By creating a world, with an eye toward it being part of a whole subsector!
Well, first we start with a name. I know, I know ~ it seems like I'm putting the warp nacelles ahead of the cargo bay, but I think figuring out a name first off gives you something you might work off, to establish themes, original colonizing culture, et cetera. And if you don't? Logically speaking, most stars won't be named by colonists anyway.
I like to keep as much randomness as possible, so I went to Wikipedia, hit “Random Article”, and got sent to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Sheumack. At the moment, we know nothing about the structure of the system, so I'll apply the name to the star itself ~ we're writing about the Bishop Sheumack system. I kinda like including the title in the sun's name; it gives a different feel than other settings.
Thinking about it, I can totally name the mainworld of the Bishop Sheumack system. Rolling the dWikipedia, I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ishee. Ishee will be the name of the mainworld, and we'll place it in a random hex in the subsector. Oooh, but first, let's name that subsector, sector, and quadrant: Eau Pleine subsector (Alpha-3D or Greve-D) in Greve sector (Alpha-3) in Alpha Quadrant. Lets roll for the hex: 0704.
Anyway, Ishee needs some definition. I'm more of a social scifi/anthropological scifi kind of qween, so I like to start with the second half of the bUWP (Basic Universal World Profile). So, rolling 2d6-2, I find that Ishee has more people than the average planet: tens of millions of people live there (Pop digit 7: bUWP α-3D-0704-? (α Greve-Eau Pleine-Bishop Scheumack-Ishee)/????7??-?/?/??/Em).
But how many tens of millions? Using random.org to generate a random 8-digit number, I discover that 16,021,313 live on Ishee. That's about the size of Lagos, Nigeria (city proper) or the Moscow metropolitan area or the entire country of Cambodia!
Next, I roll 3d6 and get a 9, which is greater than the world's Pop digit of 7, so there are no cities of tens of millions on this planet. How about millions? Are there cities of that size? A 10 on 2d6 tells me that no, there are not (again, it's larger than 7). I don't have to roll for cities with hundreds of thousands of people ~ 1d6 will always roll less than 7! Another 1d6 roll gives me a 1, which will result in a very decentralized planet, as that means that there are only (16,021,313/107)*(1+9) cities of this size (the largest). That comes out to 16 of them. Assuming they have an average population of 500,000 for ease, that takes up 8,000,000 of our 16,021,313, leaving us with 8,021,313 people unaccounted for.
Rolling 1d6 again tells us that there are (8,021,313/107)*(4+9)*10 cities with tens of thousands of people. That works out to 104 of them. Of these 3d6-3% ( I rolled a 15, so 12%) will have populations of 90,000 or more. The math says that's 12.513 cities, so I will just barely round up ~ 13 cities of such size exist on Ishee. Overall, however, we again assume these cities average out to about 50,000 people each, accounting for another 5,200,000 of our people. We still need to account for the remaining 2,821,313.
Well, let's run through that formula again, rolling a 2, which gives us (2,821,313/107)*(2+9)*100. That's 310 cities averaging 5000 people each. Rolling 3d6 tlls us that (12-3)% of them have 9000 or more people ~ that's 28 such cities. That's another 1,550,000 people placed in cities, leaving 1,271,313. Let's do another quick run through for the small towns of hundreds of people, rolling a 3 on 1d6. (1,271,313/107)*(3+9)*1000 equals 1526 cities, of which (15-3)%, or 183, have populations of 900 or more. Averaging all those cities out to 500 people each, we realize that they hold a total of 763,000 people. Only 508,313 people remain homeless. Or, rather, they tend to live alone in isolated settlements of no more than maybe a few dozen people (2-4 families), or roam across the surface as traveling folk with no permanent residence.
For future consideration, we designate the ten largest of the cities as primary cities, the remaining 6 cities with hundreds of thousands of people as secondary cities, and all the rest as tertiary.
Now, let's define the planet's major cultural elements. Rolling 1d3, we discover that there are two big Cultural Differences. Rolling 2d66, we get 12 and 61. Let's see . . . looking at the chart . . . the planet is (or hosts) a Tourist Attraction of some sort which attracts Travellers from at least the subsector if not further afield and is Progressive, with an expanding and vibrant culture full of optimism and hope. I'm kind of taken with the idea, at first blush, that this tourist attraction isn't a thing or a place, but a seasonal or annual festival that people come to the planet to see ~ maybe like a futuristic Burning man or a Cherry Blossom Festival or election hoopla . . . .
In addition, there is but a single local custom of note (I rolled a 1 on 1d6). Another 1d6 roll gives me a 5, which tells me that is single local custom of note is something from the “Miscellaneous Customs 1” table . . . That's a 1d66 roll, which gives me a 56, so high tech is allowed for . . . some group of people. Let's head on over to that table, which is another 1d66. But first! I roll a 1d6 and get a 2, s I don't have to roll on the bigger table. A roll of 1-3 tells me that the entire culture practices this custom. Hmmmm, “High tech allowed for everyone”. That sounds to me like a culture that is fiercely protective of access to high technology and deeply distrustful of any attempt to limit it. Think of, say, the NRA's take on the 2nd Amendment, or even more extreme. Maybe mixed in with what are currently more leftist ideals (or non-political and seen as a charity) of removing societal and economic barriers to access.
Maybe that festival I mentioned above, the tourist attraction, is a high tech playground/conference/chance to show off? Depending on how capitalist (ugh!) this world or this subsector turn out, it can be something like a Maker Fair mixed with Burning Man kind of thing or a massive corporate marketing scheme (like, say, E3 or Comic-Con) . . .
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Introducing Middens & Morals {Design Domingo #1}
“I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's;
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.”
--William Blake, Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion, chapter 1, plate 10, lines 20-21, The Words of Los
Welcome to Design Domingo!
Yeah, I know, but I couldn't think of a good word to describe creating my own game system that alliterated without using the Spanish word for Sunday. And I, like Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxon skalds he flattered with imitation, enjoy alliteration. *shrug* It's a thing.
Welcome to my long-running Fantasy Heartbreaker project, currently named Middens and Morals. I seem to mean something slightly different than Ron Edwards and many people by the term “Fantasy Heartbreaker”. I tend to mean by it a homebrew RPG system that someone tinkers with on and off for years or decades, trying to get it just right. Fantasy Heartbreakers are generally attempts to do “D&D but better” or (more rarely) “Exalted but better”; there are also a number of Sci-Fi Heartbreakers (“Traveller but better”), Cyberpunk Heartbreakers (“Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun but better”), Gothic Heartbreakers (“World of Darkness but better”), and arguably every superhero game is some level of Supers Heartbreaker (sometimes they’re trying to improve on a better game, but just as often they’re starting from scratch). They don't break hearts cuz of an old nickname of the Christian God or a much-newer Pat Benatar song (*sigh* Oh, Pat ~ I will always love you); they break hearts because they never quite capture what their creators are trying to capture with the elegance of design that is required of RPG mechanic design. But, of course, that's not really the point, is it? We ask ourselves questions that have no elegant answers in order to whet the blade of our thoughts, to shape the cup of our mind, so that when we do ask questions that have elegant answers we can speedily reach those heights that are higher than they could be if such was our first attempt at elegance. They are sandboxes, where we can play and put things together and not have to worry whether the sand coheres into adobe that will last the centuries.
It's also, well, like that Japanese company that figured out that everyone's shit has tiny, tiny, miniscule amounts of gold in it (we already know what Freud would say, by the way) and that building a factory to separate out this gold from the stinky remains of Tokyo living which hid it from prying eyes would not only be economically feasible, but quite profitable. This series of posts is the shit that has come about from all the RPGs I've consumed over the last two and a half decades or so of my life (since I was about 10 or 11) ~ I can only hope the gold is relatively easy to see among it. And that the smell is the rich, earthy, fertile smell of a truly satisfying shit, and not the putrescence that flows from the SAD (Standard American Diet ~ no, literally, this is an acronym used by actual scientists and policymakers).
“Man was made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.”
--William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
There’s a tension inherent in what we call the European Dark Ages or the (different) period we call Middle that fascinates me. {I’m talking here about the general mishmash of memes in all of our heads, not the actual thousand years or so between the Fall of Rome and the onset of Early Modernity.} It's a world beyond alien to us modern folk. Basically none of the things we consider vital for mental health were present and available to the large mass of people. Work was often constant and backbreaking and, although alienation of labor hadn't yet set in, taxes were high enough in crops, money, and men that we might consider a similar fruitlessness of one's labors to have pertained. Nutrition was poor, flavors bland, and diet unvaried. Feudalism is a system of rests on everyone in the social hierarchy lacking control of their destiny, and, in any view of the time period with even the slightest pinch of grimdark added, being subject to constant tests of loyalty and abusive manipulations by what we would now call warlords or gang leaders. Disease was a constant companion, even without the Armageddon of plague. You know how toothaches carry with them just the most intensely depressing emotional load in addition to their owie factor? Not only would toothaches (and other such pains) be more common thanks to the undeveloped state of medicine, painkillers would have been unavailable or much weaker than we have today. Transportation being much slower and recreational time being more limited (vacation? What’s that?), seeing someone who lived even two miles away could happen but a few times a week, and long stretches of time were spent alone or in small groupings. And therapy? What’s that?
And yet, despite all of this ~ or maybe because of it ~ the cultures of the time were fascinated with rising up out of the muck, ascending into a Heavenly bliss. Stories filled the pages and the ears with the quests of shining paragons of virtue and their striving to achieve and (harder still) maintain that exalted state. Priests preached an honor that was an exacting discipline, and every effort was taken to maintain the image of the ruling classes fulfilling them. Popular entertainment ~ books, poems, street entertainment, and theatrical plays ~ centered on questions of virtue in deed and in attitude, inventing the genres of the “morality play” and the “passion play”. Characters in these plays often lacked identity beyond their role and/or moral status, with names like “Everyman”, “Pilgrim”, “Temptation”, and “Prudence”. Religion was much more suffused into everyday life than it is now, a constant gaze above the clouds and past the Pearly Gates. Careful attention was paid to one’s behaviors, thoughts, and ways of being to refine them in an alchemy whose methods ranged from the explicit and arcane (that is to say, alchemy itself) to the mundane and banal, but always to the goal of forging your soul into gold worthy of keeping company with angels. Chivalry grew, ensconcing further the reign of the feudal warlords but attempting to bend it towards a Godly purpose to match its divine right of kings; Romance developed, in part, as what we might call Zeroth Wave feminism, lending a measure of agency to women in the grinding processes of what would eventually become heterosexuality. Even (many of the) countercultures of the time approached things from this yearning for an angelic life ~ utopian movements even back then were explicitly attempting to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The Diggers, for example, (ancestors of us anarchists, socialists, and communists) explicitly based their belief in economic equality in a passage from the Bible. The same effect carries over to the self-consciously antinomian movements of the day ~ those Gnostic sects in this category were striving to achieve the glory of the Pleroma by breaking the rules of this earthly prison; even Sin could be found to be Virtue! This is the time the Grail chose to be findable.
“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”
--Dylan Thomas
I am fascinated by this contradiction. All that is best in life and all that is worst in life all mixed up and blended together in Dung Ages stage strewn with the midden trash of what passed for civilization at the time. This is humanity in its most distilled essence, the truest nature of what it is to be us. So, I thought, why don't I try to recreate D&D in its image, mixing in all the lovely off-the-wall fantastic elements I can?
I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create.”
--William Blake, Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion, chapter 1, plate 10, lines 20-21, The Words of Los
Welcome to Design Domingo!
Yeah, I know, but I couldn't think of a good word to describe creating my own game system that alliterated without using the Spanish word for Sunday. And I, like Tolkien and the Anglo-Saxon skalds he flattered with imitation, enjoy alliteration. *shrug* It's a thing.
Welcome to my long-running Fantasy Heartbreaker project, currently named Middens and Morals. I seem to mean something slightly different than Ron Edwards and many people by the term “Fantasy Heartbreaker”. I tend to mean by it a homebrew RPG system that someone tinkers with on and off for years or decades, trying to get it just right. Fantasy Heartbreakers are generally attempts to do “D&D but better” or (more rarely) “Exalted but better”; there are also a number of Sci-Fi Heartbreakers (“Traveller but better”), Cyberpunk Heartbreakers (“Cyberpunk 2020 or Shadowrun but better”), Gothic Heartbreakers (“World of Darkness but better”), and arguably every superhero game is some level of Supers Heartbreaker (sometimes they’re trying to improve on a better game, but just as often they’re starting from scratch). They don't break hearts cuz of an old nickname of the Christian God or a much-newer Pat Benatar song (*sigh* Oh, Pat ~ I will always love you); they break hearts because they never quite capture what their creators are trying to capture with the elegance of design that is required of RPG mechanic design. But, of course, that's not really the point, is it? We ask ourselves questions that have no elegant answers in order to whet the blade of our thoughts, to shape the cup of our mind, so that when we do ask questions that have elegant answers we can speedily reach those heights that are higher than they could be if such was our first attempt at elegance. They are sandboxes, where we can play and put things together and not have to worry whether the sand coheres into adobe that will last the centuries.
It's also, well, like that Japanese company that figured out that everyone's shit has tiny, tiny, miniscule amounts of gold in it (we already know what Freud would say, by the way) and that building a factory to separate out this gold from the stinky remains of Tokyo living which hid it from prying eyes would not only be economically feasible, but quite profitable. This series of posts is the shit that has come about from all the RPGs I've consumed over the last two and a half decades or so of my life (since I was about 10 or 11) ~ I can only hope the gold is relatively easy to see among it. And that the smell is the rich, earthy, fertile smell of a truly satisfying shit, and not the putrescence that flows from the SAD (Standard American Diet ~ no, literally, this is an acronym used by actual scientists and policymakers).
“Man was made for joy and woe,
And when this we rightly know
Through the world we safely go.
Joy and woe are woven fine,
A clothing for the soul divine.”
--William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
There’s a tension inherent in what we call the European Dark Ages or the (different) period we call Middle that fascinates me. {I’m talking here about the general mishmash of memes in all of our heads, not the actual thousand years or so between the Fall of Rome and the onset of Early Modernity.} It's a world beyond alien to us modern folk. Basically none of the things we consider vital for mental health were present and available to the large mass of people. Work was often constant and backbreaking and, although alienation of labor hadn't yet set in, taxes were high enough in crops, money, and men that we might consider a similar fruitlessness of one's labors to have pertained. Nutrition was poor, flavors bland, and diet unvaried. Feudalism is a system of rests on everyone in the social hierarchy lacking control of their destiny, and, in any view of the time period with even the slightest pinch of grimdark added, being subject to constant tests of loyalty and abusive manipulations by what we would now call warlords or gang leaders. Disease was a constant companion, even without the Armageddon of plague. You know how toothaches carry with them just the most intensely depressing emotional load in addition to their owie factor? Not only would toothaches (and other such pains) be more common thanks to the undeveloped state of medicine, painkillers would have been unavailable or much weaker than we have today. Transportation being much slower and recreational time being more limited (vacation? What’s that?), seeing someone who lived even two miles away could happen but a few times a week, and long stretches of time were spent alone or in small groupings. And therapy? What’s that?
And yet, despite all of this ~ or maybe because of it ~ the cultures of the time were fascinated with rising up out of the muck, ascending into a Heavenly bliss. Stories filled the pages and the ears with the quests of shining paragons of virtue and their striving to achieve and (harder still) maintain that exalted state. Priests preached an honor that was an exacting discipline, and every effort was taken to maintain the image of the ruling classes fulfilling them. Popular entertainment ~ books, poems, street entertainment, and theatrical plays ~ centered on questions of virtue in deed and in attitude, inventing the genres of the “morality play” and the “passion play”. Characters in these plays often lacked identity beyond their role and/or moral status, with names like “Everyman”, “Pilgrim”, “Temptation”, and “Prudence”. Religion was much more suffused into everyday life than it is now, a constant gaze above the clouds and past the Pearly Gates. Careful attention was paid to one’s behaviors, thoughts, and ways of being to refine them in an alchemy whose methods ranged from the explicit and arcane (that is to say, alchemy itself) to the mundane and banal, but always to the goal of forging your soul into gold worthy of keeping company with angels. Chivalry grew, ensconcing further the reign of the feudal warlords but attempting to bend it towards a Godly purpose to match its divine right of kings; Romance developed, in part, as what we might call Zeroth Wave feminism, lending a measure of agency to women in the grinding processes of what would eventually become heterosexuality. Even (many of the) countercultures of the time approached things from this yearning for an angelic life ~ utopian movements even back then were explicitly attempting to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. The Diggers, for example, (ancestors of us anarchists, socialists, and communists) explicitly based their belief in economic equality in a passage from the Bible. The same effect carries over to the self-consciously antinomian movements of the day ~ those Gnostic sects in this category were striving to achieve the glory of the Pleroma by breaking the rules of this earthly prison; even Sin could be found to be Virtue! This is the time the Grail chose to be findable.
“I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”
--Dylan Thomas
I am fascinated by this contradiction. All that is best in life and all that is worst in life all mixed up and blended together in Dung Ages stage strewn with the midden trash of what passed for civilization at the time. This is humanity in its most distilled essence, the truest nature of what it is to be us. So, I thought, why don't I try to recreate D&D in its image, mixing in all the lovely off-the-wall fantastic elements I can?
Friday, June 22, 2018
Dragon Magazine's Cartomantic Character Creation (Fantasy Friday #1)
Way long ago in an earlier age, an eighth of a century ago, in the inexplicably ancient time of 2005, Wizards of the Coast released a card game that could function as a game prop, much like White Wolf’s series of vampiric, werewolf (including the bad ones), hunter, demon, and mage scriptures (published long before Zak's name was associated with the company ~ like at least two decades before), or Pathfinder’s Harrow Deck. The game was called Three-Dragon Ante; I own it but I’ve never played it.
It’s a betting game designed by Rob Heinsoo in which you compile flights of cards of various strengths, many of which have various triggered abilities whose activation is dependent on its strength compared to those played previously. After each “gambit” (kinda like a trick, I guess), the stakes go to the player with the most strength and a new gambit begins. Collecting matching sets of same-color or same-strength dragons triggers extra gold-earning effects. The idea is that this is a game that exists within Greyhawk (the default setting for D&D 3.x) so you can play while your characters play.
I’m most interested in it not for this, however. No, far more interesting is that the August ‘06 issue of Dragon included a Tarot-like character generation method using the deck. The only thing better than a cartomantic spread for 2nd-generation RPG character creation is a good lifepath system. I’m a sucker for those, as Traveller Tuesdays will no doubt eventually show. I thought I’d create an adventuring party by this method (using Pathfinder rules, however, cuz duh) and see how it does at providing me with story seeds and interesting character details. Join me in this adventure?
First thing I do, obvi, is shuffle the deck. Fun fact: I always shuffle decks 7 times because I picked up somewhere that a standard 52-card playing deck achieves pure, unpredictable randomness at seven riffle shuffles, combinatorily speaking. So I do that. The spread involves three cards (Body, Spirit, and Mind) surrounded by 4 others, laid horizontally, in the cardinal directions (Nature, Nurture, Dexterity, and Wisdom) and four more bursting diagonal at the corners (Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma). The orientation of the cards plays a role in the reading, so you should know that Strength is in the upper left, followed in clockwise order by Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Constitution, and Dexterity. Thus, there’s a physical side (the left) and a mental (the right).
I draw the following cards for my first character:
Nature: Blue Dragon 4
Spirit: Black Dragon 1
Body: Green Dragon 6
Mind: Silver Dragon 8
{Oooh! An evil body, with evil instincts and urges, but a good mind stronger than it. It’s Driz’zt, sure, but the idea that I’m not even done drawing and already seeing interpretations suggests that this will be a useful creation method!}
Nurture: Black Dragon 5
Strength: Red Dragon 12
Dexterity: Red Dragon 10
Constitution: Dracolich 10
Intelligence: Red Dragon 8
Wisdom: Bronze Dragon 11
Charisma: Gold Dragon 11
Hmmm, there’s just so much evil in this spread ~ maybe the good mind, despite its being stronger than the evil body, is losing the battle, just outnumbered by instincts and culture. I have to be careful, though, cuz while I like the idea of deconstructing Driz’zt, these themes edge a little closer than I’d like to some truly disgusting ideas.
Let’s see, we then put 9 tokens on Nature, 3 on Spirit, 1 on Nurture, and 2 on each ability card. These will eventually become points in standard point buy that will determine the character’s actual ability scores.
The character’s nature, represented by a blue dragon, is resilient, vain, and forceful. I give six tokens to Body and three to Mind off the Nurture card as a result. Spirit, perhaps oddly-named, represents chance. We all have things that are central to who we are that just kind of bumbled their way into our path, whether it’s the career we discovered after a friend forwarded us a funny job posting or our love of Fleetwood Mac because the diner we ate lunch at everyday while homeless played a lot of it over the stereo. In this character’s case, these things involve the stealth, cunning, and deceit of the Black Dragon. Dexterity, Constitution, and Intelligence each receive a token as a result.
More doubling themes! I’m seeing a character inclined toward vanity and forcefulness, but pushed by circumstance into acting secretly, maybe even from the shadows. Perhaps I’ll make them a vigilante . . . . I think it might be fun to play up the discomfort of the character, the strain of trying to stifle their usual habits and bearing in order to be most effective. These are much safer themes than the ones I mentioned earlier, thankfully, though they could be combined by creating a sneaky character from a member of a typically brutish race like ogres. Side note: Golarion’s ogres might exist as part of a long line of classist depictions of rural folk (as ogres usually are), but damn if their sheer, utter, going-for-it monstrosity is much more fun than standard D&D uses of the ogre!
The Green Dragon in the Body position tells us that the character can handle most anything, accepting what would be maiming blows with nothing but a snarling belligerence. I kind of envision this more as the really annoying kind of person who is never down for very long, no matter what’s thrown at them, but always brings things to account. Many have tried to take them down, only to fall to the character’s retaliations. All six of these tokens go to Constitution.
We finally get a glint of something pleasant and hopeful in this character ~ who seems very much like a Mean Girl, to be honest, vain, cunning, tricksy, and vengeful ~ as their Mind is filled with the judgment and justice of the Silver Dragon. I kind of want to make them a paladin, but it seems like that would fail to capture the duality of the character, the tidal wave forced into the trickle that rots your walls. Maybe there’s an archetype of vigilante that would be appropriate . . . not really (at least not one listed on www.pfsrd.com), though I did briefly consider a zealot. It didn’t quite fit what I wanted, however. I think I could model what I want with the Celestial Obedience feat, perhaps, as I’m getting an image of a character in an evil society who has turned to devious methods to promote a good religion. Sort of a Frank Miller villain by day, sneaky Superman by night kind of situation. More on that later. For now, that Silver Dragon gives two tokens to Charisma and one to Wisdom.
Monday, December 26, 2016
Santa Claus as Post-Scarcity Memeweapon
I'd wanted to get this idea for Eclipse Phase out earlier, but I've a new Dominant and she's been needing ALL the service, so I've been busy!
-----------------------------------
Jovian habitats are enlivened with decorations during the season, however ~ foil, plastic, and even paper are cheap enough to mass-produce after all, even eschewing nanofabrication. Every Jovian civilian is given a small allotment of money by the Republic every Christmas with which to purchase these decorations from vendors vetted and approved by governmental and church censors. Citizens receive a little bit more, enough to fund a few twinkling decorative lights if they take care to budget the cost of the power outlay. The Masses provided by the Church via simulspace (with added XP undertones), however, are even more airy, grand, beautiful, and full of colored light than usual, and most Jovians find themselves drawn to greater attendance during the season, if only to enjoy these magna opera of Church simulspace artisans. Movies, XPs, and simulspace games flood the Jovian mesh with their hybrid of military propaganda, religious themes, and Christmas movie. In years when the Junta and the Planetary Consortium are experiencing political friction, the old movie Santa Claus Conquers the Martians tends to come into popularity (after suitable editing by governmental and Church censors).
Don't think the bleakness of fascist spectacle and VR escapism define the day for Jovians. Many fully enjoy the season, throwing themselves into decorating and family gatherings that sometimes risk edging over the CDC's limit on assemblies. Many Jovians even express gratitude for the restraints placed upon them by their government, claiming that it compels them toward greater intimacy and reminds them to return to more family-focused celebrations. Fond memories of warm celebrations are almost as powerful an escapism as Mass, and creative ways found to get around the nutritional limits. Stories abound in Jovian media and the memories of the people concerning acts of kindness and are brought to life as Jovians pull together to make everyone's lives brighter for the twelve days leading up to the birth of their savior. Caroling is just possible, if the chorus is kept small. Gift-giving even persists as a tradition, with handmade gifts cobbled together with hoarded scraps being the rule. This is as much due to the JCC absorbing elements of American Protestantism vehemently opposed to the commercialization of Christmas as it is due to their resistance to post-scarcity technologies.
It's also where Christophie Odinskind and his team come in.
Born in a Titanian hulder morph well before the Fall to two proud papas, a life consciously modeled after that of old American West cowboys, and an Asatru family tradition, Christophie became a dedicated nanarcho-democrat and member of A-Bloc while attending Titan Autonomous University. Co returned to the peaceful life of a caribouherd after graduation, cor political beliefs disconnected from any action stronger than a presence on the @-list and a voting record in the Plurality. An idle conversation with cor ariel friend Rudolf Morin, a baptized and confirmed member of the Anarchic Roman Catholic Church-in-Exile changed that.
Sitting around taking potshots at ice pebbles, the two began mocking the Jovian Republic, a common enough time-wasting conversation among Titanians and among these two in particular. This time, however, Rudolf began ranting about the JCC, as he often did, and their heretical beliefs around Christmas. Anarchic Roman Catholics have a tendency to describe everything about the JCC as heretical.
Christmas gifts and Santa Claus came up in their conversation, and a spark of inspiration began its quest to fill Christophie's mind with, as they say, An Idea. What better way to undermine Jovian fascism, spread nanarcho-democratic ideals, and have a few yucks than bringing Santa to the beleaguered masses memewashed into scarcity worship?
The two Titanians burned a lot of @-rep and built a decent amount of g-rep only to burn it in order to finance their operation. One EVA sled, a modified olympian morph, a handful of modified ring flyers, and a very visible desktop cornucopia machine later, and they made their first run into Liberty City. It was a modest success, but it was fun and it was enough to attract significant attention from the Jovians, the @-list, the Plurality, and media across the system. That was AF 7; they've continued ever since.
The idea is basic memetic warfare. By leveraging imagery inherent to the Republic's memetic landscape in such a way as to showcase the CM, “Santa” works to inspire the Jovians toward developing a desire, and then a demand, for nanofabrication. Though Christophie believes that this taste for post-scarcity will naturally lead to breakdowns of the fascist regime and an upswelling of nanarcho-democracy, co purchased two griefers after that first run, smuggled them into Liberty City, and began an art/propaganda campaign to ensure that result.
The team has grown, now including 4 transhumans other than Christophie and Rudolf:
* a Titanian journo and hacker covering this daring and artistic effort to undermine the Junta (and hoping to get on MRGCNN in the process) who goes by the name “Goodness's Sake” when embedded as one of Santa's elfs,
* Eetu Laakso, a surya child born after the Fall who won an @-list contest to get a place as an elf last year,
* an AGI from the Jovian moonlet Carpo who loves Christmas as only a virtual Victorian who's lived its life almost entirely in simulspace can and goes by the name Florence Beechworth, and
* Batch Quanta, a scum bot jammer who's one of the Lost, who both serve “Santa” as reindeer
-----------------------------------
* In 1 AF, the Council of Liberty was held on Ganymede. There, the Jovian Catholic Church was founded and almost immediately experienced their first schism. Shortly after the appointment of the Exilic Pope, a large number of delegates stormed out, railing about the Line of Peter, apostolic succession, and the mass murder of the College of Cardinals by the TITANs. These priests quickly began to build what they called the Anarchic Roman Catholic Church-in-Exile, founded upon the theological claim that God had ushered in a new period of the Church in which it had to find His grace without the protection and guiding hand of Peter. Ironically, the ARCCiE both enabled the hardline bioconservatist elements within the JCC to embed their beliefs in doctrine and theology and also represents the closest theology (if not liturgy) to that of pre-Fall Catholicism, as the JCC has incorporated a few elements of American Protestantism (including Mormonism), Russian Orthodoxy, and Chinese Patriotic Catholicism into what does still remain a Roman Catholic framework.
The third largest post-Fall Catholic denomination is a small but rapidly growing group within the ARCCiE. They call themselves the Anarchist Catholic Church of the Enduring and New Third Scripture (ACCENTS). Building a new theology out of combining anarchist political theory with Catholicism, they have begun to compile a new Scripture or Testament from the texts of Christian anarchist and communist writers. Thus, it includes the Books of Francis, the Book of Petr Chelčický, the Books of the Diggers, the Hopedale Book, the Books of William Greene, the Book of the Kingdom of God, the Book of David Lipscomb, the Book of the Heavenly Discourse, the Book of Thomas Hagerty, the Books of Nikolai Berdyaev, the Revelation of Precarity, the Book of Ammon, the Books of Dorothy Day, the Book of Peter Maurin, the Books of Ernst Bloch, the Book of Jacques Ellul, the Books of the Berrigan Brothers, the Book of Ivan Illich, the Book of Diane Drufenbrock, the Book of Camilo Restrepo, the Book of Vernard Eller, and the Books of Alexandre Christoyannopoulos.
Friday, July 1, 2016
Diell Beewk
Hi. It's OneHope01 again.
Not long after I set out, driven by the magick-born intimacy that came from my use of the ancient spell known as the Charge of the First Ancestor, to find out as much as I could about the strange man-sized vermin named the "diell beead", I came across quite a strange sight.
I had spent several days searching for a diell beead colony that I knew was hidden among a particular set of ruins not overly far from where the Babylon Five thought we might start a colony. We needed to know if the diell beead would be a barrier to said colony's success. Creeping through the tumbled stones, haunted by memories that weren't mine of a time when they stood tall and pink, veined in gold, against Nibiru's petal-blue sky, I turned the corner of a long-overgrown street and saw a huddled cluster of four diell beead. Thankfully, their attention was focused away from me on some as-yet-unseen beast, giving me the freedom to pop back and protect myself from sight and blow by means of the gargantuan stone block whose corner I had just rounded.
Driven by the insatiable curiosity of our species -- more demanding and lethal than the storied weakness of cats worldwide by far -- I peeked back around and saw something I hadn't before. Between the diell beead and whatever foe they fought was a line of creatures similar to the diell beead in most ways, only a mite bit smaller and with a few key significant differences. For example, it appeared that in this smaller species (I later learned that it wasn't a separate species, but rather a sort of neuter worker caste that makes up 50-85% of all births among the diell species), the strong leaping legs tucked up under the rear of the diell beead sat a little further forward and underneath the great red-and-black carapace, having become great feathered wings protected by chitin like a beetle's diaphanous wings. Several long feathers trailed from where I thought those legs should have been. What skin was visible among these smaller diell was also feathered, rather than warty as in the beead. And finally, their mouths did not gape wide like their larger siblings, but pinched itself small with a bonily protruding hooked beak
The name "diell beewk" floated to the top of my jumbled brain, feeling like a simple extension of the name I already carried, that of the diell beead. This was my first hint that I was looking not at two related species, but at a single, united type of Nibiruan beast. I never did see what they were fighting, unfortunately, as the battle began to press the diell back and I -- wisely, I still assert! -- fled before becoming engulfed in it. Later study revealed that the diell beewk serve the diell species by scavenging for food, building and expanding the nest, and serving as frontline defenders if the colony is attacked. Although not nearly as potent as the diell beead, in groups the diell beewk can be just as deadly.
I also discovered that the ruins belonged to a race known as the loorged scoxo, who had fielded great warrior legions of diell-borne cavalry in the long-ago days of their Shkaan Empire. It is evidently quite common for their former mounts to have taken the wreckage of their pink-and-gold towns as their rightfully-inherited home. Then again, my informants on this matter are all descended from the ancient slave-races of the loorged scoxo, making sense of their description of the diell as having the intelligence to know, interpret, and utilize inheritance law in such a manner. Diell also lurk in the lightless depths of the underground realm known as Khyrdark, where their ominous sonic chimes echo off the walls to be heard, sometimes miles away. The effect can be terrifying as the echoing makes them sound as if they come from all around.
Medium-size Vermin
Hit Dice 6d8+18 (45 hp)
Initiative +3
Speed 25 feet, burrow 5 feet, fly 40 feet (poor)
Armor Class 19 (+3 Dex, +6 natural), touch 13, flat-footed 16, CMD 20
Base Attack Bonus/Combat Maneuver Bonus +4/+7
Attack Claw +7 melee (1d8+3)
Full Attack 2 claws +7 melee (1d8+3) and bite +5 melee (1d6+1)
Space/Reach 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks Rend (2 claws, 1d6+4), screech, shake the earth, trample (1d8+4, DC 16)
Special Qualities Darkvision 60 feet, immunity to sonic, low-light vision, scent, sonic healing, vermin traits
Saves Fort +8, Ref +5, Will +5
Abilities Str 16, Dex 17, Con 17, Int --, Wis 13, Cha 11
Skills Acrobatics +5, Fly -1, Perception +3 (+7 in daylight)
Feats Improved Natural Attack (claw) x2 (B), Multiattack (B)
Environment Any mountains, hills, or underground
Organization Solitary or colony (7-13 plus 2-6 diell beead)
Challenge Rating 3
Treasure None
Alignment Always neutral
Advancement 7-9 HD (Medium-size), 10 HD (Large)
Combat
Like their larger brethren, diell beewk seek to attack in groups, using their shake the earth ability abd sonic screeches to both deal damage on their foes and heal each other. A key difference in strategy when diell beewk and diell beead fight together seems to be an instinctual tactic. The diell beewk attack in a line as a unit, while the diell beead gather together behind their smaller brethren. In this way, a diell beead's sonic chime attack catches many diell beewk in its blast. Due to their sonic healing ability, which is more potent than that possessed by the larger specimens, the diell beewk are able to fight much longer than expected. Combined with their own screeches, diell beewk often seem as durable, if not more so, than their heftier kin.
Screech (Su): Once per day, a diell beewk can emit a cone of sonic energy from the chitinous bell above its head, just as a diell beead. However, the diell beewk's cone is 10 feet long, and creatures within take 1d12+3 points of sonic damage (Reflex DC 16 half). The save DC is Strength-based.
Sonic Healing (Su): This ability functions as the diell beead's sonic healing ability, except diell beewk heal 1 point of damage per 3 points of sonic damage a sonic attack would normally deal.
Skills: Diell beewk have a +2 racial bonus on Acrobatics and Perception checks, with an additional +4 on Perception checks in daylight.
Not long after I set out, driven by the magick-born intimacy that came from my use of the ancient spell known as the Charge of the First Ancestor, to find out as much as I could about the strange man-sized vermin named the "diell beead", I came across quite a strange sight.
I had spent several days searching for a diell beead colony that I knew was hidden among a particular set of ruins not overly far from where the Babylon Five thought we might start a colony. We needed to know if the diell beead would be a barrier to said colony's success. Creeping through the tumbled stones, haunted by memories that weren't mine of a time when they stood tall and pink, veined in gold, against Nibiru's petal-blue sky, I turned the corner of a long-overgrown street and saw a huddled cluster of four diell beead. Thankfully, their attention was focused away from me on some as-yet-unseen beast, giving me the freedom to pop back and protect myself from sight and blow by means of the gargantuan stone block whose corner I had just rounded.
Driven by the insatiable curiosity of our species -- more demanding and lethal than the storied weakness of cats worldwide by far -- I peeked back around and saw something I hadn't before. Between the diell beead and whatever foe they fought was a line of creatures similar to the diell beead in most ways, only a mite bit smaller and with a few key significant differences. For example, it appeared that in this smaller species (I later learned that it wasn't a separate species, but rather a sort of neuter worker caste that makes up 50-85% of all births among the diell species), the strong leaping legs tucked up under the rear of the diell beead sat a little further forward and underneath the great red-and-black carapace, having become great feathered wings protected by chitin like a beetle's diaphanous wings. Several long feathers trailed from where I thought those legs should have been. What skin was visible among these smaller diell was also feathered, rather than warty as in the beead. And finally, their mouths did not gape wide like their larger siblings, but pinched itself small with a bonily protruding hooked beak
The name "diell beewk" floated to the top of my jumbled brain, feeling like a simple extension of the name I already carried, that of the diell beead. This was my first hint that I was looking not at two related species, but at a single, united type of Nibiruan beast. I never did see what they were fighting, unfortunately, as the battle began to press the diell back and I -- wisely, I still assert! -- fled before becoming engulfed in it. Later study revealed that the diell beewk serve the diell species by scavenging for food, building and expanding the nest, and serving as frontline defenders if the colony is attacked. Although not nearly as potent as the diell beead, in groups the diell beewk can be just as deadly.
I also discovered that the ruins belonged to a race known as the loorged scoxo, who had fielded great warrior legions of diell-borne cavalry in the long-ago days of their Shkaan Empire. It is evidently quite common for their former mounts to have taken the wreckage of their pink-and-gold towns as their rightfully-inherited home. Then again, my informants on this matter are all descended from the ancient slave-races of the loorged scoxo, making sense of their description of the diell as having the intelligence to know, interpret, and utilize inheritance law in such a manner. Diell also lurk in the lightless depths of the underground realm known as Khyrdark, where their ominous sonic chimes echo off the walls to be heard, sometimes miles away. The effect can be terrifying as the echoing makes them sound as if they come from all around.
Medium-size Vermin
Hit Dice 6d8+18 (45 hp)
Initiative +3
Speed 25 feet, burrow 5 feet, fly 40 feet (poor)
Armor Class 19 (+3 Dex, +6 natural), touch 13, flat-footed 16, CMD 20
Base Attack Bonus/Combat Maneuver Bonus +4/+7
Attack Claw +7 melee (1d8+3)
Full Attack 2 claws +7 melee (1d8+3) and bite +5 melee (1d6+1)
Space/Reach 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks Rend (2 claws, 1d6+4), screech, shake the earth, trample (1d8+4, DC 16)
Special Qualities Darkvision 60 feet, immunity to sonic, low-light vision, scent, sonic healing, vermin traits
Saves Fort +8, Ref +5, Will +5
Abilities Str 16, Dex 17, Con 17, Int --, Wis 13, Cha 11
Skills Acrobatics +5, Fly -1, Perception +3 (+7 in daylight)
Feats Improved Natural Attack (claw) x2 (B), Multiattack (B)
Environment Any mountains, hills, or underground
Organization Solitary or colony (7-13 plus 2-6 diell beead)
Challenge Rating 3
Treasure None
Alignment Always neutral
Advancement 7-9 HD (Medium-size), 10 HD (Large)
Combat
Like their larger brethren, diell beewk seek to attack in groups, using their shake the earth ability abd sonic screeches to both deal damage on their foes and heal each other. A key difference in strategy when diell beewk and diell beead fight together seems to be an instinctual tactic. The diell beewk attack in a line as a unit, while the diell beead gather together behind their smaller brethren. In this way, a diell beead's sonic chime attack catches many diell beewk in its blast. Due to their sonic healing ability, which is more potent than that possessed by the larger specimens, the diell beewk are able to fight much longer than expected. Combined with their own screeches, diell beewk often seem as durable, if not more so, than their heftier kin.
Screech (Su): Once per day, a diell beewk can emit a cone of sonic energy from the chitinous bell above its head, just as a diell beead. However, the diell beewk's cone is 10 feet long, and creatures within take 1d12+3 points of sonic damage (Reflex DC 16 half). The save DC is Strength-based.
Sonic Healing (Su): This ability functions as the diell beead's sonic healing ability, except diell beewk heal 1 point of damage per 3 points of sonic damage a sonic attack would normally deal.
Skills: Diell beewk have a +2 racial bonus on Acrobatics and Perception checks, with an additional +4 on Perception checks in daylight.
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Diell Beead
We were the Babylon Five, a small coven utilizing reconstructed ancient Mesopotamian ritual technologies, grounded in a Thelema-inspired Aeonics and syncretized with the western magickal tradition -- with a big dose of post-Discordian post-Dada post-Situationist scifi-focused pop-culture-based chaos magick -- to find new places for the human race to inhabit. With NASA defunded and the space program worldwide a joke, we believed we were the last best hope for the survival of the human race as we reached the carrying capacity of Big Mama Earth. Well, us and a massive depopulation die-off, near-extinction kind of event, but we were hoping to avoid that.
Then we found Nibiru.
Who knows if what we found was actually the planet Sitchin described in those sacks of excrement he called books. Who cares, really? It's quite possible that out our rituals _created_ Nibiru out of all our Ouranian Barbaric chanting and cut-up bibliomancy and die-roll personality creation. Once again, who cares? What mattered is that we had found a reliable way -- much cheaper than the spaceships the governments of the world had deemed too impractical -- to escape the coming death-by-crowding of our species.
We published our work, and discovered that its promise was popular. Now, we have found ourselves at the vanguard and forefront of a movement of thousands, maybe millions, from all around the world. We call ourselves the Tenth Billion, in reference to the median projected carrying capacity of Big Mama Earth as of a 2001 report to the United Nations, which was 10 billion humans. Others sometimes call us the Renegade Colonizers or the Disunited Federation of Planets.
I still call us the Only Hope. In fact, it has become my handle in the various message boards and mailing lists that dot the web, connecting our widespread network of people working to prepare Nibiru for largescale human habitation.
I think it is the only way we will survive what we have done, are doing, and will do to the planet. We are a cancer, and this is the only compassionate cure. Even if we are crazy.
*******************
After the Babylon Five discovered or created Nibiru, we began to explore it and to collect various data on the conditions and life there. One of the first entities I myself was first confronted with was an eight-limbed creature with a hard, shiny red and black carapace that looked like it might conceal wings, but it acted only as durable armor over much, but not all of its fat body. What brown, leathery skin was visible was dotted with dry, stubby warts. Only four of its limbs were normal, walking legs. Its two rearmost limbs were large and powerful legs used for the sole purpose of jumping far distances; they were held tucked up under the rear of the body when not in use. On the front of the creature, two jointed, agile, and wickedly hooked claws groped the air before its four beady, black, insectoid eyes and sharp, jagged mandible. These wide and gaping mouthparts sat below a brow ridge that formed the base of a massive, hornlike, chitinous protrusion looking for all the world like the bell of a massive trumpet, from which I could hear a faint, high-pitched warbling. This protrusion tapered above the creature's shoulders and flared out over its sharp jaws. Essentially, the creature lacked a true head; in its place is the large horn, which warbled and trumpeted when it communicated with others of its species. Its throat bulged and rippled as though it was about to croak.
I quickly fingered the small bag of apple seeds, yew leaves, and processors at my hip, reciting the Charge of the First Ancestor (translated here from the Ancient Aramaic I used in the moment):
"Oh holy, vibrating Breath Over the Unformed Waters,
You it was
Who created
my firstmost, many infinity times great-grandfather
from the red dirt.
You it was
Who had sound but not yet language,
and You it was who charged him
with finding the names of things
and speaking them to You,
teaching You,
even You,
to speak.
In gratitude for this history,
and in order to dutifully perform my species's forgotten task,
I call to You
who is now called simply
the Name.
Summon memories of my human magick from the code of my cells,
and I will teach You,
even You,
much and more names,
the names of all things,
seen and unseen,
felt and unfelt,
thought and unthought."
Upon completion of the prayer, the name "diell baeed" floated from my brain out through my lips like the dirt that has been washed from your body down the shower drain. It appeared that this was the fearful thing's name.
I became fascinated with the hideous, nauseating thing. You know, I've read and reread every account of the Garden of Eden -- the Books of Genesis and Ezekiel in at least 4 languages, surat Sad, surat al-Baqarah, surat al-A'raf, surat al-Hijr, the Doctrines and Covenants, all manner of commentaries and revelations about those accounts, and endless divinations, numerological transformations, and cryptological breakdowns concerning the Garden. The one thing none of them ever told me was the sensuous intimacy that comes in a rush with the naming of a thing. There's a kind of merging on a fundamental level that occurs.
I embarked on a study of the diell beead, arranging for repeated ritual journeys to Nibiru (alienating my coven endlessly, by the way -- I eventually began organizing trips just to get away from the endless arguing they caused) and spending my free time doing endless divinations to learn more. I rather quickly thereafter lost my job as a canvasser.
Medium-Size Vermin
Hit Dice 8d8+32 (68 hp)
Initiative +1
Speed 40 feet, burrow 5 feet
Armor Class 20 (+1 Dex, +9 natural), touch 11, flat-footed 19, CMD 21
Base Attack Bonus/Combat Maneuver Bonus +6/+10
Attack Claw +10 melee (1d8+4), or tongue +7 ranged (grab)
Full Attack 2 claws +10 melee (1d8+4) and bite +7 melee (1d6+2 plus poison saliva and grab), or tongue +7 ranged (grab)
Space/Reach 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks Fast swallow, rend (2 claws, 2d8+6), shake the earth, sonic chime, swallow whole (1d3 bludgeoning plus 1d2 acid damage, AC 14, 7 hp), trample (2d6+6, DC 18)
Special Qualities Darkvision 60 feet, immunity to sonic, low-light vision, scent, sonic healing, vermin traits
Saves Fort +10, Ref +3, Will +3
Abilities Str 18, Dex 12, Con 19, Int --, Wis 13, Cha 9
Skills Acrobatics +9, Perception +7, Stealth +3
Feats Improved Natural Attack (claw) x2 (B), Multiattack (B)
Environment Temperate land and underground
Organization Solitary or colony (7-56)
Challenge Rating 6
Treasure None
Alignment Always neutral
Advancement 9-10 HD (Medium-size), 11 HD (Large)
Combat
Diell beead in groups fight by using their shake the earth ability, attempting to knock prone as many enemies as possible. They then rush in and trample whatever foes they can before switching to claw, bite, and rend attacks. The creatures only resort to their sonic chime attacks if necessary. Although mindless vermin, diell beead fight with a certain amount of savage cunning. A diell beead's tongue attack has a range of 10 feet with no range increment.
Diell Beead Saliva (Ex): Bite—injury; save Fort DC 18, frequency 1/round for 2 rounds, effect 1d3 Con, cure 1 save.
Shake the Earth (Ex): A diell beead can channel some of the sonic energy within its body by performing a rhythmic stomping on the ground as a standard action. Any creature within 5 feet of a diell beead when it activates this ability must make a DC 18 Reflex save or fall prone as the ground lurches and buckles beneath it. Diell beead are immune to shake the earth generated by themselves or other diell beead and never need to save against the effect.
If multiple diell beead activate their shake the earth ability in the same round, the radius of the effect expands as the resonance in the ground combines. For every diell beead within 5 feet using shake the earth, the radius of the effect expands another 5 feet. Thus, two diell beead within 5 feet of one another generate a shaking that effects all creatures within 10 feet of either diell beead. Three diell beead within 5 feet using the ability would generate an effect that affects all creatures within 15 feet of any one of the diell beead.
Creatures with stability or that are considered stable against trip attempts receive a bonus on their Reflex save as if they were being tripped (so a dwarf would receive the +4 bonus on the save to resist being knocked prone). The save DC is Strength-based.
Sonic Chime (Su): Once per day, a diell beead ca emit a cone of sonic energy from the chitinous bell above its head. The cone is 15 feet long, and activating the chime is a full-round action. Creatures within the cone take 5d6 points of sonic damage (Reflex DC 18 half). A diell beead is immune to its own sonic chime attack and that of other diell beead. Diell beead attacking in numbers use this ability instinctually to heal their fellow diell beead once several have taken damage (see sonic healing below). The save DC is Constitution-based.
Sonic Healing (Su): For every 5 points of damage a sonic attack would deal to a diell beead, the creature instead heals 1 point of damage it has already sustained. If a diell beead receives more healing than its current hit point maximum, the extra hit points are wasted (the creature does not gain temporary hit points from exposure to sonic damage). A diell beead gets no saving throw against attacks that deal sonic damage.
Skills: Diell beead have a +8 racial bonus on Acrobatics, a +6 racial bonus on Perception checks, and a +2 racial bonus on Stealth checks.
Then we found Nibiru.
Who knows if what we found was actually the planet Sitchin described in those sacks of excrement he called books. Who cares, really? It's quite possible that out our rituals _created_ Nibiru out of all our Ouranian Barbaric chanting and cut-up bibliomancy and die-roll personality creation. Once again, who cares? What mattered is that we had found a reliable way -- much cheaper than the spaceships the governments of the world had deemed too impractical -- to escape the coming death-by-crowding of our species.
We published our work, and discovered that its promise was popular. Now, we have found ourselves at the vanguard and forefront of a movement of thousands, maybe millions, from all around the world. We call ourselves the Tenth Billion, in reference to the median projected carrying capacity of Big Mama Earth as of a 2001 report to the United Nations, which was 10 billion humans. Others sometimes call us the Renegade Colonizers or the Disunited Federation of Planets.
I still call us the Only Hope. In fact, it has become my handle in the various message boards and mailing lists that dot the web, connecting our widespread network of people working to prepare Nibiru for largescale human habitation.
I think it is the only way we will survive what we have done, are doing, and will do to the planet. We are a cancer, and this is the only compassionate cure. Even if we are crazy.
*******************
After the Babylon Five discovered or created Nibiru, we began to explore it and to collect various data on the conditions and life there. One of the first entities I myself was first confronted with was an eight-limbed creature with a hard, shiny red and black carapace that looked like it might conceal wings, but it acted only as durable armor over much, but not all of its fat body. What brown, leathery skin was visible was dotted with dry, stubby warts. Only four of its limbs were normal, walking legs. Its two rearmost limbs were large and powerful legs used for the sole purpose of jumping far distances; they were held tucked up under the rear of the body when not in use. On the front of the creature, two jointed, agile, and wickedly hooked claws groped the air before its four beady, black, insectoid eyes and sharp, jagged mandible. These wide and gaping mouthparts sat below a brow ridge that formed the base of a massive, hornlike, chitinous protrusion looking for all the world like the bell of a massive trumpet, from which I could hear a faint, high-pitched warbling. This protrusion tapered above the creature's shoulders and flared out over its sharp jaws. Essentially, the creature lacked a true head; in its place is the large horn, which warbled and trumpeted when it communicated with others of its species. Its throat bulged and rippled as though it was about to croak.
I quickly fingered the small bag of apple seeds, yew leaves, and processors at my hip, reciting the Charge of the First Ancestor (translated here from the Ancient Aramaic I used in the moment):
"Oh holy, vibrating Breath Over the Unformed Waters,
You it was
Who created
my firstmost, many infinity times great-grandfather
from the red dirt.
You it was
Who had sound but not yet language,
and You it was who charged him
with finding the names of things
and speaking them to You,
teaching You,
even You,
to speak.
In gratitude for this history,
and in order to dutifully perform my species's forgotten task,
I call to You
who is now called simply
the Name.
Summon memories of my human magick from the code of my cells,
and I will teach You,
even You,
much and more names,
the names of all things,
seen and unseen,
felt and unfelt,
thought and unthought."
Upon completion of the prayer, the name "diell baeed" floated from my brain out through my lips like the dirt that has been washed from your body down the shower drain. It appeared that this was the fearful thing's name.
I became fascinated with the hideous, nauseating thing. You know, I've read and reread every account of the Garden of Eden -- the Books of Genesis and Ezekiel in at least 4 languages, surat Sad, surat al-Baqarah, surat al-A'raf, surat al-Hijr, the Doctrines and Covenants, all manner of commentaries and revelations about those accounts, and endless divinations, numerological transformations, and cryptological breakdowns concerning the Garden. The one thing none of them ever told me was the sensuous intimacy that comes in a rush with the naming of a thing. There's a kind of merging on a fundamental level that occurs.
I embarked on a study of the diell beead, arranging for repeated ritual journeys to Nibiru (alienating my coven endlessly, by the way -- I eventually began organizing trips just to get away from the endless arguing they caused) and spending my free time doing endless divinations to learn more. I rather quickly thereafter lost my job as a canvasser.
Diell beead, I learned, thrive in underground colonies, constructing immense, convoluted tunnel complexes reminiscent of anthills. Though often shy and nonaggressive, they are mindless hunters who live to breed and expand their warrens, breaking off into new colonies when one has grown too large for an area (typically when a colony has amassed more than 28 members). Diell beead have been used as mounts by many of the more intelligent races of Nibiru. Loorged scoxo have domesticated them in the past, as have some foresevu kelvlin tribes. These groups know that in great numbers diell beead only become more effective, and mounted units of diell beead riders sometimes form the elite fighting units for certain of the tribes or cities of Nibiru.
--@OnlyHope01
--@OnlyHope01
Medium-Size Vermin
Hit Dice 8d8+32 (68 hp)
Initiative +1
Speed 40 feet, burrow 5 feet
Armor Class 20 (+1 Dex, +9 natural), touch 11, flat-footed 19, CMD 21
Base Attack Bonus/Combat Maneuver Bonus +6/+10
Attack Claw +10 melee (1d8+4), or tongue +7 ranged (grab)
Full Attack 2 claws +10 melee (1d8+4) and bite +7 melee (1d6+2 plus poison saliva and grab), or tongue +7 ranged (grab)
Space/Reach 5 feet/5 feet
Special Attacks Fast swallow, rend (2 claws, 2d8+6), shake the earth, sonic chime, swallow whole (1d3 bludgeoning plus 1d2 acid damage, AC 14, 7 hp), trample (2d6+6, DC 18)
Special Qualities Darkvision 60 feet, immunity to sonic, low-light vision, scent, sonic healing, vermin traits
Saves Fort +10, Ref +3, Will +3
Abilities Str 18, Dex 12, Con 19, Int --, Wis 13, Cha 9
Skills Acrobatics +9, Perception +7, Stealth +3
Feats Improved Natural Attack (claw) x2 (B), Multiattack (B)
Environment Temperate land and underground
Organization Solitary or colony (7-56)
Challenge Rating 6
Treasure None
Alignment Always neutral
Advancement 9-10 HD (Medium-size), 11 HD (Large)
Combat
Diell beead in groups fight by using their shake the earth ability, attempting to knock prone as many enemies as possible. They then rush in and trample whatever foes they can before switching to claw, bite, and rend attacks. The creatures only resort to their sonic chime attacks if necessary. Although mindless vermin, diell beead fight with a certain amount of savage cunning. A diell beead's tongue attack has a range of 10 feet with no range increment.
Diell Beead Saliva (Ex): Bite—injury; save Fort DC 18, frequency 1/round for 2 rounds, effect 1d3 Con, cure 1 save.
Shake the Earth (Ex): A diell beead can channel some of the sonic energy within its body by performing a rhythmic stomping on the ground as a standard action. Any creature within 5 feet of a diell beead when it activates this ability must make a DC 18 Reflex save or fall prone as the ground lurches and buckles beneath it. Diell beead are immune to shake the earth generated by themselves or other diell beead and never need to save against the effect.
If multiple diell beead activate their shake the earth ability in the same round, the radius of the effect expands as the resonance in the ground combines. For every diell beead within 5 feet using shake the earth, the radius of the effect expands another 5 feet. Thus, two diell beead within 5 feet of one another generate a shaking that effects all creatures within 10 feet of either diell beead. Three diell beead within 5 feet using the ability would generate an effect that affects all creatures within 15 feet of any one of the diell beead.
Creatures with stability or that are considered stable against trip attempts receive a bonus on their Reflex save as if they were being tripped (so a dwarf would receive the +4 bonus on the save to resist being knocked prone). The save DC is Strength-based.
Sonic Chime (Su): Once per day, a diell beead ca emit a cone of sonic energy from the chitinous bell above its head. The cone is 15 feet long, and activating the chime is a full-round action. Creatures within the cone take 5d6 points of sonic damage (Reflex DC 18 half). A diell beead is immune to its own sonic chime attack and that of other diell beead. Diell beead attacking in numbers use this ability instinctually to heal their fellow diell beead once several have taken damage (see sonic healing below). The save DC is Constitution-based.
Sonic Healing (Su): For every 5 points of damage a sonic attack would deal to a diell beead, the creature instead heals 1 point of damage it has already sustained. If a diell beead receives more healing than its current hit point maximum, the extra hit points are wasted (the creature does not gain temporary hit points from exposure to sonic damage). A diell beead gets no saving throw against attacks that deal sonic damage.
Skills: Diell beead have a +8 racial bonus on Acrobatics, a +6 racial bonus on Perception checks, and a +2 racial bonus on Stealth checks.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
The Halfling Holiday of Longdays
"Sweet you came, and sweet you shall return."
--The Journal of Sacrifices 3:19c (from the Diaries)
When the halfling liturgical calendar embarks into Longdays, a period of forty-eight days of fasting, prayer, repentance, and reflection, often including a rather literal step into the desert, clergy in both the Apostolic Ǽtscúrárite /ǽtʃúrɑ́r/ Church (an inclusive, sacramental, esoteric, and mystical religion with apostolic succession) and the Outer Halfling Church join with religious people from around Walhiska /ɥɑ́rískɑ́/ of various different heritages and backgrounds. Halflings commonly remind themselves and each other that it’s often all too easy to let one’s mind wander while reading the more esoteric texts when, at this time, we should be focusing on making straight the way for the Divine to enter into our hearts.
Probably the most defining feature of Bróƿèo-Tḕrkṑ-Scúcrá /bróɥèotɛ̀rkɔ̀ʃúkrɑ́/ is the imposition of sugar which is made from the sugar canes blessed with the sweat, blood, and pained cries of halfling worshippers on the previous Fréo-Brī̀m-Scǽní /fréobrɪ̀mʃǽŋí/. This sugar is placed on the foreheads of the congregation with the accompanying phrase, “Remember that you are sweet, and still sweet you shall return.” To be sure, it’s a rather strange custom to many outsiders but to the faithful, it is a reminder that mortals were created to be amusement and candy for the gods, that people are therefore fundamentally carefree and joyful, and of their mortality – something that is easily forgotten in the crush and turmoil of daily lives.
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow in ethics or wealth or rank; true nobility is being superior to your former self in pleasantry and beauty and cheer."
--halfling writer Éornòst Fíenƿḕg /éorŋòstfíyŋɥɛ̀g/
The quote by Fíenƿḕg, in many ways, could be said to be a proper quote to an understanding of this season of vows and the value of the role of remembrance in the spiritual process of dissolution, boiling, and caramelization. Mortals must descend and experience the bewildering confusion of being fully dissolved in the milk and water of nature, while at the same time recognizing the need for their own inner caramelization in the process.
When mortals remember, as Ǽngìmúngæ̀m /ǽŋːìmúŋːæ̀m/ speaks that the ‘delight of the gods is a thing we share along with equality’, they can come to a gentle understanding of how they all as a trifle sharing in a common cook all are engaged in this process, which is ultimately redemptive, and thus arrive at gnosis. We share in one another's suffering and learn compassion for the gods, that we are all suffering with, sharing in that sympathy with the Divine Light.
In Nìsèoƿṑsóró's /ŋìsèoɥɔ̀sóró/ writings, the Three Ends of Things are often compared to the three aspects that are present during the process of combustion (i.e. fire, smoke, ash): ‘Whatever burns is sulphur, whatever is humid is mercury, and that which is the balsam of these two is salt’. Nìsèoƿṑsóróans also employ the Three Ends of Things to represent the composition of the mortal microcosm: spirit (mercury), soul (sulphur) and body (salt), and this correlation is extended to some extent to a typology of the gods: the old gods (sulphur), the timeless gods (mercury), and the young gods (salt)."In this manner", states Nìsèoƿṑsóró, ‘in three things, all meets its end […] namely, in salt, in sulphur, and in liquid. In these three things all things are contained, whether sensate or insensate […] So too you understand that in the same manner that mortals are fed into the mouth of the gods, so too all creatures die in the number three’.”
“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men.”
--Átscék's /ɑ́tʃék/ Diary
Within each mortal there is rot and decay, and unyummy things. It can be a voice from the past which reminds one of how worthless one is when one knows one is not. It can come from obsessing over failures one has made however big or small. It can come from study or work. It can also come from one's spiritual family as well. Longdays is such a time, then, to drop the burden of what one's been carrying for the past weeks or even years and is an invitation for mortal's to start out on a new adventure of forgiving themselves and others for the barriers that they have placed in their hearts which prevent the gods from coming to them more clearly, as well as to improve their flavor in the gods' mouths.
"What makes mortals free is the knowledge, of what they are, of what they can become, of where they were, of wherein they have been cast, of how they are being cooked, of what spices shall compliment their flavor, of what birth truly is, and what rebirth Truly is."
--halfling theologian Nwǽmùmgèmàn /ŋːʷǽmùmgèmɑ̀ŋ/
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