Punth: City of Compartments III

Why are you in the City of Compartments? If, that is, you aren't an agent of one of the neighbouring powers, or a Hydraulic Dwarf. 

Firstly, it is one of the few places to access the Qryth on vaguely equal terms. That doesn't mean that they will talk to you, or that their incentives and behaviour are so very different from when they are in Punth itself. But for the dilletante Qryth scholar from the Empire, there's no better place to get started. 

Secondly, it is lightly governed. The Masters of the Aqueduct have no brief to prevent drunkenness, dissipation, gambling or prostitution (for instance) in the City, unless they interfere with the supply of Precious Municipal Fluids. This is not to say that everyone else in the City appreciates an incessant Bacchanal, or that religious leaders in one compartment or another might not rouse opinion against them and apply their own preferred solution. 

Thirdly, it is a commercial crossroads. It is one of the few places outside Punth you may find Phahk or other specialist Punthite commodities. Likewise, Dwarven handicrafts, Nirvanite textiles and Mariklyne cattle are all present. It might not be as varied a selection or population as one of the great port cities of the Stained Sea, but it certainly stands out in the region. If nothing else, there is little to beat the Saltire Market, sitting at the intersection of the two aqueducts, lit by numerous hanging metal lanterns to extending trading hours into the night.

Fourthly, it is somewhere that you can be Ka-Punth and not be bound to a quite-possibly bloody, small-minded, manipulated or djinn-haunted society. If a unified Ka-Punth society comes about, it may well  be because of an intellectual renaissance in the City of Compartments.

Fifthly, it is a refuge from the lower levels of law enforcement from both the Empire and Punth. It's not a place you could hide a traitor, but for a thief or an unlucky brawler or a dealer in outlawed minor magics, it's a good spot.

***

There is a subtle difference between those born in the City, and those who are driven there; an ease with the vertiginous tenements and the looming shadow of the aqueducts, the sparing use of water, an impatience with any law not related to bodily necessities. Some of them will in time realise the strangeness of their upbringing - but it is not known how many of them care to leave.

A sketch map of the City of Compartments - as it might have been in at past one period.

Punth: City of Compartments II

 Following on from last time...

Presence

As might be imagined, there are two major groups in the City of Compartments other than the Hydraulic Dwarves. The Nirvanite Empire and the state of Punth both maintain an official presence within the city, though in different fashions. The most obvious thing to note is that the Empire fully occupies the north-most compartment, treating with the Hydraulic Dwarves in the condescending but predictable way that they deal with non-humans. Punth maintains a heavy presence in the two south-most compartments, but does not act out every civic function they might normally do so. 

This is due in significant part to the ways in which Punthite thought must deal with this uncontrollable influence on their borders. Every other foreign power is at something of a distance - over the deep desert, over the sea, over the mountains. A neighbour - especially a neighbour that they must cooperate with - is unthinkable. Therefore, it is asserted that the Hydraulic Dwarves are merely an arm of the Punthite state. Punth possesses and controls the City of Compartments - pardon me, City 37 - therefore why would it duplicate key functions like gate guards or water suppliers? To the Imperial mind, by contrast, Erukha is simply another neighbour to be influenced, courted, implored, threatened, cajoled, persuaded or conquered. 

Structures

Of course, Punth has bowed to certain inevitabilities. City 37 has what is called a Ziggurat in the south-most compartment, but it wouldn't cut make the grade in any other city. But south of the city lies Fort 690: nominally a defensive structure like many another on the highways of Punth. However, Fort 690 larger and better supplied than any of these: it is the Punthite contingency - in case City 37 should be overwhelmed by the madness of foreign merchants abusing the hospitality of the Sky-Princes. Fort 690 would bar - or at least delay - an army passing through the Arcaded Pass and, as needed, would act as a staging ground to retake Punth's compartments. 

The Empire has a similar approach to Punth, and is undergoing the construction of a cathedral on a terrace to the north of the city. Despite the availability of Dwarven labour and craftsmanship, this has been going on for several generations - which gives ample scope for the laying out and resetting of defensive plans, earthworks and the like. Most actual worship by humans of the Faith of the Eight goes on the Church of St Ludmilla in the northern-most compartment (for the Manifest Rite) or that of St Bernard Finisterre in the second northern-most compartment (for the Unified Rite). The protean Cathedral is in theory dedicated to St Berengaria. Their centre of local government is tucked the northwest of the first compartment; it is known as Cornerstone Manse - and is the seat of the Ducal Envoy. 

Both the Empire and Punth have carved out cisterns in their respective compartments. These are secret, highly frowned upon by the Masters of the Aqueduct - and would be in no ways adequate to maintain the respective populations claimed by either state in the City of Compartments. Even restricting water rations to their soldiers, they would struggle to last above a week. 

People

The Nirvanite Empire has as its most notable representatives the Ducal Envoy (Lord Oderic of Saragotha) and the Dean of St Berengaria (Mthr. Ysodor); an assortment of merchants with significant ties to the courts and civic governates of Lameravis and the Novopolis also maintain houses in the City of Compartments. 

The Presiding Magistrate of Ziggurat 37 is the Qryth official Prudent Vanadium. Fort 690 - again, unusually for a fort of its nominal status - has a Qryth castellan, Commander Amorous Cordite. 

Recognition by Punth or the Empire is a different thing to recognition by the Masters of the Aqueduct. The Hydraulic Dwarves will sometimes 'recognise' an Imperial or Punthite subject different to the Presiding Magistrate or Ducal Envoy to act as the responsible party in contracts between them. This has occasionally been a very useful way to sow division between Imperial parties or to goad haughty Sky-Princes. 

The Hydraulic Dwarves regulate entrance to the City, and maintain registers of the Qryth; diligent record-keeping has also enabled them to keep tract of individual Punthites, no matter what badges they wear. Likewise, they note the comings and going of Imperial subjects and groups. They have been quite willing (for instance) to bar admittance to the oft-belligerent Knights of St Castrum or the Order of the Steel Suns. It is for this reason that numerous different knightly orders are encouraged to dwell in the city by the Dean of St Berengaria. Similarly, opportunists and mercenaries regularly trickle into the City - including a few highly-prized Half-Giants of distant Trygvir, who find the old compartment walls curiously familiar. 

Violence

Is, of course, quite common. Tempers run high, cultural clashes are common and neither Punth nor the Empire sends people known for deescalating to their garrisons in Erukha. Clashes are sickeningly swift and bloody, with combatants disengaging before the guards on the Aqueducts respond. 

The Qryth have adjusted their preferred fighting styles to fit the narrow streets of the compartments. One of them may equip themselves as a 'breacher', carrying a vast hammer to cave in the thin tenement walls of the city and enable access for themselves and their gendarmes. A Qryth may also take the role of a 'street fighter' and carry four smaller sabres, with which to cut and jab in many directions.

The men-at-arms of the Empire have likewise adapted. The usual Imperial counter for the Sky-Princes is (laying aside considerations of magic and certain artefacts) the chevalier and the wall of pikes. Both options are impractical in the City. Shorter and more flexible halberds are the norm for Imperial footmen and have some popularity with dismounted knights. If an Imperial group know a Qryth they absolutely must have dead (and there are no Half-Giants to hand), the usual tactic is to draw them into a close, tight combat with well-armoured knights. While thus distracted, a lightly armoured swordsmen runs up onto a tenement roof or balcony and jumps onto the Qryth's back, where they can stab something vital. This has been attempted many times, has been successful often enough - and so there is now a training apparatus for this in the northern-most compartment. Those who use it are known as the Vaulting Squires. 

Next time: non-aligned residents of the City of Compartments. 

I've linked to some very old stuff for Terrae Vertebrae in the above. Such details didn't make it into The Primer - in part to maintain the separate character of Punth. But it's all fairly broad material, and can be swapped out relatively easily.  

Punth: City of Compartments I

The land of Punth is divided from the lands of the Nirvanite Empire to the north by the Dividing Mountains. This is an ancient land, cultural crux of northern Vertebraea: where bankers and artists bustle in the Novopolis, churchmen and courtiers disport themselves in the Estates Immaculate, cavaliers and farmers hone blades in Kapelleron, and sailors and merchants make plans in Lameravis, sweating on the coast of the Stained Sea. It is is these last two regions that lie next to Punth, and which have provided soldiers and material for crusades against the Sky-Princes.

But getting through the Dividing Mountains is rarely easy: there are many passes, but only a few that would suit an army on the march. The best known - and the pass that the traveller would first choose - is the Arcaded Pass, twenty miles south of the Blue Brimstone Mesa in arid Kapelleron. This is dominated by the city Erukha, the city of aqueducts, the city of compartments, special economic zone of the Hydraulic Dwarves.

The City of Compartments dominates the pass, standing on a rise - now more of a tumulus - in the valley. It was not made by the Hydraulic Dwarves, but found by them. The Cyclopean walls had been erected in another age, and outline a roughly oblong shape, divided by a series of almost-as-large walls set in parallel lines across the width of the city. The Hydraulic Dwarves have repaired or patched or retrofitted these, but the ancient bones and vast proportions of these still show through. Their most obvious contribution - and the source of their name - would be the two great aqueducts reaching out of the mountains to cross the city of compartments at one off-centre angle. 

Thus, three colours make up the city: the umber stones of the old walls, the off-white blocks of the aqueduct and the local reddish brick of the tenements within the compartments. 

The Hydraulic Dwarves sell water, regulate entrance to the city, maintain the walls and preserve overall order. They do not chase thieves, chastise vice, sweep streets or arbitrate disputes. Residents of the City of Compartments know them in the following roles, starting with the most prominent. 

• The Sellers of Water A Hydraulic Dwarf will take up the franchise of a certain downspout or conduit from the aqueduct, and then sell water to the inhabitants of the city - paying the Masters of the Aqueduct a portion of his profits. The Sellers of Water have booths in bunkers above their conduits, with jali screens. As custodians of something very like a spring, they are considered as a sort of low-level priest in the Animist customs of the Dwarves; therefore, they are obliged to maintain a level of practical and ritual purity about the conduit house. When about the streets, the Sellers of Water carry finger cymbals to make their presence known and to mark certain times of day as well as staffs topped with a flexible club, like a cosh. 
• The Aqueduct Soldiers The rule of the Hydraulic Dwarves is enforced by control of the Aqueducts. These allow water supplies to be cut off, and also provide a platform to view the beneath. Dwarves will guard the fortified up-ramps and stairways to the aqueduct and the Dwarven settlements above the Arcaded Pass, and defend Hydraulic interests in the City by missile fire and hurled rocks from bartizans and brattices on the Aqueduct - and if need be, from suspended gondolas.
• The Artisans Plumbers, pipe-fitters, gaugers, inspectors: the Masters of the Aqueduct employ them all, and the residents of the city are glad of them.
• The Farmers Refuse collectors and gong-farmers from the City will often come into contact with the Dwarves that help cultivate the terrace farms above the Arcaded Pass. Flowers are particularly prized by the Hydraulic Dwarves; a bloom pinned to the cloak is a symbol of a festive event, and a floral crown is worn by both partners in a wedding, in by elders at a commemoration and at the initiation of certain prominent priests. The expression "Enough flowers to fill a vase" is commonly used to suggest "More money than sense". 
• Miners, Smiths and Masons The Hydraulic Dwarves do mine ore, smelt metal, forge tools and carve stone. These goods do make their way down to the city, though the artisans behind them may not. Such careers are considered safe, respectable and dull by most Dwarves.
• The Masters of the Aqueduct Are rarely seen about the streets of the city. When they do go forth, they were elaborate head-coverings with jali screens over their faces of lightweight carved stone, or are carried in litters with similar such screens. Perhaps these hearken back to their past as Sellers of Water. The Masters of the Aqueduct are those whose wealth or mastery have grown to such an extent that they hold a place on the self-selecting Quotidian Board. The executive functions this wields are buttressed and cross-checked by Examination Quintets of the Occasional Board (which encompasses almost every Seller of Water, and many other prominent Dwarves in the above roles). Punditry and analysis will often refer to these as 'the Channel' and 'the Reservoir'.  

Next time: The lives of the Non-Dwarves in the City of Compartments.

Epithets of Ylyoun

The city of Ylyoun could believe in any number of gods, but held with dogmatic rigidity to a scheme of the qualities of the universal man, an image so god-like as to make foreign visitors believe that there was a god behind it all along. The matter, codified by Honux Porphyrystomus, went thus: Men - Mankind - in their fullness could have ten supernal qualities, and their inverses. These qualities would be expressed by epithets, which would be appended to the names of citizens. This may have started as a practice among princes of Ylyoun, but would not remain exclusive to them. 

One might be:

• Victor [Ever-Conquering, Always-Conquering, All-Conquering]
  Which is, inverted: Never-Conquering
• Invictus [Never-Conquered, Conquered by None, Unconquered] 
  Which is, inverted: Oft-Defeated
• Opitalus, [Aid-Offering, Helper of the Needy, Bringer of Help]
  Which is, inverted: Never-Aiding, Unable to Help
• Impulsor [Impelling, Who-Drives-On]
  Which is, inverted: Who cannot Impel, Who makes no Progress, Paralysed
• Stator [Who-Stops-and-Stays, Bringer-to-a-Halt]
  Which is, inverted: Who cannot Halt
• Centumpeda [Stabilising, Establishing]
  Which is, inverted: Whose Establishments and Efforts ever Fail
• Supinalis [Overthrowing, Who-Throws-on-the-Back, Down-Tearing]
  Which is, inverted: Who may not Throw-Down
• Tigillus [That-Is-The-Prop, Upholding]
  Which is, inverted: Who-Upholds-Not, Poor-Prop
• Almus [All-Sustaining, All-Furnishing] 
  Which is, inverted: Who cannot Sustain, Who Furnishes None
• Ruminus [All-Nourishing, All-Feeding] 
  Which is, inverted: Who cannot Nourish, Who Feeds None

Thus: Thalamon Invictus, Polycene Stator, Hupon Centumpeda. The terms could be applied to foreigners: Sopespian Victor, Uvilas Tigillus. These were not strictly titles, to be possessed thereafter, but attributes, notable for a season or a spell. A soldier hailed one day as Ydumee Invictus might be killed the next day without those who hailed Ydumee feeling very foolish: the influence of Invictus, for whatever cosmic reason (or personal fault on the part of Ydumee) had clearly passed out of his life.

The epithets became symbols and artistic motifs, often personified. Due to the popularity of the epithets, scratched graffiti and other hasty markings rendered these in a number of simpler ways.

• Victor was a garland, or a figure in a garland.
  [Often shown as a broken circle of crosshatches]
• Invictus was a shield showing the sun, or a shieldbearer.
  [Often shown as a circle with a stylised sun]
• Opitalus was a jar of ointment, or a figure holding such a jar.
  [Often shown as a jar or rough cylinder]
• Impulsor was a goad, or a figure holding a goad.
  [Often shown as a straight line with a curving line emerging from one end]
• Stator was a trowel, or figure holding a trowel.
  [Often shown as a triangle with a right-angle bend emerging from the base]
• Centumpeda was a pillar, or a figure against or by a pillar.
  [Often shown as a shaft with a simple pedestal and capital]
• Supinalis was a leopard skin, or a figure wearing such a thing.
  [Often shown as a clump of small circles]
• Tigillus was a beam of timber, or a figure holding a beam of timber
  [Often shown as a horizontal, square-cut shaft]
• Almus was a cornucopia, or a figure holding a cornucopia.
  [Often shown as a curled horn]
• Ruminus was a breast or dug, a phallus, or - serving for both, as a vessel of liquid tapering to a point - an amphora; or, as it may be, a figure with any of these attributes.
  [Often shown as a V or U shape]

The scratch-marked epithets were used in a number of ways. Positively, the marks of Centumpeda and Tigillus might be stamped into brick or tile. Victor and Invictus would be cut into the backs of shields, and commanders of the armies of Ylyoun would consider it a poor omen (or, at least, indicative of poor morale and an absence of élan) if none of the scratch-marks appeared in an encampment before battle. Ruminus and Supinalis might appear joined as a coarse boast.

An erased or struck-through scratch-mark was a curse or threat. To daub a struck-through Stator on the wall of a house meant 'You will not stop me; this wall will not keep me out'. Lead discs with a defaced Ruminus were provided as a marker to curse another with infertility or impotence; if such a disc was split, it was presumably so much more malign a curse - though it would only apply if both halves could be inveigled into the target's possession. 

In later artwork showing the Epithets personified, the scratch-marks might even be incorporated as an abstract pattern - one moderately well-known example being the atrium frescos in the Treasury of Cyncybar.

Enestor of Bovrenna, it is recorded, once publicly opined that the Ylyounic Epithets constituted a set of emanations of the Creator God, the fount of all things, and that these had possibly even taken forms before men. He lost two fingers, an eye and three-quarters of his hair in the ensuing riot. The citizenry of Ylyoun are jealous of their epithets, and would not see them applied to the wrong target.

Ylyoun probably fits well with the city mentioned here. Maybe's that Ylyoun a few centuries down the line. 

The epithets used come from St Augustine of Hippo's De Civitate Dei, Book Seven. The neat assortment of the list struck me in a way like these Elementals.

A number of names have come from the Troy Book of John Lydgate (of Bury).

Conquistadors of Tartarus: The Murmuring Fraternity

There are those who will assure you that Hades is sunless. That warmth and light and the rest of the sun's qualities are quite unknown to the underworld; that even if there is sight, then that sight is blurred, obfuscated by the realm of darkness, accepted only as much as it needs must be.

Those who assure you of this have not been there. Now, in the Year of Grace 1580 - or as near as can be told, after the cataclysm at Lepanto - there are settlements on the Styx inhabited by more than ghosts. In the pious fortress of God's Ravelin, or the impromptu forum of Rome Oldest and Newest, the techniques of Hadean astronomy are developing. There is day, and there is night. The sun's rays produced the metal gold in the Earth, and continue to filter down into the Underworld. Even those who do not opine that Hades is truly in the earth admit that it is paraterrestrial - so that the sun reaches even them.

Not that this is sunlight as men know it. So we see the bleak light of Wanhope as the vaults of Hades brighten, the livid clarity of Febriterce, the aching monotony of Rackhour and the sulking slow dwindling of Bittergloam. These are strange states to dwell in - and those who know the surface world still find themselves caught out by the passage of 'days' in the underworld. One or two clocks, in point of fact, did survive the trip down from the Gulf of Patras; given the state of sixteenth century clockwork, no-one is really sure that Wanhope to Wanhope really is twenty-four hours, or even that Febriterce even falls at the same time every day.

Still, there are some effects of the light that equal those on the surface. During Bittergloam, there appear in certain places great gatherings of things like birds. They are dark and small, but bearing about their heads a sort of intangible sorcerous veil. Flying one way, they are distant but clear points in the distance - flying another, they are deceptive little specks that one must focus on carefully, like frogspawn. Flocks wing together in the near-dusk, forming assorted patterns in groups ten thousand or more strong: now a great disc, now a twisting serpent, an unwinding helix, a sinuous crescent, a wolf's head. Then after perhaps an hour, they disperse. 

Given the lack of predictable natural life in Hades, these are not merely birds going about the unclear but ordinary business of avian life. Theories have been proposed by residents of the Underworld. By some it is thought that these are souls of the thoughtless, of those who obeyed in error - who now follow nothing in particular, save that they follow. By others, they are traces of birds as they dwell on the surface, set as a half-measure in the half-realm below. 

An interesting notion holds that these are the souls of humans in purgatory, showing themselves to living Christians and Virtuous Pagans below, indicating that the proper process of human redemption and the afterlife is going on, somewhere. As souls in Purgatory are going through a form of penitence, the birds naturally wear supernatural hoods and there is a soft noise of myriad whispered prayers. 

A variation on this holds that these are not souls in Purgatory (who are really far too busy going through Purgatory) but souls of those on Earth - who sin, or think on sin, and so are brought near to the realms of gloom and flame. They swarm and group and gather as vice and hope war in them, as one sin or another grips them. A spectral trail follows them, trace of their spiritual journey - and, even when briefly set as a bird, the seat of their spirit-handling intellect is the head.

Whatever their origin, it is these last two theories that give rise to the name of the Murmuring Fraternity. 

To the Moon, Like All Lost Things

I've been reading Orlando Furioso, the epic poem of Ludovico Ariosto.  

Lacking or ignoring the many heroic poems of the early Middles Ages, from the Song of Roland to the Germanic and Icelandic sagas, the chief Renaissance epics were a peculiar blend, created by four Italian poets: Boiardo, Pulci, Ariosto and Tasso. The first two begin to the 15C, the other pair to the 16th. Once as familiar throughout the West as Shakespeare and Goethe are now, those four names and their glory survive only in their country of origin. When the gondoliers of Venice sing for the tourist, it may be bits of Tasso's epic. As late as the beginning of the 19C, Ariosto and Tasso were read, quoted and enjoyed by educated Europeans. At the same time, Dante's Divine Comedy, also an epic adventure and now one of the "great books" was looked down on as Gothic, a piece of medieval obscurantism. What is the "more human" subject of the other four Italian epics? ... Instead of the old epic's warriorlike sober sadness, the provide for the sophisticated Humanists and courtiers the excitement of love-making and of what has been called the "The Marvellous", the miraculous, performed by black or white magic.

From From Dawn to Decadence, Jacques Barzun, 2000.

Alas, I've next to no Italian. I'm reading the translation by Guido Waldman - prose rather than the original verse, first published 1974 by Oxford University Press. 

Anyway, let's look at Canto 34. Orlando - Roland - is mad (furious, even). His English cousin Astolfo goes on a journey to recover his lost wits. He enters one of the chambers of Hell, then ends up in the Earthly Paradise with St John the Evangelist. The Saint then takes him to the Moon in Elijah's flaming chariot to recover the lost wits of Roland.

The chariot passes through a barrier of flame, that covers the earth (Cf. The Discarded Image). They ascend to the moon - which is as big as the earth, and in appearance like untarnished steel. It is apparently inhabited: castles and nymphs are mentioned. 

Then, as Waldman has it: He was led by the Holy Apostle into a valley shut in between two hills, where everything that is lost on earth (be that the fault of time or fate) fetches up miraculously. What is lost here collects up there. I do not mean only dominion and wealth, subject to the vagaries of fickle Fortune.....

Let's skip forward to compare a Canto, quickly:

75 Le lachryme e i ſoſpiri de gli amanti inutil tempo che ſi perde a giuoco, E l’otio lungo d’ huomini ignoranti Vani diſegni che non han mai loco, I vani deſideri ſono tanti Che la piú parte ingombran di ql loco, Ciò che in ſomma qua giú perderti mai La ſu ſalendo ritrouar potrai.	LXXV  The lover's tears and sighs; what time in pleasure And play we here unprofitably spend; To this, of ignorant men the eternal leisure, And vain designs, aye frustrate of their end. Empty desires so far exceed all measure, They o'er that valley's better part extend. There wilt thou find, if thou wilt thither post,  Whatever thou on earth beneath hast lost.
From the original.	From the William Rose translation.

Waldman: The tears and sighs of lovers, the useless time lost in gaming, the chronic idleness of ignorant men, the empty plans which know no rest, the vain desires are in such numbers that they  clutter almost the whole place. In short, no matter what you ever lost ere you would find if you went up there.

But we soon find some solid objects:

[Astolfo] noticing a lofty pile of tumid bladders from which seemed to emanate a hubbub of cries, he was told that these were the ancient crowns of Assyrians and of Lydia, of the Persians and Greeks - once so illustrious, now forgotten almost to their very names.

There's quite a few of these, so I'll add them in bullet point form - again, all Waldman.

• 'gold and silver hooks...gifts made in hope of reward to kings, to greedy princes, to patrons'
• 'garlands he saw which concealed a noose: all flattery....'
• 'Verses written in praise of patrons wore the guise of exploded crickets'
• 'gilded bonds, jewel-studded shackles' which are 'Love affairs pursued to little purpose'
• 'eagles' talons....the authority which lords vest in their servants'
• 'bellows littering the hillside....the praise given by princes and the favours conferred on their favourites'
• 'Cities and castles and treasures....in a confused jumble of ruins. They were treaties, he was told, and ill-concealed plots.'
• 'snakes with maidens' faces: the work of coiners and thieves'
• 'broken phials: service as wretched courtiers'
• 'A great mess of pottage....is the charity left by a person after his death'
• 'a great mound of sundry flowers once sweet-smelling but now reeking....was the Donation of Constantine to good Sylvester'
• 'quantities of bird-lime for ensnaring; your charms, good ladies'
• 'Folly, however, whatever it's degree, is missing from there: it stays down here and never leaves us.'

Orlando's wits are eventually found. 'Wits' take the form of 'a soft, tenuous liquid, apt to vaporise if not kept tightly sealed'. They come in different size phials - and, of course, men lose them for many reasons: in loving, in search of honours, in search of wealth, in trusting princes, in magical baubles, in jewels or paintings. 'Here the wits of sophists, astrologers and poets abound.' 

***

Now, it would hardly be objectionable if you read this post and promptly went out to read Orlando Furioso. However, here's another use for it all.

Let us imagine that Ariosto's moon has some sort of magical realm. It has to be bigger than a vale between two hills - say a great spreading plain between mountain ranges. 

We have hazards to overcome: a wilderness with talons ready to scratch, oddly enticing bird-lime,  and the overpowering odour of rotting flowers. 

We have animal and human threats: serpents with the faces of beautiful young ladies, rival adventurers (who, having lost all folly) are dangerously clearsighted about the possibilities of applied force.

We have valuable magical artefacts: Bellows that can puff Charm Person, Golden shackles that men will willing don themselves. To say nothing of the prestige of an ancient crown or the eternally rare Wits of Men.

We have resources to compete over: pottage-lakes and sheltering ruins.

We have intersecting functions of powerful devices: crowns that can command talons, hooks that can pull down crowns, talons that can claw and maim hook-wielders.  

Anyway, a hexcrawl (say) journeying through all that could prove interesting. Like a more lively version of the Wilderness of Taroc.

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: Publish and Be Damned

The press is one of the great movers of the new age. If you are going to spread ideas or report on a new discovery or promulgate a new law, printed materials can make this happen.

This includes for player characters. A good way to build a reputation is to print an account of your travels and discoveries - even if people violently disagree, the fact that they have to publicly speak against you (or a pseudonymous figure that everyone in the know can identify) will allow your star to rise. 

For TRoAPW's purposes, we will speak of three sizes of publication:

• Pamphlet
• Treatise
• Book

and three types of audience it may be geared to:

• Broad-as-possible
• General
• Specific (and technical)

That's not necessarily low-, middle- and highbrow, but the connection could be made.

We may say that in a city (near the press itself, or on a notable trade route to get them) a fully-fledged book goes for 20 silver pieces, a Treatise 10 and a Pamphlet 2. 

Actually getting something printed and on the booksellers' stalls yourself requires one of the following:

• Paying for it yourself
• Convincing a printing house to print it - usually on the basis that there is a way for them to make their money back
• Convincing a wealthy patron to put up the funds

Or, indeed, a combination of the above.

The costs of paying for it yourself are predictable enough: time and money.  Getting a printing house involved is likely end up with your work edited or suitably adjusted for the market.  Getting a patron involved may distract from your own fame, and indeed yoke you inevitably in the public eye to Lord X or Prefect Y or Arch-Priestess Z - aside from the tie of obligation involved. 

Of course, decent quality maps or illustrations will add to the cost of getting a book printed. 

It is assumed that if a character lacks the skills or inclination to sit down and write themselves, they may hire a hack to do it for them - usually at a rate a little below the average 'white collar' wage in the city you find them. A more highly placed collaborator can do a better job, but may cost more and absorb some of the resulting fame. 

So, what benefit comes from all this?

TRoAPW publishing sits alongside the usual set of carousing rules - but with wider social possibilities. If the Crucible Society want to gain fame from their exploits in the Bronzemount Free State or acclaim for their contributions to the field of Pneumametrics or draw attention to the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, then publishing can accomplish this. 

Looking across to The 52 Pages, in terms of hazard and unforeseen consequences, publishing looks more like 'Training' than the various other options. 

Unless a player wins the jackpot - the right book at the right time with the right distribution network and the right kind of people recommending it - it is assumed that any profits accumulating to them are fairly low. The roof stays over their heads. 

Actually trying to write for that kind of profit is difficult - by the time everyone's aware that they should be paying attention to (again) the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, that section of the market is swamped.
Writing on behalf of a cause or faction - Pneumametrics, say, or in favour of the Jointe in Tsymric - can get you a certain measure of publicity, but a smaller audience than you might hope.
In any case, player characters shouldn't be trying to be professional authors!

There are, of course, two more things to consider.

Firstly, grimoires. It is just about possible to pass on details of a spell without actually having to exactly reproduce a page of a grimoire. Think of an off-the-shelf spell as being like an equation with the final answer not yet given, but all the working shown - and which must then be rewritten for presentation in beautiful calligraphy. 

Accordingly, there are extra costs involved (even before you get to the point of dealing with the magical regulations for that jurisdiction). This involves things like specialist printing presses and secure 'behind the counter' retail transactions. Can't have someone else completing the equation!

So, a pamphlet length account of a new spell costs as much as an ordinary treatise, a treatise with (say) half a dozen spells as much as a full book and a full book with a good number of spells inside it - perhaps as much as ten times the cost of a romance.

***

Secondly, censorship.

Nowhere in Calliste has a formal freedom of the press, or of speech*. There may be city quarters where nobody cares what you say, or what you write - but a law may well have been broken all the same.

Let us speak of six levels of censorship.

1. Review and adjustment of all printed material
2. Review, adjustment of most
3. Review, &c of many
4. Review, &c of certain targeted works
5. Review, &c laser-focussed on certain works
6. Absolute minimum review.

1. and 6. are both basically non-existant- the former for reasons of state capacity, the latter for reasons of social structures.

This is further complicated by how keen the authorities are to actually carry out their duties. The lax censors of the Margravate of Fuchsunddachs may be commanded to review most material throughly (3.) but don't often manage this - unlike the Duchy of Brocq-et-Tod, whose Public Truth Commissioners carry out targeted censorship far more efficiently and dutifully. 

Thus, one pictures something like the below.

1	Painstaking review of all works
2	Painstaking review of most works	Lax review of all works
3	Painstaking review of many works	Lax review of most works
4	Painstaking review of targeted works	Lax review of many works
5	Painstaking review, laser-focused on certain works	Lax review of targeted works
6		Lax review, laser-focused on certain works
7	Absolute minimum review

But states don't have the same laws, or the same short-term policy objectives, or be rooted in the same cultures. The Grand Republic of Melesvulpia may have a robust tradition of political debate and broadsheets, but maintain public order via significant controls on what books of magic can be printed. 

So we might conceive of something like the below.

	Books of Magic		Books of Magical Discussion		Political material		Religious material		Military material
1	Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works
2	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works
3	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works
4	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works
5	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works
6		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused
7	Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review

This is not exactly complete - it leaves out, for instance, pornographic material. 'Targeted' in the above refers to a certain type of (EG) magical work - thus necromancy, mind control and so forth.

You will also note that Books of Magic and Books of Magical Discussion are different categories in Calliste. For reasons discussed above, they are different things (just one spell would be enough to make a theoretical tome into a Book of Magic). It may be assumed that most legal systems would wish to keep a closer eye on Books of Magic than Books of Magical Discussion, but Calliste is a big place with a wealth of little principalities and enclaves! 

Of course, it should be noted that states may also wish you to add something to a publication - a seal of approval, for instance. This is aside from states (or state actors) seeking, commissioning or encouraging publishing. 

Illegal presses may exist, allowing you to dodge the above but will have their own complications. The price will be at least comparable to a legal press - any costs (in time or coin) you avoid in not going before the censor you accrue in (for time) the necessary discretion an illegal press requires and (for coin) the premium they extract.

***

So as not to end on that note...TRoAPW is portraying a world in which substantial, influential works are being printed and circulated. Difficult to have an Enlightenment without that. Lawmakers are (perhaps) more often curious than censorious. Publishing in Calliste may be difficult, but it is also widespread. 

I don't insist on TRoAPW being a 'glass-half-full' setting (things might be going badly wrong!) but the glass definitely isn't empty.

*And, indeed, even places that proclaim both may have various organisations, cultural tendencies, &c. that suppress or discourage a certain kind of book.

A Map: Possibilities and Realities

I acquired a book called North Russian Architecture in a give-away a few months back. A small item, pages of heavy high-quality paper, a wood-effect hard cover. Published 1972 in the USSR, translation by Kathleen Cook. If it didn't have pages about six inches square in area, I might call it a coffee-table book.

Opening it the last few days, I found it to be quite charming - if the sort of volume replaced these days by Wikipedia and digital photography*. Many details on the wooden Churches in Lake Onega, for instance - which really are incredible. An interesting testimony to the abundance of a resource fuelling architectural creativity.

Among the material within, I found this map, showing Solovetsky Monastery, on the islands of the same name in the middle of the White Sea.

    The key is not conveniently positioned, so I reproduce it here:

Towers:
A - Spinning, B - Assumption, C - Watch, D - North, E - Kvass-Brewing, F - Kitchen, G- South, H - White

Gates:
I - Holy, II - Herring, III - St Nicholas, IV - Kvass-Brewing, V - Kitchen, VI - Assumption, VII - Archangel

Buildings:
1 - Cathedral of the Transfiguration (1558-66), 2 - Cathedral of the Assumption and refectory (1552-57), 3 - Trinity Cathedral (1859), 4 - Bell-tower (1777) and Church of St Nicholas (1834), 5 - Passage, 6 - Church of the Annunciation (1596-1601), 7 - Church of St Philip (1798-1859), 8 - Hospital building, 9-17 -  living quarters and domestic buildings, 18 - Water mill, 19 - Chambers (1615), 20 - Chambers (1642).

Heady stuff - with that assortment of gates and functions and religious areas. All the more so when one reads that Ivan IV (the Terrible) gave the monks cannons. So much that adventurers could tamper with, so many options. Is the herring gate somehow enchanted for monastic anglers? Does the spinning tower revolve?

If you were primed to assume that Solovetsky Monastery was made of wood - well, so was I. However, it is of brick and stone. Don't worry; your version - in northmost Tsymric? - can be wooden.

The other unexpected discovery was in my cross-checking; as it emerges, the Solovetsky Islands were the site of one of the earliest Soviet prison camps. This makes geographic sense: in 1923, the sites of the old Tsarist penal colonies in Siberia (EG) were cut off during the Civil War, and the Allied Archangel Expedition had wrapped up by then. The White Sea would be accessible by rail from the Muscovite heartland and the islands would make escape difficult. I had encountered this before, but it hadn't lodged in my mind like the names of (say) Alcatraz, Devil's Island, Wormwood Scrubs, Botany Bay or Dartmoor. Thankfully, I have encountered attractive maps to be questioned before and I do not regret picking this up by chance.

To end on a milder note - I have encountered few other things in following up for this post, including the Anglican Church in Riga (Cf. St Olaf's, Balestrand), the Estonian and Latvian naval jacks, and the source of the Pinega River, in the Krasnoborsk marshes, at the confluence of the Black and White Rivers - which sounds like something out of the Painted Lands.

*Occasionally it lapses from art-historian technicalities or tour brochure gloss to refer to something oddly specific. See this passage, when referring to old Autumn fairs:
'...they would trade in distaffs, clay toys, household utensils and birch-bark boxes. Similar boxes painted with strange green and red flowers with white and blue leaves are still made by Dmitri Matveyevich Novinsky, a local craftsman who lives not far from Verkhnyaya Uftyuga in the village of Novoandreyevka.'