supernatural substance, or a divine ability to perform magic. I suppose the lifebringer probably counts as a divine power source, but that makes this summoning an edge case, even if it is common.

[/quote]I avoided 55 because I didn't want to claim sole "ownership" of the Lokou. However, if no one else is terribly interested I'll take it up soon.[/quote]
If you feel you are dominating a topic, ask me a question about it and I'll happily answer! I want to see more aobut the Lokou

Originally Posted by Daigoro

The seas are on the inside of the tetrahedron, like you were standing inside a pyramid. If you look up, you see the other 3 walls covered with ocean. The sun is at the centre of the volume, which is 204 miles from the centre of each face, at point O in this diagram. So, one face of the sun lights up to illuminate one internal face of the world.

Gravity acts perpendicular to each local surface, so it doesn't matter which face you're on, gravity is down for you. The edges and vertices are going to have some weird gravity effects.

Ok, its a bubble, not a droplet. Nice world. Adding to the artwork list...

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by patchwork

I avoided 55 because I didn't want to claim sole "ownership" of the Lokou. However, if no one else is terribly interested I'll take it up soon.

Go for it. I don't have any firm ideas for them at the moment.

Question 95 What does the rest of the Concordat of Five Banners think of gods in general? If they are in disagreement with the ogre knights, what is the basis of the concordat? How much of a distinction do the ogres make between a god and its mortal cult? What virtues or qualities do the ogres prize in themselves, and what in allies? (since they're apparently capable of working with allies very different from themselves).

Answer 95 [CFB]- Terms of the Concordat
The Ogre Knights are essentially a military force that is cut off from any supply chain, so they have to negotiate for what they need by supplying muscle, military craft and the willingness to use them.

Their philosophy sees gods as a burden on the rest of creation, and they seek to free mortals from the cloying bondage of cosmic fate and godly whim. They'll readily accept other mortals as friends completely regardless of their religious leanings, and actually feel sorry for those who are overly fervent. How various religious followers react to this philosophy is up to them, but the main reaction is to not take the Order's seemingly impossible mission seriously. Generally, the Ogre Knights and such allies politely agree not to discuss their differing viewpoints on religion. Of course, a god who feels directly threatened by the Ogre Knights will either (a) send their followers against them in probably futile crusade, or (b) not overtly admit to such fear, as looking worried would damage their reputation and believers might lose faith.

The other member groups of the Concordat therefore follow whatever religious inclinations they already have. They might be in the alliance out of a sense of desperation though, so they swallow any distaste they have for the Order's deicidal tenets for as long as they need their military aid.

(This does open a little of a question regarding what mutual benefit they get in alliance with the Pirate Kings, but we can nut that out. The Pirate Kings might have a lot of practical polycosmic knowledge, as well as fancy flying ships, that the Order finds useful.)

[sinleqiunnini]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

And another player enters the game! Welcome, fellow polycosmic traveller!

Originally Posted by ericthered

Welcome! We are glad to have you. Also, thank you for including that idea! I've been biting back my urge to include it because some people really don't like non-planar topography, but I have a soft spot for it!

Thank you for the warm welcomes!

Originally Posted by Daigoro

(This does open a little of a question regarding what mutual benefit they get in alliance with the Pirate Kings, but we can nut that out. The Pirate Kings might have a lot of practical polycosmic knowledge, as well as fancy flying ships, that the Order finds useful.)

They definitely have those, but the way I figured it the Banners (and probably anyone else that could) would want to be in the Pit for the same reason the Romans wanted to be in Britain. From the Banners' perspective (or the Romans') both places were awful hellholes that sent out constant attacks. Going there means those raids stop - or, in the case of the Pit, can be somewhat controlled. Get less young people proving their worth by stealing your stuff, and get more of them doing that by stealing someone else's stuff.

Previous Eddy quotes:

Spoiler:  

[QUOTE=ericthered;2271026]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Its a poor policy to be dependent on your neighbors for your weapons, and the empire has at least one cosm that produces a net export of metal: Eddy. Eddy is composed of myriad streams of water flowing through midair, piercing and arcing above myriad blocks of stone. Some of the stone glows, lighting the maze of a cosm. The streams are rich in life, much of which is highly mineralized. Some of the creatures even use unique alloys in their shells or teeth, and these are highly sought after. Some are even domesticated and farmed, such as the black ridged crab.

Originally Posted by patchwork

Answer 43 the six cosmi of the Calledron Empire:
1-Fragment
2-Eddy, as mentioned re: answer 32
3-Mother Plains. Given that the Imperial capital is built around the Mother Plains portal, and that the Empire relies on staple crops from MP, I think it's fair to call the MP one of the six cosmi of the Empire, even if this hasn't been explicitly stated before.

4 - Gnomon.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

On top of that, these Name 5's:
Question 43 [MV][Name 5]- Imperial Realms: 2 of 5 (3 if we count Mother Plains)
- Eddy
- Gnomon
- Mother Plains (?)
/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 77:
What sorts of civilizations are native to eddy?

Originally Posted by ericthered

Question 85: Who are the native inhabitants of Eddy?

Originally Posted by patchwork

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

Answers 77, 85, and 69b: The peoples of Eddy and the Temple of the Many-Faced Wheel:
Eddy is a network of three-dimensional streams, all connecting, speckled with small islands. Each stream is covered by a think layer of air, only twenty meters thick, and surrounded by the airless void where the sun-stones rest. Gravity here points to the center of the closest stream. They team with life. The black-ridged crab might be the most famous, making its home in the shallows of the floating islands that drift down and across the rivers, but they are not the only one. The widest rivers hold most fearsome monsters, such as the yawning terrors. Those many-headed whale-like beasts are covered in a slick metallic fur, and their power is such that peoples who know of them revere them as animistic gods.

But who then, are those peoples? Calledronians put them into three categories – "Natives", "Civilized", and "Imperial". The “civilized” – the rival empire, whose sign is the Face of Wheels, use the same categories, though they swamp “Imperial” for “Heretic” and “Civilized” for themselves. The natives have two – "People," meaning themselves, and "Demons," meaning those from beyond their cosm.

Eddy’s natives are a varied lot, and divide themselves into clans. These are a few of the largest:

Black-Smoke Clan: The Black-Smoke people so call themselves after an ancestor, the Black-Smoke-Under-Heaven, who taught the people to peer into the fire. They practice a curious form of religion, based on flame-augury, and worship ancestral spirits that keep the lessons of the past fresh while the smoke shows the future. Their culture places little value on the present. Today’s hardships will fade tomorrow, and yesterdays lessons will always be fresh. They live on the their island of Shashloa, which forms the core of the Imperial province of Eddy. They live off of the fruit they grow, and farm the black-ridged crab, which provides meat and iron. Their land is one of the most stable in the Empire - they resisted conquest, but do not resist rule. Their priests have seen the Empire’s fall in the smoke, and they know that it will be the crocodile’s claw that cuts its own throat.

The Barbed Fish of the Narrow Stream: This clan is upriver from the Black-Smoke, and called such due to their reputed descent from schools fish that swim up and down the river branch they call home. They do not live on an island, and instead live on great netted seasteads which follow the schools. To them each of these fish is an ancestor and a descendant, and their sharp teeth that never tarnish are proof of the immortality they have through them. Imperial vessels will sometimes make the difficult trek upriver to trade for these, and other products the Barbed-Fish cultivate.

The Two-Pupiled People: So named because they have two pupils in each eye, they are reputed to be powerful sorcerers and shamans. They are down river from Imperial Eddy and worship the yawning terror. Some even say that their magic is derived from them. That must, of course, be nonsense - such beasts do not possess the scale or beauty to be gods. They live on the “Nunaloa Archipelago,” whose movements are directed by their powerful king-priests. Even the most common of commoners here adorn themselves with gold jewelry made from the scepter crabs, and golden silks from the ubiquitous spiders.
This list is not exhaustive – there are many more clans worth mentioning, and each clan as its own subclans.

A rival empire also has an outpost on Eddy. It has a pretentious name – The Orthodox and Catholic Temple of One-In-All. It controls a few islands too close to Imperial Eddy for Calledron to be comfortable, and ministers to many more. Their driving ideology is this: There is no distinction between the self and the worlds, the gods and the people, the sun and the soil. The Polcycosm is One Wheel with Many Faces, and that this knowledge leads the willing to a higher state of being, free of suffering, death, despoilment, and terror. All peoples are deserving of this state, and so all must be shown the path – but it is up to every individual to walk it. They also believe that all the worlds have one source, and so must all truths. This source is embodied in the person of the High-Prophet. When the High-Prophet gains their position, they don a mask which is said to turn them into a vessel of truth and to give them the ability to speak to the cosmos itself.

This religion has a few worshipers in the Empire, but it is uniquely illegal. Because the Temple recognizes no temporal authority other than the High-Prophet and their appointees, it considers itself in a state of war with all those who reject this – Empire included.

Question 98: What is the Temple's home cosm like?

[patchwork]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Where is the magic coming from in this case? We've established that you need either an innate ability, a supernatural substance, or a divine ability to perform magic. I suppose the lifebringer probably counts as a divine power source, but that makes this summoning an edge case, even if it is common.

What's a supernatural substance? I'm not trying to dismiss your objection, but I don't think that term is defined enough to be meaningful. In fact, it seems a tautology - what defines a thing as supernatural? The fact that it is part of a cross-cosm summoning process. One's own labor, secrets, murder, sacrifice, tears - all of these things seem sources of magical significance to me. I'd happily say that the manacles must be made of some special metal - perhaps cold-wrought from two iron crabs of Eddy without killing the things, although you'd want to kill them once the process is finished - but I seriously don't know what you're aiming for. We can also make the voles or the water lilies minor magical beings, with some sort of luminescence, invisibility, size control, teleportation - minor magical beasts are always a positive addition in my book.

[sinleqiunnini]

Seeing that the same question got asked twice w/ regards to Eddy has been reason enough for me to go through the thread and compile the answers into one word document. I am currently through page five, and am thinking hyperlinks would make organizing them significantly easier. Once I've got everything into the document would anyone object to me making a wiki (not through wikia, I've heard awful things about them) and putting everything up on there? I've noticed that there are several questions from fairly early on that were not answered or only partially answered, and I fear they're getting lost in the noise.

Edit - I'm through page nine now.

Edit - Now caught up on answers. Did not compile the questions because I am a fool. Will do that later in the day, then look at organization (and a wiki, if there are no objections).