World of Lazarus: A Worked Example

 I wrote in my World of Lazarus review:

• There's a nice section on how an organisation a GM creates might grow and plot to advance itself. A component I can see myself using elsewhere. 

Very well. Let's give this a try.

We will speculate that a minor family under Minetta aims to carve out a domain of their own in former Soleri territory. This is semi-plausible - given that A) there is no sovereign authority in the East African territory that World of Lazarus maps out as former Soleri territory and B) Minetta is relatively laissez-faire as a Family goes - not that they would be intensely relaxed by this move, but this can give said minor family more starting room to manoeuvre. 

What shall we call them? Let's give this minor family a name from the Karnataka and the Mysore region - Urs, and have them unite with a warlord; a former Soleri colonel who can muster enough diplomatic niceties to integrate himself into X+65 international society. We'll call him Gadarat, after an Aksumite king and base him in the plain around Djibouti. Urs-Gadarat will try to set up a Trans-Erythreaean power base...

[That is, one set up across the Indian Ocean. I'm being wilfully obscure, I suppose - but Trans-Indian could mean, e.g. between Mumbai and Kolkatta or Chennai and Lahore. So we're using an older phrase for the Red Sea and beyond, because I want a non-confusing equivalent to Trans-Atlantic or Trans-Pacific.]

....in, the aim would be, a quadrilateral with corners at Cochin, Hyderabad, Aden and Zanzibar. Penetration into the Ethiopian Highlands and the Nile below Khartoum can wait. 

This draws on A) a history of trade across the Indian Ocean, B) The Aksumite empire mentioned above had territory in Ethiopia and what is now Yemen and C) a desire to see another scattered set of family territories like Bittner on its arc across the North Atlantic, another thalassocracy. (I take it that sea trade in X+65 persists despite fancy future aeroplanes, &c. No one's seriously restarted travel by airship. The Macau Accords would likely affirm something like present Freedom of the Seas for de facto King Canute reasons.)

***

Let's trace out a year by some of the tables in World of Lazarus.

The first stage of Urs-Gadarat is a Plot action: a Surgical Strike against Mogadishu to knock out the local rulers (a group of strongmen operating through puppet-Magistrates). Initial strike by helicopter, with drone reconnaissance; reinforcement by Land forces from the Jijieh-Gode highway (widened by Soleri). The defence advantage is matched by the intelligence Urs drones are able to provide. A qualified success: the Gadarat strike force suffers severe casualties. But in the next fortnight Urs civil engineering teams are able to clear and operate the harbour, opening it to vessels from other Minetta sub-groups. 

Attempts to Grow Urs-Gadarat properly into the interior of the Horn are stymied by an Organisational Threat: Shortages.  Their ports might be secure and there may be no military threat, but compliance is slow. Farms, mines and production facilities can only produce the desired commodities with assistance -  crop-strains, machine tools, vehicles. Repayment is more likely with U-G managers and enforcers in place, but this will still require a sacrifice of Capital.

And U-G is Plotted against. Their expenditure has not gone unnoticed in Minetta, and the scheme is now more obvious. Any action against Minetta is Undermined. 

The proper response to this is a Plot of Corruption. Influence and Capital are applied to Minetta inspectors, who may convincingly state that this is Gadarat's action, with Urs purely involved in a commercial sense. 

A further season of Growth will now be needed: A Hardening of Systems - both Urs enclaves in Mysore and the Djibouti-Mogadishu line.  Harar will stand as a strong point protecting the Horn region. Mysore assets will undergo a reinforcement from the veterans of Mogadishu - newly trained in the advanced weapons and battle-drills of a Family-level army.

The slow trickle of profits from existing Urs properties and new acquisitions allows Recapitalisation by U-G. But all this does now go unnoticed, and a mix of proxy efforts go against them. The Khartoum Clique begins selling arms to the Provisional Governate in Addis Ababa, and Nkosi flames into life rumours of U-G injustice in Mogadishu. Bad PR. Growth in the next year will struggle.

Accordingly.....

***

So...this was a fudge. I'm not quite using the Modern AGE mechanics here - it's a partially random, partially chosen set of ideas, which I hope hang together. A better option would have been to copy out the relevant tables, scrubbed of explicit mechanical detail. 

But was this satisfying? Eventually, yes. It's aping a real story or set of events, but by X+66 we have decent powder-keg in the former Soleri territory. There's the possibility of war along the Awash river valley and the ridge of the Ahmar mountains. The Islamic shrines of the city of Harar devastated - incensing religious leaders in the Minetta bailiwick, who have a ready-made strike against Urs-Gadarat....

Let's call the above, then, the turning of a starting-handle. Lots of sweat and grinding, but the motor is now purring nicely.

Riddles and Housekeeping in the Red Chamber

I have been reading the first volume of Cao Xueqin's 1760 novel The Story of the Stone, better known perhaps as The Dream of the Red Chamber. The translation is by David Hawkes, first published in 1973. It's one of the great classics of Chinese literature and a novel of manners; it even has its own field of study: Redology.

Anyway, Chapter 22 has a number of riddles, told as part of a game. I shall list these, with answers below under the picture - they all have fairly mundane answers, but Hawkes's translation, and the anthropomorphism of the riddles mean they could be used to describe divine messengers or elementals or other spirits.

1. My Body's square
   Iron-hard am I.
   I speak no word,
   But words supply.
   [A useful object.]


2. At my coming the devils turn pallid with wonder
   My body's all folds and my voice is like thunder.
   When, alarmed by the sound of my thunderous crash,
   You look round, I have already turned into ash.
   [An object of amusement.]


3. Man's works and heaven's laws I execute,
   Without heaven's laws my workings bear no fruit.
   Why am I agitated all day long?
   For fear my calculations may be wrong.
   [A useful object.]


4. In spring the little boys stand up and stare
   To see me ride so proudly in the air.
   My strength all goes when once the bond is parted,
   And on the wind I drift off broken-hearted.
   [An object of amusement.]


5. At court levée my smoke is in your sleeve:
   Music and beds to other sorts I leave.
   With me, at dawn you need no watchman's cry,
   At night, no maid to bring a fresh supply.
   My head burns through the night and through the day,
   And year by year my heart consumes away.
   The precious moments I would have you spare,
   But come fair, foul, or fine, I do not care.
   [A useful object.]


6. My 'eyes' cannot see and I'm hollow inside,
   When the lotuses surface I'll be by your side.
   When the autumn leaves fall I'll bid you adieu,
   For our marriage must end when summer is through.
   [A useful object.]

1. An inkstone.
2. A firework.
3. An abacus.
4. A kite.
5. An incense-clock.
6. A 'bamboo wife' - that is, one of 'those wickerwork cylinders which are put between the bedclothes in summertime to make them cooler'.

***

A brief piece of housekeeping for the blog - there's a number of posts I've written, on city or a region or a location, some moderately popular but without being tied to any given setting in particular and (generally) written to be quite self-contained. These are now under the label Translucent Polities, which seemed correct. Browse at your leisure.

The Sedentary Catacombs

When we say that the funerary customs of Assar-Ytite were egalitarian, it is important to clarify what we mean. Foreigners, even long resident respected merchants and publicly-feted ambassadors who died in that city would be required to pay for their own funerals and monuments in the cramped strip of ground set aside for that purpose. Likewise, the unransomed war captives who raised the great walls of the city and quarried the four reservoirs in the Houndstooth Hills - and ended their days in slit trenches. The cadaver of the executed criminal was thrown into a dedicated section of the city's midden, as was the criminal who died in the course of corporal punishment: the gods had clearly decided that the justice of men was insufficient for them. 

However, every burgher of the city, every cultivator, every weaver, every child-rearer, every coppersmith, every scribe, every priest and oracle, every citizen-soldier and captain of the host - every hereditary magistrate and anointed clansman was buried in the same place. 

If, that is, they could be. There were separate rites for the shipwrecked, the unreturned traveller, the devoured, the unrecovered war dead, the sorcerously befouled. These ceremonies were similar in form to those across the whole South-West: centred on the temple, formed of tearful addresses to the psychopomps and gods of the underworld, accompanied by sacrifices, dances and dirges. One famous chronicler of the last century has asserted that these are of a foreign origin - developed only with the growth of trade in the region. However, it is unlikely that so highly specific and focused a set of customs would be devoid of practices for when citizens died away from Assar-Ytite, even if they did come to be influenced by neighbouring beliefs. 

The dead of Assar-Ytite were buried in catacombs of the city: long tunnels dug into the rock, running under the tiled houses and arcaded plazas into the wilderness. Each corpse was dressed and placed on a throne - throne after throne stretching on either side of the long corridors.

After its customs, the city provided the burial place. The family (or the coffers of the season's magistrate) provided the throne. Naturally, thrones differed. Brick thrones were the norm for the poorest. Glazed tiles patterned the visible sections of the middle ranks. Carved stone was for those who could afford it. Panels of beaten metal were a common ornament on thrones of any rank, and almost every throne will bear a clay tablet with the name and rank of the dead. Further details of the deceased's life and prayers to the gods of the afterlife were seen only one the thrones of the upper ranks (or professional scribes). 

Curiously, plaster and paint - despite being commonly found in the temple precincts and clan quarters of Assar-Ytite - were not employed in the catacombs. 

The thrones of dead infants are the same size as those of adults. All but the smallest children would be placed sitting just as an adult, perhaps set in place by cloth-wrapped wooden blocks. The greater space accorded this offers on the body of the throne is typically given to a greater number of prayer tablets for the departed. 

Some thrones of unusual form have been seen in the catacombs: the anchorite oracle Yezerit was buried in an enclosed booth of common brick, with a ornamental hatch. Archoptala, the greatest astrologer of her century, who led the fifth calendrical revisions, was buried on a throne with a baldachin studded with quartz pins showing the constellations. The Adamant Twenty who died at Esaul Pass were buried together on a replica barracks bench, with their arms on the wall behind them and clutching the bowl for the evening rations in their hands. At one end of the bench was set the tall issue jug for barleywine.

The dead within the catacombs tend to be dressed as they were in life. There were exceptions: wounds are very deliberately covered by folds of cloth or daubs of pale clay. Fallen soldiers tend to be dressed not in real armour,  but carefully painted and fitted clay replica armour: exceptions are only found among the heroic or very wealthy dead. The manufacture of mock-armour seems to have been a good trade in Assar-Ytite. 

Unlike the reservoirs, the catacombs were dug out only by the labour of citizens. Tunnels ran far ahead of the number of thrones - ensuring that the work of the diggers did not disturb the dead - or allowing, perhaps, for the arrival of many new residents at once. 

Unsurprisingly, it was the young and spry who dug the tunnels, carried away the rubble and paved the floors with the slight slope and necessary drainage tunnel. It was not necessary for a citizen over their majority to serve the Year Given to the Dead in one chunk; indeed, it was considered positively outré to do so. There is even a case mentioned in surviving records of a magistrate issuing declarations of censure against a band of young men of the same age who worked in the tunnels all at the same time, chattering and chanting work-songs as if they were working at any common task. 

The Year Given to the Dead also allowed for recruitment to the societies of guardians, surveyors and guides of the tunnels. Different extended clan groups would, at a set phase of the moon, be allowed access to the catacombs to say prayers for the recently departed or maintain the tombs of famed ancestors. Entrances were flanked by images of the weeping serpent-goat Wahv, but that appears to have been the only formal signage within the tunnels. 

In the life of the city, there is no evidence of the catacombs being used as a shelter, or a sewer, or a smuggling route. The extramural refuse dumps beyond the Bitumen Yards show many centuries of eager use and a paved road leading to them, attesting to a robust waste removal service. 

There are no written accounts of the theft of grave goods, and, equally, there are no written accounts of the dead protecting their treasures, nor of dedicated sentries. 

Whether this means that such thefts did not occur, or that someone was very good at protecting the catacombs is, at present, unclear. 

***

"What if Conan skeleton but everyone?"

 

Punth: Vorsprung durch Technik

I once wrote:

Punth was originally conceived as part of a larger world (see Ch. 7) - the Terrae Vertebrae of my blog. Other than in that Chapter and a few scattered other references, I have tried to make Punth able to be slotted into another fantastical setting. The Babel-myth elements and Near or Middle Eastern basis makes it perhaps an odd fit if you were to slap it down right next to, say, fantasy equivalents of Vietnam or the Tlingit lands - both in terms of culture and environment. However, I would contend that the meat of Punth is in the Codes and the position of the Qryth: the specifically Babel-like elements could be reduced, reformed or repositioned, as could the Near Eastern portions.

What I didn't touch on there is technology: can Punth prosper next to (say) the gunpowder-equipped Tokugawa Shogunate or the railways and telegraphs of American westward expansion or the radar stations and bomber wings of the victorious Allies? 

Terrae Vertebrae was written as being something like High-to-Late Medieval Europe. 'There's been Marco Polo, but not Henry the Navigator.' The Novopolis is the Italian city states making a lot of money and asserting their independence so that they can (as it were) eventually have a Renaissance, not the Italian city states mid-Renaissance. Punth-as-written can resist Crusaders, even magically-assisted ones. 

So, what if the Dwarves start letting everyone play with their Firesticks? Can Punth resist Pike-and-Shot armies?

Frankly - you decide. Even if you say 'No, they can't: a joint force of holy orders and the Ducal Tercios of Kapelleron pay a massive fee to the Hydraulic Dwarves and sweep into Punth' the notion of the Northerners holding territory for any real amount of time the other side of the mountains would be a fascinating story. 

Punth-as-written is inflexible: that's the Codes for you. It might have maintained institutions mimicking the structure and functions of research laboratories before Edison ever got going in Menlo Park, but Punth is never going to make a Newton or a Boyle or a Faraday. That the Qryth have an existing love of marksmanship and big crossbows won't make creating a corps of gunsmiths any easier. 

But I think there's a useful bit of fudging one can do to say that Punth achieves some measure of 'parity', even if (say) The League of Civic Etiquette has managed to create hot air balloons or telescopes or clockwork before them.

1. Secrecy is difficult. Espionage would be damn difficult for Punth, but once they get get an idea of something, they would be pretty ruthless in acquiring it. (They might just buy it - Punth can be an attractive trading partner!)
2. The Qryth are able, over time, and using the progress of the neighbours to uncover more and more about their ancestors' artefacts.
3. The Roads to Nowhere. 'The first generation of Qryth extensively scanned Punth; doubtless somewhere beneath the sands is a great bounty of petroleum or the minerals needed to make DVD Players'. Punth isn't going to be the first place where powered flight occurs, but somewhere there's a rich seam of bauxite waiting to be exploited with far greater ease than most of their neighbours.
4. As referred to on a recent post, Punthite 'Chemic workshops' exist. This is in addition to the possibility of heavily ritualised research labs referred to above. The loose outline of industrial society exists: the makers of 'Punthite Alum' are considered (possibly trained as) Chemical Technicians, not Craftsmen. There's probably some interesting Fordist-Taylorist strains to the Codes.

All that said, if Punth has taken to its heart the repeating rifle and the telegram - it probably isn't really Punth-as-written anymore. A Punth of post-Napoleon mass armies may be possible, but a Punth that can smoothly accept and issue Codes for each new vital technology is probably quite far from Punth-as-written.

I suspect technological progress would remain firmly in the hands of the Qryth - who might have to take on an ever-more intensely military role. Picture a Beau Geste-style French Foreign Legion fort assailed by the Qryth. Legionnaire Lefebvre, a long way from his native Nicquardy, must face quatremanu warriors - who have not just great big ugly fighting knives, but jezails that will fire through a brick rampart and put a hole you can put your foot in through a man's chest - who can carry, fire and feed the belt of a water-cooled machine gun all at once - and all he has is a single-shot breachloader and a bayonet and the battlemage has le cafard at the worst possible time....

This is to say, I think that the Qryth: A) Need to remain dominant in Punth and B) Need to remain a threat: if you can outpace them in an armoured car and pepper them with a Tommy-gun without consequence, the Sky Princes lose something. No, by the time you've got the armoured cars, they've managed to extract enough Radium to power Barsoom-esque aircraft. Best of luck to you in the biplane-sunglider dogfights!

Diplomacy, Protagonists, Macbeth, Tully and Caithness

A recent post at Monsters and Manuals set my mind going. I don't watch a great deal of television and would likely endorse the moral of the story that no-one reaches up from their deathbed to say 'I wish I'd watched more TV'. But more to the point: I grew up with - possibly even to a greater degree than television - games (and books more than either, but this was a jumping-off point). The early 2000s had their share of real-time strategy games, but I suspect that Age of Empires (and sequels/derivatives) loomed highest in my mind. There's two things that these do or did to my developing preferences and understanding of (faintly realist) fiction (in a variety of media). The notion of multiple players who may succeed and the process of organisation and resource management. 

Firstly, there is the notion that anyone can win. However advantageous it may be to start as the Julii in Rome: Total War the notion of an entirely Carthaginian Balkans or a Seleucid Iberia is not implausible. I've not played the Paradox grand strategy games (Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron) but they at least allow this to an even greater degree. There is not always a protagonist, no-one chosen for victory. The mind goes to the board game Diplomacy, with its particularly obvious balance of forces: every player starts with three armies or fleets - except Russia, whose size is as much hindrance as help. 

Hence, I suppose, the light scorn I thrust in the direction of the Song of Ice and Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game here (the paragraph beginning 'Even if...'). Eight nominal or near equals on Westeros: the notion that Tully interests are permanently shackled to Stark is irritating. You have to cultivate and maintain allies - you don't just plug their troops into your command structure and keep fighting. Am I really so incensed that I can't bring about GLORIOUS TULLY HEGEMONY? 

I take it this has activated some neurones.
(Found here, the best and clearest Westeros Diplomacy map I found online.)

Which brings one back round to television: I watched Game of Thrones for long enough to A) be aware of its flaws and B) Give up on it. Fun while at Uni and able to chat it over with housemates, but not worth revisiting. The finale has been dissected at length in a variety of forms, but a recurring theme is that it got to attached to big showy character moments, and neglected the underlying logic and social structures of its setting (EG, people writing here, here and here). Teleporting armies, curiously obedient subordinates, religion with no grip on the hearts of the faithful. 

Time is limited in an episode of television. Special effects are limited. Books have the room to put this stuff in; games demand it, as the price of moving an army north is part of the challenge. The cost of logistics, even if only sketched in, can be displayed. There are cheap jokes about all the walking in The Lord of the Rings, but footslogging is a reality of campaigning! 

More to the point, the treatment of non-protagonists. You're either the commander, the champion, or nobody. A butt of jokes, a burden. Costuming reinforces this: I accept that the Freys have an unenviable family resemblance, that their patriarch is a disagreeable fellow, that the rest of the nobility don't much care for them. But they are wealthy and use their leverage to the best of their ability: they should be near as armoured and colourful as any lord rather than dressing in leather the colour of mud and wearing unflattering coifs. They're nouveau riche, not swamp-dwellers - and 'Betrayed by Unappealing but Vital Ally' is more interesting than 'Stabbed in the back by a bunch of Obviously Shifty Bastards'.

Specifics aside, if you've opened a broadsheet's Arts and Culture section in the last decade, you've probably read something about the importance of who we make protagonists, or representation, or similar questions. It's the sort of idea discussed here by Palmer and Walton, who extend it to the question of protagonists and chart the decline of Tapestry books (do read that link!). It's something I've speculated on before, and Noisms moots in the post that started this all off 'it is almost as though [Television] were designed to destroy our capacity to develop a fully-fledged theory of mind.' Terrifying if true. 

Well, that's all wonderful. But do I want a literal 'World without Extras' in my fiction? I approvingly cited Diplomacy above, but only the great powers get a say there (and depending on how many can make it for a game, we might kick Italy out of that club. Guess the Risorgimento went down in flames!). I still have to acknowledge that there are limits to the size of a novel or the processing power of software. 

My mind goes to Macbeth. I have no particular objections to Macbeth and, frankly, it would mean very little indeed if I did. Macbeth starts the play as Thane of Glamis, he becomes Thane of Cawdor also. Macduff is Thane of Fife. Banquo is clearly a peer of Macbeth: I don't believe he is referred to as Thane in the text of the play, but both Holinshed's Chronicles (Volume 2 of the 1577 Edition) and Hector Boece's earlier History of Scotland (Book Twelve) a source for Holinshed, refer to him as Thane of Lochaber. The Thanes of Angus, Ross, Caithness, Mentieth and Lennox appear, with or without lines. 

Do I really suppose that Macduff would as willingly usurp Duncan I as Macbeth? Well, that's a question for the philosophers and theologians. Who, other than Orson Welles, knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Do I want a play which plausibly might end with GLORIOUS CAITHNESS HEGEMONY?

They do have a pretty cool flag these days.

I know full well that that wouldn't be Macbeth. But I would hope that the Thane of Glamis is dressed and staged in a comparable fashion to his peers. The rest of Scotland's nobility are not yet cowed by him*, driven into embarrassing spectacles - and useful or useless, you can't ignore Drunken Incompetent Regional Magnates. I'm leaving out much here - the world view of Shakespeare's England, to say the least. 

So, Macbeth may not be something that needs the above 'Diplomacy-perspective.' But there's room in my library for Portraits and Tapestries alike. The possibility that society will only start making (or praising, or honouring, or writing about, or otherwise considering to the exclusion of others) is a little unnerving. Compare this extended basketball analogy.

Perhaps we need some sort of Rawlsian Original Position. You might end up as any of these characters, so you should write something that at least considers any of these characters. Of course, the veil of ignorance doesn't always work quite as intended. 

*You thought that The Death of Stalin invented tense dinners of horseplay with moustachioed Dictators?