Solemn Guardians

Solemn Guardian- stone and metal constructs brought to life by duer magic. Silent, but understand spoken commands.  They possess enough intelligence and sense of logic to try and interpret commands in such a way as to make sense out of them. They can be programmed to have an ethical code, or they can develop one with time, based on the commands they have been given.

Maeleff racial politics

Geb are compulsive debaters, and for all f their militaristic tendencies are fanatics for democracy.  Every decision in a Geb city is made as the result of weeks or months of debate. The some exception is the decision to fight the blooded or eliminate evidence of gods, regarding which they are to say the least intense.  They use criminals and war prisoners as slave labor, but are otherwise fairly friendly to outsiders.

Shar have a strict hierarchy, with a small oligarchy at top, and strictly delineated castes beneath them. Most Shar cities are closed to outsiders.  They raid nearby settlements for slaves or food or just for the fuck of it.  Gladiatorial contests that can raise one's caste. Outsiders are sometimes allowed to compete, sometimes forced to, but will never be integrated into Shar society as a result.

Sava are clannish anarchists. Families stay together because they want to, and wen they no longer want to, they leave. They cooperate to hunt or for defense, and because they are naturally outgoing and friendly, but they almost never feel obligated to do so by anything beyond affection or enlightened self interest.

Aelth have a tribal structure, and are generally hostile to outsiders.

Duer are insular and clannish. They are polite and open to outsiders as prudent, but generally keep very mug to themselves.  Ruled by councils of elders who vote among themselves.

Lothar, as far as anyone can tell, have no sort of organizational structure at all. They appear to live mostly individual existences, acting together only when necessary.  They at a extremely private, and did not even attempt to make contact with outsiders until quite recently.

The bugs claim that they are ruled by the wisdom of their elders, but nobody else can even determine if said elders are sentient, let alone in command. Mysterious.

The office of the Tyrant of Ammadhur

The primary government offices are in an old stone fortress on the central island, a fort left over from before the Falling, that was restored after people began to re-emerge from the local caves.

The Tyrant's offices take up most of the third (top) floor if the central keep.  The maethen berry vines that climb the outer walls pierce through the stone here, and completely cover one interior wall. The ceiling has been replaced with alchemically reinforced glass. The berries are of top quality, alchemically enhanced, and are used to make a small batch of Maethen wine every year, most if which is given as gifts to important visiting diplomats.

The old way vs. the new way....

Okay, interesting thought. Or I think so anyway...

Despite the danger inherent to magic, Mayes have for obvious reasons always wielded tremendous power in Maeleff. Even aside from their personal power, this is a world whose people were raised and evolved with magic and sorcery being just the way certain things were done. The ability to use magic is of course to some extent damaging to a society's "technological" growth, insofar as they have never had a reason to learn how to do certain things without magic. 

Now of course, things are a bit different. It's been 500 years or so since the gods died and their Blood ran.  The people have had 500 years to get used to the idea that magic is dangerous, destructive and poisonous. So there has been a rising movement to learn how to do things without magic. Philosophers, scientists and engineers are just starting to appear, looking for other ways to do things. 

This of ourselves sets up lots of neat conflicts. Old power structure looking to keep its grasp of things vs. those looking to brak away from that while structure. Neophobes vs. Neophiles.

Magic and spell casting

Casting a spell has three steps:

1. Forging a Connection

2. Gathering Power

3. Shaping the Power

In Forging a Connection, the Mage temporarily opens himself to the magic at the heart of the world, or to some other source of power, and binding himself to it for the duration of the spell.  For a Blessed or Blooded Mage this is an easy task; as the Blood grows within them, they become their own source of power. For others, it requires a significant mental effort, that can be aided by ritual.  Most mages Forge with the Well, the main pool of magical and metaphysical power placed by the gods at the heart of the world. There are however other sources of power that can be tapped, usually for limited and situational purposes.  Shaman (and Defilers) can tap the life force and spirit of the natural world around them, for small and local effects. By sacrificing an animal or sentient creature, the Mage can tap into the life force and energy inherent to that creature. One who has been granted power by a Weeping can draw on that connection, as long as the Weeping allows it (or at least does not actively prevent it). 

In Gathering Power, the Mage, having opened himself to magic, draws upon that bond and fills himself with magical power sufficient to create the effect he desires. The wells of power are vast and deep, and the gathering power stage can take as little or as much time as the Mage desires. However speed comes with a great potential cost. A Mage must have the mental strength to absorb what he needs, and simultaneously requires sufficient mental agility to dive into the well without contacting the blood, and damning himself. It is much easier to do this in a slow and methodical manner, drawing in tiny amounts of power over a long period of time. Drawing great power through the bond rapidly runs a much greater risk of contacting Blood.  Note that the risk of becoming corrupted is lessened by using a source or power other than the Well, but with the sole exception of a Weeping bond, the risk is never entirely eliminated.  Even the slowest, most cautious and well protected Alchemist or Shaman still has a chance of touching the Blood at the heart of all magic. All power, all energy, on Maeleff is in a sense bound together by the magic of the gods, and us it is all subject to the blood.  

Shaping Power is an act of will and imagination. Now that the power has been gathered, the Mage must force it into the pattern he wishes to create to create the desired effect. 

Sinodytes - bug folks. Sapient larva, nonsapient adults.

New race notes

Aquatic insect race.  The medium sized larva are sentient, the ultimate huge beetle adult is not sentient. 

Relatively short lived as intelligent larva, but there are methods of extending their lives and avoiding pupating.

The adult beetles are fairly docile and slow, but very tough, and are both revered as ancestors and used as mounts and transportation by the young.

Very big river and coastline traders.

Shadowmancy

The Dwellers in Shade, or Shadowmancers, are a small and secretive ascetic order of Blooded mages, who believe that their discipline can be used to slow the progress of corruption while still making use of the power that it grants.

Because magic, and Blood power, are to some extent metaphysical in nature, and malleable by will, the Shadowmancers believe that the danger of the Blood is at least in part because of the way people think of it. They attempt to change this in part by changing the metaphor for its use.

As I've noted before, the Parable of the Poisoned Well is so widely spread that it is how most people - even most mages and magical scholars - think of magic and Blood.  The Shadowmancers believe that this metaphysical construct has become so widespread that it is effectively real, and they seek to change it. They instead believe that the corruption of the Blood of the Gods, as it is a phenomenal (if deadly) power source, should be thought of as the ultimate source of visible power - a sun. They attempt to focus their minds and wills to imagine the Blood in their systems as a small metaphysical sun, radiating its power and corruption outwards, rather than something internal that spreads outwards. They will then create what amounts to a shield of magical shadow to block the rays of this malevolent sun. Instead of manipulating the light from the Blood sun to create magic, they manipulate its shadow, using the negative metaphysical space to manipulate their environment in ways similar to those of standard mages.

This is all of course metaphor, and metaphysical construct. They are not physically creating a ball of light and a shield. Its essentially a use of creative visualization that manipulates the metaphysical realm in which magic has its physical stuff, rather than an actual physical creation.

Interestingly, the Dwellers in the Shade do seem to have something. On average, those Blooded who master their visualization exercises, and who can manipulate their own minds to fully set and accept the proper metaphors, do on average seem to be able to hold out against Corruption longer than most, and can seemingly hold off the decision between destruction and Blessing for years longer than most others.  Whether this is simply because the most studied ascetics possess the greatest willpower, or because of some material benefit of the discipline itself, is an open question.

So, the wastelands on Maeleff were basically painted by this guy.

http://i.imgur.com/P8jH0Z1.jpg

Shar male.

Ignore the writing on the image, it's a Shar male, not Sava.

Game systems

Been looking at open source tabletop RPGs, to try and find one to fit BoDG, but can't find anything that grabs me. Either not flexible enough to easily handle the corruption and transformation processes, or don't have a stat system that I think will fit. I think I really may have to just design a bare bones story based system and leave it at that.

Maeleff Underground maps!

TIL - the MTA has maps online of the subway tunnels all throughout NYC. I think I've found an instant map for some of the underground tunnels and pathways that cut all through Maeleff.

http://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway_Track_Maps

Note to self

Need to remember to write up Despoilers (blessed anti-druidic types, typically corrupted Lotho). Also: someone on a reddit rpg thread said that they had a party member animate the corpse of a bear, hollow it out, fill it with shelves, and have it act as a walking closet. I so need to steal that.

Maeleff, southern continent.

Myth and History

Myth and lore tell us much that the scholars and alchemists of today can only guess at, or discuss in the abstract.

We know that the stars of the night sky are suns like our own, and have worlds around them both greater and lesser than Maeleff. We know that the gods came here from one of those worlds, and remade Maeleff as their battlefield and playground.

We know that all of the peoples of Maeleff were raised up by the gods to be their tools, both servants and soldiers against each other. We know that the gods made magic and gave it to their servants in order that they might better make war against each other.

We know that the gods died, killed in hatred by a weapon so powerful that it poisoned the world. We know that at their death, the gods spilled their poisoned blood into the world. We know that the Blood and its poison are the unmaking of everything, and that out of the arrogance of the gods, the world will someday die, either withered and foul, or so altered and rendered Blessed and strange that it will no longer seem our world.

We know that the world contains mysteries we no longer understand, artifacts of the gods and their servants from the elder days of endless war. We know that, and we have hope, that in the annals of those older and grander than ourselves, yet perhaps less wise, we may still find the wisdom to save us.

Some new flora and a blessed

Sanguine Blooms

A breed of flowers that grows only near or above physical pools of the Blood. Deep red roses that can grow either in the light or in total darkness. Their scent is hypnotic and grants visions that are sometime true, and sometimes perilous. Inhaling the scent of the blooms will cause hallucinations which may reveal truths, but is usually safe. The flowers themselves are poisonous to mortals, and the roots actually contain traces of the Blood.

Many Blooded claim that keeping or wearing a sachet made from the petals and other parts of the plant grants them powers of vision beyond the usually in incomprehensible imagery usually associated with the flowers. Certain Blessed have been known to smoke or otherwise consume the flowers. What they gain by doing so is unknown, but many will actively seek the blooms out.

Blessed:
The Hollow / The Faceless

Masters of illusion and manipulation.
Normal looking (whatever) except with no face, just an opening that appears usually to open up onto a portal into deep space - they appear filled with sky and stars.

The Hollow are empathic blessed that create illusions and hallucinations in the minds of mortals, do that they can feed on the powerful emotions. Brief contact leaves one feeling calm and dispassionate, incapable of deep emotion for a period if time. Longer exposure can damage minds, as the Hollow feeds on more and more, until they leave their victim mindless and drooling.

There are rumors of some people, usually wealthy and powerful, hiring Hollow to feed on a specific emotions, leaving them for example utterly (if temporarily) fearless.

Some have been known to become addicted to the gaze of the Hollow. These poor souls inevitably are one day found mindless and drooling.

The Hollow are not mindless at all. They are as varied in intelligence and personality as any mortal race. Their kind appear to drawn from all of the various races (save Sava of course), and some come from no race that can be readily identified.

Note that the blooded are not immune to a Hollow's illusions, nor are they safe from his feeding. Some Hollow who have not fully resigned themselves to evil have developed a taste for the Blooded, and will seek them out to feed upon.

Hollow reproduce by draining a blooded of their mind, and then pouring son of their own essence back into their victim. They may also expose the mindless (but alive) body of a victim to the blood after they have new drained, and then pour their essence into the vessel.

==========*===========


He screamed in fear and rage and struck the final blow, striking the creature's head from its shoulders, and dropping it at his feet. He set the point of his blade on the ground and leaned on the hilt, panting heavily as his adrenaline drained from him.
It was then that he felt a peculiar but not unpleasant tingling warmth in his hand.

Gateways, need a name...

I'm a bit ashamed to be cribbing an idea from the Eye of the World series, daft as it is, but I will admit that some bits of it inspired this thought:

Id like to have a series of permanent portals, gateways that are set up in interconnected sets of 3 or 4 all over the world, or at least the continent, offering near instantaneous travel from one to the other. They would mostly be underground, deep in labyrinths in the Dismal, and they are old relics from before the Blood.

As they are magical, and existed before the corruption, many of the portals are infected, and traveling though then would be perilous, probably impossible, for those who are not already blooded or blessed.

Why "the nails"?

I came up with the nickname without knowing what it meant yet.

I think the reason that the Office of Causal Oversight is referred to as "the Nails" is that in their earlier, less refined days, the criminals that they sought had an unfortunate tendency to be found later nailed to things.

The Wiki of Dead Gods

I'm starting to edit this shit into a real wiki, at http://blood-of-dead-gods.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Thoughts on changing the tone from undead-horror to unknown-horror

Is Maeleff a world, in the way we think of one? A roundish planet hovering in space somewhere around a star? Do I need to be that... I don't know, mundane? Literal?

I might make it a flat world, with the "outer edges of the universe" being the far reaches of the flat plane, encircling a small island of order. But I do't want to have to figure out the physics of that.

I've said before that the gods found Maeleff as a raw natural world, file with animals but no intelligent life, and changed some of the animals into the intelligent races. Buy what else did they do to shape the world?

Ideas:

- no molten core, the gods changed the core into pure magic. That's where magic power comes from, and where mist of their blood now resides.  Thus it's not really a well of magic, it's a literal sphere of liquid power, with a denser liquid core if corruption.

- the planet below the surface was changed extensively over time, for whatever incomprehensible purposes the gods had. The entire crust and mantle is riddled with tunnels, huge caverns and cavern complexes, occasional decaying artifacts and incomprehensible machines, some of them incomprehensibly large, and all of then incomprehensible in purpose. Along with other things, this gives a reasonable excuse for the prototypical dungeon crawl.

- the gods cut Maeleff off from the rest of the universe when they were alive, but their walls fell when they did.  Stars and sun only became visible when the gods died, before that the surface had patches of light or darkness as the god willed.  Mages and academics are only now starting to really look at the universe outside their world and form theories about it.  For some years, it was believed that the sun was what killed the gods, and the stars were the gods' dead souls. Now we are unsure.

- the gods were simply another race, from another world. An old, old race, decadent and powerful, that had traveled the galaxy for uncountable eons performing experiments and changing worlds before moving on.  The creation of magic, and ultimately of the virus that killed them, were the first truly new things they had done for millions of years. One of their number had continued to explore the universe, and came to its absolute edges, where things broke down into insanity without form or natural law, and strange, directionless and shapeless power. He brought some o that strange stuff back, and the gods studied it, and from it they crafted magic. Unknown to the rest if the gods, that one explorer also brought something else back, the very thing that eventually killed them.

- magic is in everything and is a part of everything, but that was not always the case, the gods simply made it so. They were so enamored with their new creation that they bound it to life force somehow. In a sense, the sphere of power at the planet's core is thus in some sense a vast ocean of life force.

Think very carefully before making this change:

- magic is just shapeless power - like electricity that responded to will and intelligence.  The Blood of the Gods however is something else. It is, in some sense, alive. A parasitic organism, a virus, that lives for no purpose other than to spread itself.

Tonal changes - Blessed

Since I'm thinking of slightly changing the tone, from undead-centered to "outer strangeness" albeit diety-free lovecraftian in nature, consider the following Blessed changes:

- weeping - no change save that if you look into its cuts or empty sockets, you see things moving. Picture a writhing mass of tiny red worms.
- Shadekin - eyeless, otherwise unchanged
- skinwalkers- the ribcages of the skeletons, when not dressed in skin, are filled with twisted, discolored and distorted organs. Those organs can maintain the skin for months, even years if it is properly and ritually prepared
Otherwise unchanged

Kin/Shadekin

This is a picture of a dog with its head out of the window of a fast moving car. However, I like it and think it looks fairly menacing. I think this is what Kin and/or Shadekin look like. I'm even thinking about making them eyeless just to conform to the picture.
If eyeless: Kin rely on scent, hearing, and a sort of psychic awareness of their environment to "see". Psychic sense is tied in to the kin family group mind

Personnel with the Office of Causal Whatever I Called It

Oversight. Causal Oversight. That's it.

Racine Zed

Human female, 70 years old. Long and varied career, including merchant, smuggler, pirate, fence, and for the last 30 years, the captain of the Nails.

Tall (though getting a bit bent now with age), and still deceptively tough. Gray hair, hazel eyes. Still strong, though fighting off a bit of a gut. You can tell that she was once mildly pretty, if not outstandingly so, still has a very commanding presence.

Sarcastic sense of humor. Wickedly smart. Good with secrets, and nobody can be said to know all or even most of the projects and agents she is running at any point in time.

Tinkered with a bit of alchemy in the past, but has avoided the Blood.

Commands great respect from her people, who also (very reasonably) fear her.

Two husbands plus a Sava lover, three children, seven grandchildren. Has apartments within the trade quarter, as well as a modest estate outside the city walls.

Kepli Thikt Sen

Male Shar, Blooded Mage, and a close advisor to Zed, who is the only person in the Office who is aware that he is blooded. String willed, he has so far avoided any physical changes from the Blood, but it had started to affect his mind. Friends have noted that he is getting more paranoid and insular. Small, with blue and black stripes.

Taen Shalun Marithire Ru'Halena ma Sheer (Tall red blossom in the outer reaches of the high forest)

Called "Taen" by most non-Aelth, or "Red" by friends.

Female Aelth, former scout and mercenary with a Traveller's Society, joined customs and the Office about ten years ago, recruited by Zed. Thin, deep yellow skin, red hair and eyes

Landscape feature - Craters

Giant craters, leftover from the gods' wars, that breach huge networks of tunnels, and all kinds of strangeness.  Come up with a suitably dramatic name

The craters make up a significant portion of the landscape.

In the time since the gods died, natural weathering and growth have started to change the landscape. Plantlife begins to reclaim the blasted lands.  The huge craters that broke open underground cities and networks of ancient tunnels have turned into cities reminiscent of Native American pueblos.  The great Geb city of (whatever it's called) is one example.

More on the death of the gods

The virus (for lack if a better term) that destroyed the gods was not of this world.  It was found in the outer reaches of the universe  by one forgotten god, modified and unleashed.

The virus was inimical to the stuff that the gods were made of. Not matter per se, as the gods were never truly material in the way we think of it, but they did have a real substance to them. Not anymore, they were utterly unmade.

The virus' effect on other things is less predictable.  Magic is similar to the power of the gods, but not identical.  Thus magic carries the virus, but is not destroyed by it.  In fact, the virus itself being made up of an incredibly powerful and strange energy, magic was in many ways made stronger, if far more dangerous.

As for mortal flesh, life on this world was altered drastically by the gods, and infused with a portion of their power and essence. Thus, the virus is almost always  inimical to it. But unlike the gods, who were helpless before it, mortals are made of different stuff that gives them strengths and options that the gods did not have.  Thus usually they are unmade, but sometimes they are only changed.

Work on making Blood-touched mutations and changes more Lovecraftian in tone than straight up undeath, at least in its greater forms.

I keep thinking I should come up with names for this stuff - the blood, the virus, the dead gods, etc.   But I kind of like having the stuff unnamed.  The names of the gods have been deliberately forgotten.  Nobody understands the virus or even know it exists really, so it just the blood as far as they know.

Time Line

I guess I have to decide once and for all how long it has been since the gods died.  I've been somewhat inconsistent over the course of my writing.

I've been vacillating between 1000's of years and just a few.  I think I need to sort of split the difference and make it a several hundred years, maybe between 500 and 800. I want enough time for society to rebuild in a new image, and for a lot of knowledge to be lost, but not all of it, with new technology/magic to be derived from the remnants of the old.  This also makes it long enough for archaeology to be a significant factor in the rediscovery of old knowledge and power.

So there was a bit of an apocalypse maybe 600 or so years ago. Civilization survived in isolated pockets until about 100 to 150 years ago, when isolated populations started to reconnect with each other.

That's not to say that those isolated populations had been idle all that time.  Ammadhur for example has been growing steadily for the entire period, exploring the ravaged world and starting to reconnect with whomever they could find.

There are some groups that have banded together - by choice, conquest, or whatever - into budding nations. But most of the world - or at least of this continent - remain smaller city-states, some like Ammadhur with areas around them that depend on the city for any number of things, like unofficial de facto nations.

Not with a bang...

The virus (for lack if a better term) that destroyed the gods was not of this world. It was found in the outer reaches of the universe by one forgotten god, and unleashed.

The virus was inimical to the stuff that the gods were made of. Not matter per se, as the gods were never truly material in the way we think of it, but they did have a real substance to them. Not anymore, they were utterly unmade.

The virus' effect on other things is less predictable. Magic is similar to the power of the gods, but not identical. Thus magic carries the virus, but is not destroyed by it. In fact, the virus itself being made up of an incredibly powerful and strange energy, magic was in many ways made stronger, if far more dangerous.

As for mortal flesh, life on this world was altered drastically by the gods, an infused with a portion of their power. Thus, the virus is almost always deadly to mortals that encounter it. But unlike the gods, who were helpless before it, mortals are made of different stuff that gives them strengths and options that the gods did not have. Thus usually they are unmade, but sometimes they are only changed.

Work on making Blood-touched mutations and changes more Lovecraftian in tone than straight up undeath, at least in its greater forms.

I keep thinking I should come up with names for this stuff - the blood, the virus, the dead gods, etc. But I kind of like having the stuff unnamed. The names of the gods have been deliberately forgotten. Nobody understands the virus or even know it exists really, so it just the blood as far as they know.

Shar city

Found this picture of a town in Buenos Aires that was underwater for 25 years after a dam broke, and is now being revealed again. I'd like to use this as the basis for the map of a Shar city.

The Office of Causal Oversight

Ammadhur's legal system, like every other aspect of its governance, is an immensely complicated tangle of rights, duties, obligations and spheres of influence. The guild of barristers is quite powerful as a result.

The city being a central port and hub of mercantile activity, the role of the customs office is extremely important, and they are universally given a surprising amount of leeway in the legal system. Some time ago, a smart Tyrant took advantage of this by creating a small cadre of the customs police whose job was ostensibly to investigate corruption at the highest levels, and who were answerable to nobody but the Tyrant himself. He then manipulated changes in several bodies of law to make sure that certain holes were left unfilled, and which resulted in the group having no charter to speak of, and few if any legal limits on their powers.

That group has the innocuous title of The Office of Causal Oversight, but are referred to by most as "The Nails", for reasons lost to history. In effect, they act as the Tyrant's own hounds and secret police. They recruit their numbers from many sources, not the least being Ammadhur's prisons, where any number of pirates and smugglers have found themselves shanghaied with the simple choice of service or death.

It is rumored that the Nails have dealings with the Blooded, possibly even with Blessed, and may harbor some within their numbers. They are suspected especially of having several Skinwalkers in their ranks.