Rural Communities

You stroll into town... or, at least, you think this is the town. A few old and battered store fronts line the single street, with houses dotting the landscape here and there, miles apart. An old Rural man nods at you from a rocking chair on the general store's porch, sod crumbling to the ground from his wrinkling forehead... Welcome to Bavingdon. Or is it Perstoke? Or Tursham? Or Hanwer-on-Wirth? Who can tell? All these small farming communities are basically the same, so they will all come together for this single post on Rural Communities.

Honestly, I really need to organize my ideas better. For months, I've been talking and writing about the three Rural communities that surround the City: Bavingdon, Perstoke, and Mestloath. Then, in preparation for today's post, I took a look at my map of the Realm of Lives, and saw that there was another, one Sathed, down in the southeast of the map, where I had apparently decided it was too large a blank region to be without a town. So. Yeah. What do I do? Do I trust my initial instinct, which was to have three towns -- or the me that put the map together, and add in a fourth one? Damn it, Past Me's, communicate with me better! Anyway, after a bit of cogitation, I decided two things: First, that Mapmaker-me was right, we need a fourth town, or that part of the map will be noticeably and bizarrely empty; and second, that Sathed is a terrible name. Combine that with the continual irritation I've had every time I have to use "Mestloath" [It sounds like meatloaf. What was I thinking?], I headed to my name generator.

For those who are interested, I use a marvelous random name generator for most of my "foreign language" names (as opposed to those that are based on real words, like Dead-Blooded or Sky-Carver). It's called The Everchanging Book of Names, and you can find it here. It randomizes results from lists of real names, deriving new names that "sound right" by using the same structure, letter combinations, and common prefixes/suffixes that occur in that culture. It's awesome, and the free demo version is remarkably powerful (I just registered it myself, so I'll report back in later on how much improved it is). 

The EBoN gave me a mess of names to choose from in creating my two missing villages. Here are some of the better ones (the ones I considered using), derived from the "English Place Names" EBoNEBoN created for me just now: Uckmon, Searilsouth, Wastead-Frirnorth-Chirby, Brabourn, Chrintmere, Tostlam, Edgothfer, Hackbourne, and Cadgimpstone. When I looked at the original output, I noticed one that really appealed to me, except for one little bit: Hanwer-an-Math. Obviously based on the "Blank-on-blank" nomenclature convention that shows up in English place names, but with a different vowel in the middle. I could easily change it back to "on" and have a good name... but "math" is a word, and not one I want associated with the town -- these farmers can hardly count, much less higher mathematics. A while later, I ended up with "Wirth" and thought that would be a nice suffix to replace "math." The other one I almost went with... another "w" name that has vanished from my files, but decided I didn't want two "w" names, so decided Regitursham was cool, but too long and hard to pronounce... so I hacked off the first two syllables. Voila! Hanwer-on-Wirth and Tursham, the other two villages that, along with Bavingdon and Perstoke, will make up the Rurals' centers of "civilization." name library... Well, that's nice. I somehow deleted my castoffs. Okay, well, here are a few names

These four towns have a combined population of perhaps a few thousand people, and serve as small bastions of "civilization" in the rugged areas outside the City. I don't think they need a full ARTTBavingdon -- the most interesting, as it stands definitively within Crasher territory, and close to the border of Dead Tribes territory, so is always getting raided by one group or the other. Hence, it's a bit tougher than the other villages, and also holds the distinction of being the hometown of the only Rural rich enough to buy his way onto the City of Lives' High Council. treatment. However, I've established a little about

House Solfidley
Description: The home of the only Rural rich enough to buy his way into politics.
Threat: Solfidley intends to destroy the Council and its “corruption.”
Aspect: Secret Vendettas, Hated Wealth
Face: Arbron Solfidley — Rich Rural Revolutionary Working From Within 

This Arbron Solfidley has become a favorite NPC in the playtest game, where his "Southern Gentleman" persona, seen by the players as a mix between Colonel Sanders and Foghorn Leghorn, has earned him the nickname "Cockburn Fuckhorn." So... yeah.

Tomorrow we go off-Realm, as we begin examining the various universes that connect to the City of Lives. We'll begin with Niontia Unprime 236, one of the colonies of the 2-dimensional living shadows The Niontians. See you here!

The Heliotrope Cliffs

You step out of the carriage, smelling deeply the fresh mountain air. A tiny hamlet surround you -- a trading post to your left, a handful of ramshackle buildings to your right. You look up the winding path that leads to the mine entrance. Hearing a loud chanting behind you, you turn to see a mass of unionist protesters, waving signs and shouting in a variety of tongues... Welcome to The Heliotrope Cliffs. The center for mining for the City, and the Sons of Light's ancestral home, back when they were in full charge of the City.

Okay, so here's the history as it stands: Once upon a time, a group of humans lived by the Heliotrope Cliffs, and some of them migrated to the crux of rivers where the City of Lives now stands -- according to legend, guided by the hand of sun-god The Light. These City-builders and rulers of the government came to be known as the Sons of Light, led by the Monarch of Light. The original settlement at the Heliotrope Cliffs declined, as most of the Sons of Light migrated to the City over the next few centuries.

Then the Elder Trio came. From some Far Realm, these godlike beings removed the Monarch of Light from power [in a war? helping an internal coup? through unimaginably powerful magic? dunno yet], and the last remnants of the Heliotrope Cliffs population ended up in the City [how?], leaving it entirely abandoned.

Now, companies from the City mines iron, gold, the titular heliotrope, and other valuable minerals from the Cliffs, and archaeologists unearth the fascinating remnants of the ancient Son of Light culture.

Archetype: The Heliotrope Cliffs' main archetypal role is as a "collapsed civilization." The most classic examples of this archetype look like this: A grand old culture made the most amazing artifacts in the world/galaxy/universe, then vanished entirely -- Stargate's Ancients, Mass Effect's Protheans, Forgotten Realms' sarrukh, not to mention Atlantis. The Heliotrope Cliffs, however, is closer to the "collapse into barbarism" seen in Foundation, Red Dwarf, and the historical Roman Empire -- the people who once ruled are still around, in the form of the modern Sons of Light, but they are nowhere near as powerful as the old civilization.

Real-Life Inspiration: The inspiration here is every archaeological dig ever. The roads left behind by ancient Romans, the ruins of the Minoan civilization, the pyramids of south America... There are amazing things left behind by these people, art and culture and technologies forgotten until brought back up by the archeologists' careful hands. The old Sons of Light had Lightshaping techniques unknown to modern Crafters, as well as taking Blightshifting to a level now unknown [see the posts on the Blightbound and the Addix], so searching through their ruins always holds the promise of finding the City of Lives version of the Antikythera Mechanism.

Theme: The Heliotrope Cliffs are divided into two distinct areas (conceptually, if not physically): the mines, and the ruins. The mines represent oppression and hard times -- the workers are little more than slaves, and nobody has yet built a mine that's fully safe and easy to work in. On the other hand, the ruins represent lost knowledge, and the hope that it might one day be recovered.

Twist: Pretty easy one here, at least for me: The Sons of Light weren't nearly as amazing as everyone says they were. Personally, I am sick of the "good old days" mentality that goes with the "ancient civilization" trope, and believe that the present is the best we, as humanity, have ever had it. So the Sons of Light weren't so great -- their culture was oppressive and racist, sexist, and most other -ists you can thing of. And they may have created a few marvels that the modern City societies would find amazing, but for the most part, they would be considered amazing "for the time" -- like the Antikythera Mechanism or a third-grader's "A" paper, it's remarkable they made these things with the primitive knowledge they had at the time, but not in today's terms.

Now we leave the Heliotrope Cliffs for our final trip on our Realm of Lives journey, the trio of small farming communities that are the only towns of note outside the City: Bavingdon, Mestloath, and Perstoke. See you next time!

The Vulgar Morass

Your footing is unsteady, each step threatening to collapse into murky, stinking water. Vines droop overhead, and you have the uneasy feeling that they're hiding serpents in the trees. As you finally miss a step and begin sinking into the muck, you hear the whooping sound of angry natives... Welcome to The Vulgar Morass.

The Vulgar Morass -- this is probably the oldest name in The City of Lives. Originally, the Vulgar Morass was a geographical feature in a Tolkienesque D&D campaign I created in high school, called The Two Continents. Back then, it was a massive swamp where the goblins lives in a faux-American Indian tribal lifestyle. When I created the Realm of Lives. I saw a massive open space south of the City, and, as I've mentioned before, I want to keep the Realm of Lives small and manageable, so that adventures will explore the City and the other Realms. Hence, I looked through my old notes and plopped the Vulgar Morass down to block egress. So -- besides blocking people, what is the purpose of the Vulgar Morass?

I don't honestly know. I've focused my attentions on other areas -- so let's figure it out together.

Archetype: Well, the classical purpose of a swamp is similar to that of the forest -- wildness and the unknown -- but with a slightly different mood, including a certain "grossness." The swamps that come to my mind are: The Fire Swamp from The Princess Bride, filled with wall-to-wall danger -- and extremely original dangers like R.O.U.S.'s and Lightning Sand (or Snow Sand, depending on whether you're watching the movie or reading the book); the Swamps of Sadness from The Neverending Story, where sorrow is represented as slogging through mud that can swallow you whole if you let it; and, oddly enough, a TV movie adaptation of The Tempest that moves the action from an island to Mississipi, where the swamp represented isolation and nature at its wildest (the home of Caliban, for one).

Real-Life Inspiration: Well, here I'm really out of my depth. I have never once been near a swamp. All of my images of swamps come from the media -- and mostly fiction. I suppose I know ever-so-slightly more about the Everglades than any other famous swamp, having once seen a documentary about the plight of some endangered species or other, so let's call the Vulgar Morass based off of the Everglades... that's about it. Don't know much about the Everglades.

Theme: The Vulgar Morass's theme, methinks, is right there in the name: Vulgar. The swamp is gross. Uncivilized. Chaotic. So -- to really, properly be those things, somebody has to live there. It can't be just animals -- those are too natural and wild to be properly vulgar. So who lives there? Kipmen? No, those animal hybrids hold the Wilderwoods as their domain? Rurals? No the plant-men dominate the Julian Plains. Well -- what if a variation on the Grate-Scratchers live out here? The defining characteristics of the Grate-Scratchers are: 1) they live underground in the sewers -- and swamps are basically the countryside version of sewers; 2) their hygiene is so appalling it becomes an asset -- they can become caked in mud from the swamp as easily as the sewer system; and 3) they are tremendously resourceful, eking out a living from the scraps of the civilization above -- and they can show instead a Robinson Crusoe/Swiss Family Robinson ingenuity out in the wilderness.

In fact, this leads back to some additional:

Archetype: The "noble savage" tribesman archetype can be filled by the unnamed swamp-dwellers. The Noble Savage goes back centuries, and has shown up in such varied characters as Robinson Crusoe's Friday, Brave New World's John the Savage, and Dragonlance's Riverwind and Goldmoon. The noble savage is tribal, has natural knowledge, and has a simpler morality than the city folk. We've examined a partial example in the post on the Rurals' "Seeding Manual, but they hold to agrarian ideals and not pure nature.

Twist: First, we can revisit the idea that the noble savage is not necessarily morally superior or inferior to the city-dweller. Second -- perhaps the Vulgar Morass isn't so vulgar after all... perhaps a hidden civilization deep within the swamp has utilized the Grate-Scratchers' natural resourcefulness to make a sort of utopia. First question: Technological or magical? To differentiate it from the City, perhaps it should be technological (steampunk?). On the other hand, magic is much more efficient than gears and computer chips, according to City of Lives physics -- and technology doesn't work too well in mud and swampwater, anyway. So let's go magic. Second question: is this actually interesting? The hidden utopia is an old, classic concept that dates back literally hundreds if not thousands of years, at least back to the stories of El Dorado -- and the question is whether it's interesting, or has passed into cliche, or has passed back out of cliche into an archetypal concept. For this, I don't have an answer. Sound off in the comments!

Thanks for venturing into the disgusting swamps with me. Next time, we'll take a look at the City's main source of mineral wealth (and slave labor), the Heliotrope Cliffs.

The Mountains of Mourning

At the edge of the world, a mountain range looms. So high it scratches the sky (so they say), so inhospitable even the most powerful magics will not protect you (so they say), so long it cannot be crossed in a thousand lifetimes (so they say). These are The Mountains of Mourning, the northern edge of the livable region of The Realm of Lives.


Archetype: Mountain ranges have two purposes in fiction: hazardous routes to interfere with a journey or truly impassable barriers. Consider the mountain range "The Misty Mountains" in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings -- it stands between the heroes and their destination, and they must travel with great difficulty through the mountains, exposing themselves to danger (and goblins). Then there are the impassable mountains -- common in video games as a way to justify limited map sizes (the Might & Magic series I played in my youth comes to mind). The Mountains of Mourning are designed more as the latter -- like the Wilderwoods, they are meant to be so difficult and dangerous to cross that nobody will bother, acting as the border to my campaign world.

Real-Life Inspiration: The physical inspiration is, I suppose, the mountain ranges in Washington and Alaska states, which I've been in (mostly driving through) many a time. Evergreens. Snow. Amazing vistas. More importantly, though, the remote, inaccessible spots in the Andes, the Himalayas, and such, are the model for the Mountains. Scaling the biggest peak (which is, of yet, nameless) should be just as monumental a task as climbing Mt. Everest.

Theme: Mountains are the classic spot for secrets and remote locations: Shangri-La, Shamballa, Nanda Parbat. So as well as being impassable, the Mountains of Mourning are filled with mysteries. A remote monastery or research institute (or both -- the Practical Theosophers may have a presence here); a military outpost from an invading crossRealm army; and local mythology holds that the demigod Prometheus is imprisoned in a cavern deep beneath the mountains. Secrets secrets secrets.

Twist: You know that absurd legend that the ancient demigod Prometheus, progenitor of the Promethean bloodline and son of The Light, is chained up in a cavern? He actually is! Okay, maybe that's not much of a twist for a fantasy campaign, in most of which all myths are true... but it is a hell of a campaign goal: Free the god-man who is either Jesus or Satan (depending on who you ask), and throw the entire world off-balance. I can see the splatbook now -- Prometheus Unbound... or is that title already taken?

Locations

The Worlds’ Cross
Description: Cross-Realm portal in which Prometheus is bound.
Theme/Threat (depending on your point of view): The Light’s rebellious son Prometheus is imprisoned here.
Aspect: A Prison That’s Also a Gateway
Faces:
Prometheus – Angry But Good-Hearted Demigod
The Eagle – Prometheus’s Sadistic Gaoler

Niontian Outpost
Description: Small outpost of Niontians pondering invasion.
Threat: Niontians – lying, living shadows – scout force.
Aspect; Deceit Is a Way of Life For Them
Face: Vertex-of-Pain – Niontian Captain Intrigued by the “Truth-Tellers"

On our roundabout trip through the wildlands of the Realm of Lives, we will come back through The Addix, where angry undead raiders plot the City's destruction...

The Wilderwoods

You tread carefully along the narrow forest path, watching the mysterious shadows between the trees with mistrustful eyes. Something in the distance howls, the the howl breaks off into a squeal of pain... Welcome to The Wilderwoods. Last time we ventured out of the City for our first foray into the Realm of Lives and examined the safety and security of the Julian Plains. Now we head further, into the dark and mysterious forest that borders the Plains to the east. Known as the Wilderwoods, the forest marks the edge of the known Realm in that direction -- and it's filled with big nasties and adventures. Let's take a look.

Archetype: The big dark scary woods: The woods from Little Red Riding Hood, Mirkwood from The Hobbit, Sherwood Forest from Robin Hood. Dark, dangerous and unexplored -- filled with wild animals, both real and mythical. Perhaps bandits lurk in its depths, and they're more Mongol Hordes than Robin Hood. You never know what you're going to get in a forest like this -- hunting monsters, searching abandoned military outposts, encountering a rogue Crafter in a magical tower.

Real-Life Inspiration: Well, as a lifelong townie, I'm not terribly familiar with any forests in my own history. On the other hand, the evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest have been on the periphery of my vision my whole life (not to mention in every TV show I watch that's filmed in Vancouver -- the immense number of evergreen forests on Stargate SG-1's alien worlds comes to mind). So in my head, the Wilderwoods are mostly filled with pine and fir, with bears, moose, and cougars over tigers or crocodiles. Which, of course, reminds me of a question to answer at some point: what is the biome of the Realm of Lives like? Should it be like the Pacific Northwest, North American environment I'm familiar with? Should I rejigger it so that it more closely resembles the classic English countryside Tolkien made famous? Somewhere further afield, like Iran or Australia? Or does nobody care, and should I just jam together a fun, if environmentally impossible mish-mash of ecological characteristics? Sound off in the comments!

Theme: The Wilderwoods is, from a game standpoint, an adventure mill. It's a mysterious area filled with nasty critters. It's deliberately vague in terms of geography and inhabitants, so almost anything can happen there. In a more literary, thematic, sense, the Wilderwoods represents the wild unknown. The mysterious, shadowy, "here there be monsters" part of the map. The Wilderwoods should never be a safe haven for the PCs, but a place for adventure and terror.

Twist: Well, for once, here's a dark and mysterious forest that's not secretly populated by elves and fairies, so that's new... seriously, I got nothin'. The Wilderwoods are dark and mysterious. They represent the edge of the world -- and also the edge of my interest. The City of Lives is about the titular City, and about the other Realms the characters can explore. While I like the places I've built up around the City, they are not where my design goals fall -- this is not really a dungeoneering or frontiersman campaign -- so I don't have all that much in my head to fill the mysterious void of the Wilderwoods with. And maybe that's okay. The whole point of them is to be mysterious, after all, ready to be populated with whatever the GM needs that day...

Locations:

The Greensman’s Garden 

Description: On the edge of the woods, a perfectly-maintained garden sits, maintained by a mysterious... Rural? Demigod?

Theme: A forest guardian keeps his garden safe.

Aspect: A Demigod of Dubious Divinity Dwells Here

Face: The Greensman – Eccentric Rural or God of the Wild?

The Greensman  

Character Concept Aspect: ’Umble ’Elper of the Wilderness

Bloodline: Rural Turned God – Or The Other Way ’Round

Youth: Follows the Seeding Manual to the Letter – Maybe He Wrote It?

First Adventure: Oi Must Protect Me Garden

Free-Form 1: Very Gullible and None Too Bright

Free-Form 2: Moi Friends Morris

The Crashers’ Camp 

Description: Home of the Crashers, a Kipman/Rural band of barbarian raiders

Threat: Home of paranoid, angry marauders

Aspect: They Can Be Fun When They're Not Murdering You

Face: Skarch – Kipman Barbarian Leader Working on His Anger Issues

Next time we'll venture to the very edge of the known Realm of Lives (at least to the East) in the Mountains of Mourning. See you there.

A Newbie's Primer -- and The Julian Plains

Welcome back. We've spent the last few posts on mechanics with the Universal Conflict System, but this blog is mostly about setting, so now we're going to head back to the City of Lives. I imagine we have a lot of newbies here, after Mike Olson and Johnn Four's kind words on their blogs. Hence, before we jump back into the campaign world of The City of Lives, I'll give a brief rundown of the setting as we've explored so far:

• The world is a cross-dimensional high fantasy setting centered around the devious political maneuvering and class warfare of the titular City of Lives.
• The City is at a pre-industrial revolution, vaguely 18th-century level of technology -- but most of its industry is based around its particular form of magic known as Crafting.
• Though creatures from many, many world (known as Realms) inhabit the City, it is dominated by ten Bloodlines. Each of these Bloodlines are essentially human, but have heritage from a variety of sources, from animals to magical clones to the undead.
• The City of Lives is at the center of a crossroad of realities, but, more mundanely, also sits at the confluence of two rivers, on the fertile Julian Plains.

Our first extended series from Sylvennis to The Lost District was on the City's districts. This time, we're going to head outside the city into the Realm of Lives and its wilderness. The key landmarks we're going to look at and ARTT out include:

• The Julian Plains
• Bavingdon
• Mestloath
• Perstoke
• The Wilderwoods
• The Addix
• The Vulgar Morass
• The Mountains of Mourning
• The Heliotrope Cliffs

Let's begin with the most important piece of support for the City: the agricultural community that is the Julian Plains. This is where the City gets its food and trade goods, the support of the massive entity that is the City.

Archetype: The small farming communities beset by bandits and marauding monsters is a staple of the fantasy genre, and this is where the Julian Plains fit in. A place for PCs to call home, a safe place but also a place of constant adventure. Tristram, the Shire, West Harbor -- these are the inspirations for the locales of the Julian Plains.

Real-Life Inspiration: The Julian Plains are, in my mind, based heavily on the rolling hills of the Palouse (eastern Washington state), where I grew up. You may know the image -- it was the default desktop background image for Windows XP. Wheat and barley cover low hills, with the occasional sheep, horse, or cattle ranch dotting the landscape. The populace is made up of simple farmers, uninterested in higher education, complex art, or politics.

Theme: Both practically and thematically, the Julian Plains are the support structure for the City. The City relies on grain and meat from the Plains in order to survive. The Plains provide the City with necessities both directly and indirectly, as the City trades the Plains' goods to other Realms. The Julian Plains also rely on the City  -- for protection and government, [more here]. Like every infrastructure, literal and metaphorical, the Plains are solid, dependable, and unremarkable. They have no need for fancy art or complicated magic -- but without the Plains, the City would be unable to have these things.

Twist: The seemingly idyllic Plains have got to hide a secret -- but what kind? Perhaps an underground revolution is slowly coming to boil as some of the Rural peasants wonder what they really get out of their association with the City, and want to gain their independence. Revolutionaries have always turned their farming implements into weapons of war -- and since the farmers on the Plains use magic to control animals and plants directly... well, I'm scared.

Locations

Wells Ranch

Description: A small homestead outside of Bavingdon, constantly attacked by bandits.

Theme: Stability threatened by chaotic forces 

Aspect: Peaceful Plantation Beset By Bandits 

Face: Plenton Wells -- Desperate and Paranoid Cowboy Protecting His Property

Brintall Dam

Description: A dam blocking off a small tributary of the River Actetas. It creates Brintall Lake.

Threat: Local Crasher raiders are targeting the dam for destruction, threatening the nearby farms.

Aspect: You'll Need More Than a Finger to Plug This Dike

Face(s): Brakk -- Kipman Raider Itching To Cause Some Chaos

               Orton -- Rural community Leader With His Head in the Sand

Passel Mill

Description: A small mill that provides grain to the local community.

Threat: The owner smuggles herbal drugs to the City 

Aspect: Simple Beauty Hides A Filthy Underside

Face: Dowen -- Miller With a Terrible Secret


All right. Come back next time to take a look at the dark, mysterious Wilderwoods...