Faufreluches: The World of Menchero

On the borders of the Thousand Day Regency there is a small world - not the smallest - orbiting a distant star - not the most distant - another stout bulwark of mankind's domain - not the stoutest.

Behold Menchero: a world of two billion souls, six major mountain ranges, two vast oceans, extensive wetlands, a bracing copper-scented atmosphere and mild paranoia.

Menchero underwent mild terraforming in the days of the Stellar Regulatory, chosen with the opaque criteria of the Machine-Minds. Settlement by lottery occurred some centuries after the Regent entered his tomb, following survey by a Janissariat expeditionary group. Government was initially by an oligarchy of founding families - who collectively prevented any one lineage from rising, even technically, to the rank of Magnate. Generational debts to Schematician planners, Secretariat licensors and Mews carriers made the world beholden to Pillar influence. This has, however, changed; as in systems spinwards of Menchero settled worlds have been devastated in flesh and spirit.

The government of Menchero is now in the direct gift of the Siegneuria. Talented administrators and leaders from Magnate cadet houses have been placed as governors there for the last century, striving to build up Menchero's resources and resiliency. Native Mencherene stewards watch them come and go, and say that Menchero's care rests with them, as it ever has.

What is it to visit Menchero? Set down at the Benxhan cosmodrome; drive out into the depths of Benxhan Rural, or weave your way into Benxhan Civic. On either journey your passage will be noted by the Vigiles, in their dull green uniforms.  Benxhan Civic will show you buildings clad in the local marmoreal, with its distinctive indigo veins. Members of the Gubernatorial Brigade patrol the Topaz Processional, clad in chrome helmets and brocade sashes. Their banners and motor-carriages show the mulberry and white-gold livery of the Lord Governor. Looking past them, one sees the terminus of the Processional, at the Chrysogonian Hall. Beyond this are the shrine towers of Celb. Drusus and Celb. Famke, with their exconjuratory corner pagodas.  Then the aggressively drab walls of the Continental Academy, and the standard-issue ornamental panels on the barbican of the Office of Public Tranquility. Further out? The Herbgarden Quarter, named for the self-satisfied financial street of Mint Row. 

Perhaps you went to Benxhan Rurual. Once past the marshalling yards and warehouses of the cosmodrome's long brownfield shadow, there are the wetlands and the scattered farm outposts. It doesn't all go one way - mostly, the goods that leave Menchero are canvas, ball-bearings, detergents and canned fish.

Menchero is (approximately) self-sustaining, and has been for some time - but the works programmes of successive governors increase the burdens on most. This is borne stolidly. There has been turmoil in Quoningen Civic as the result of a corruption trial - something to do with railway procurement, they say.  In the hills of Xianwijk Rural there has been strife, and religious turmoil: a dispute over the status of a local holy figure and her placement in the 'Anointed Generations'.  You may see convoys of the Mencharene Defence Force heading west that way, the 1st Security Division visible in buff tunics and oxblood webbing.

This is not the threat that most excites the attention of the governor, however. In the closer-than-comfortable outer galaxy, the foes of man gather. Machine-minds and rogue Janissaries are only part of the picture: rumours and psychic whisperings accumulate of the Empire of P'o L'u. Lords of the Regency begin efforts, subtle or gross, to uncover and repel the Cephalopodic Process and the dreadful absorption into that murky and lurid combine.

Will Menchero be prepared for the great trial when it comes? Which light of human settlement will be snuffed next? What could draw the tentacles of P'o L'u to this little world?

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Some persons

Brigadier Sebastian Kemecut - heads the First Security Division. Born and raised in Xianwijk.

Twice-Honoured Volcxken Bohelok - an official, and the most senior Mancherene native official within the Lord Governor's staff. A surprisingly keen historian.

Ioess Hanggata - Chief of the Benxhan Civic Vigiles. Increasingly convinced that he should retire soon, and very keen to obtain funds to enable this.

The Venerable Jorinde Saharca - Arch-Pastor of Benxhan. She belongs to the Echoing Circle of the Pastorate, who have a reputation for gnomic utterances, ascetic sensibilities and remarkable success with the stranger type of psychic. Saharca has been known to treat worldliness as a switch that may be flicked on and off - a habit that sits ill with more than a few of her underlings, especially those more worldly than her. 

Klaas Ergonote - Chair of the Second Directorate, Office of Public Tranquility. He is half-convinced that he could succeed on another world of the Regency, and that his talents are needed elsewhere.

Bombastimaches Greatorex - Lieutenant Governor, a Siegneuria appointment. Can't wait to return to Saiph, and spends a lot of time with the Glossatrices in the Herbgarden Quarter.

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Other notes

• Manchero's emblem is a mountain with a long-feathered bird perching on it, between two white blossoming branches. The governor's own symbol (usually an obvious variant of his or her Magnate family's) can be displayed below in a small cartouche. 
• This started life as a piece of 40k material; perhaps the greater military element shows. A world like Menchero is by no means the norm in the Regency, but such places do exist.
• The emperor of P'o L'u is nameless and infinite. His marshals will happily tell you as much.
• Further Faufreluches material (which you may in fact wish to read first...) may be found here. 

Another Return to Yoon-Suin

Yoon-Suin has a second edition. I chose to do a little retrospective work when this news was announced, as you may see here. Now the new edition has arrived, something comparable is in order.

The new edition is, like the shell of a superior Crab-Man fighter, thicker, harder and glossier. There is more content in it, as the initial Kickstarter page made clear - largely in the form of new appendices (including Weapons, Treasure Tables and Collectors of Rarities) and twelve mapped adventure sites. However, the bulk of the text is the same - Opium Plantations, Elephant Shrines, Psionic Gharials and all. 

So, we turn to differences in presentation. An obvious distinction is the artwork. The watercolour-like wavering lines of Matthew Adams have been replaced by harder, somewhat pixellated artwork...by Matt Adams. This is consistently inconsistent, if you will. The artwork of Y-S1 didn't make the book: it was secondary to the table and materials inside in a way that isn't the case in a way that - say - wasn't true of something like a Warhammer Codex. I feel about the same way with the artwork of Y-S2. It doesn't get in the way, and nor should it: if each version of the Purple Land generated by a user is meant to be unique, then setting this in stone with definitive, intrusive artwork will rather get in the way of that. Generated is a curiously appropriate word. The illustrations make me think of something that a long-forgotten video game might have produced - and there are touches that make me think back to MS Paint as lovingly provided by Windows 98. There is one piece - towards the end of the chapter on the Hundred Kingdoms - that stands out in a bad way (not ugly, just out of place). None of it feels like it could exist in the Yellow City itself, which (curiously) helps maintain that degree of separation. 

(Real Yellow-City art would have to be so much more vivid and densely detailed; a sort of Rococo characterised by abundant, even excessive, use of one or two materials - and almost certainly with some kind of patina or wear. Some of the interior maps approach this.)  

Far better about setting the scene or establishing tone are the adventure sites at the end. These take on a number of forms - bounded or open-ended, above ground or as part of a dungeon - and are intended for different regions. Each seems to have a tantalising mix of the social and the violent, which makes excellent sense for Yoon-Suin's blend of cruelty and opulence. There's also some effort being made to make sure they all feel like different places, with a different set of physical challenges and distinct terrains. In several, the weather feels like it could prove as great a threat as anything else. The Mad Sorceress's Blessed Retreat hooks best in my mind. 

What's also worth commenting on is the new form of the tables. In place of the curving sans-serif font and alternating grey-and-white tables rows is something sharper, somehow more vertical. It's not always as direct, to my eye - but the tables work in about the same fashion as before. 

Perhaps the most interesting thing that I've picked up from dipping back into Yoon-Suin is how I find myself diverging from it. I certainly still admire it, and the structure and restraint it shows were very useful in conceiving some aspects of Punth. But I find that what I've worked on or written or conceived recently tends to have some strong central pillars of a culture or an intellectual system or something of that kind to be played with. This put me sort of at odds with Y-S2 on reading it. Where are the Slug-man lawmakers? The great philosophers and prophets? The conquerors and kingmakers? Even resisting the urge of great man theories of history, movements have figureheads and exemplars. Would I try to work the Purple Land's own home-grown amethyst Napoleon into full realisation? Perhaps not, but I might be tempted to build a pantheon or a set of dynasties or to build resemblances between groups in the interests of knitting all things together. 

Of course, this bodes well for play. Can one group pull together the scattered threads of the Purple Land? Knit together magic and statecraft and courage to produce an enduring legacy? One might say that the Yellow City and the great God River have seen an thousand such before, and seen their every statue crumble. If so, then we will be the thousand and first, and none the more ashamed for it.