Faufreluches: The Thousand-Day Regency

Faufreluches: the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. 

'A place for every man and every man in his place'.

I'm calling this little series after the above concept from Dune because I've never been able to chase down its derivation. Last time, I put forward a number of ideas about where the appeal of the strand of science fiction sometimes called 'Feudal Future' lies. I closed by asking:

2) Having assembled such a list can I devise, if not the greatest Feudal Future, at least an adequate one?

Here we go.

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The How

I don't intend to lay this out with tags from my previous post ("Lady Hentzau wears the distinctive Bayonet and Sun-in-Demi-Eclipse crest of House Nicksenhauer [Simplicity/Familiarity]"). You already know that it is intended to tick boxes on that list. 

I shall do one post on the wider setting, following with one on a particular series of events. Given that I'm not quite trying to write a novel or a tabletop game or a comic series or what have you, this gives an opportunity to show how it might be applied to any of the above.

Individual posts shall display in-universe material before anything making explicit real world reference. Mention of other Feudal Future works shall be avoided.

I don't have a pet illustrator, and the strictures of the Butlerian Jihad oblige me to avoid AI art. Descriptions of costume or manner that might ideally be communicated visually will occur.

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The What

The First Year was announced with the birth of the first child in the permanent settlement of Alpha Centauri. No-one remembers the child's name, but the calendar had been proposed by a man called Semyon. Both Semyon and the child are long since dust. 

It is the year 6,191, and mankind is changing.

Spread across the stars, humanity expanded and contracted, forming a new grid of settlements under the Stellar Regulatory. Trade flourished, and the species began forming itself allies and servants - the birth of genetically engineered subspecies of soldiers, settlers and spacefarers, guided by the machine brains embedded into the bureaucratic regimes of the Regulatory. However, unexpected to all the central planners, mankind was changing.

Predictive and telepathic abilities occurred sporadically at first; the first so-gifted were secretive to a fault. But they were soon detected on a wider scale, and frequently imprisoned or killed. But among the teeming hosts of the inner systems, one man announced it widely: "mankind is changing!"

A telepath and psychic of unusual power, his doctrine stated: This change could not be stopped, and it was intolerable that it be directed by the machine-minds. Mankind alone would be authors of their own future, masters of the coming Kingdom. But clearly, Psychic Man had not yet fully manifested across the whole population. Until that time, there would be a Regency, led and guided by him who stated first and foremost that mankind was changing.

The Regent waged bloody war against the tattered remains of the old world and the machine-minds. In this, he was aided by his Paladins, psychic warriors of rare ability and by the cohorts and armadas of the Janissariat, the gene-crafted slave soldiers of former days, promised a place among the citizenry of the new Regency. After victory on the steps of the Regulatory Central Complex in Mindanao and the smashing of the machine-minds, one doctrine would govern the species: Mankind is Changing.

The foundations of the new order would take a lifetime to build, if not more. The Regent was long-lived by the count of men, but his years were not enough. The surgeons eventually announced that he had perhaps a thousand days left to live. The Regent, by the urging of his trusted Council and popular acclaim had himself and a hundred of his Paladins sealed into temporal suspension vaults beneath the Palace of the Massif. Once every four terrestrial years he would emerge for a day, to review the state of the fledgling species. Until that time he would stay frozen, knowing that mankind was changing.

The Regent has remained in the Palace for three thousand years, cared for by the Maiors of the Palace and watched by the College of Martyrs. At the set intervals he emerges, or at other moments of high crisis - to counsel or to command humanity. Sometimes from the ancient machinery of the vaults will come one of the peerless warriors, a Paladin, the victor of a thousand psychic wars, ready to defend the order of Regency. But mankind is changing.

The old unity of people, paladin and janissary has dwindled. The Regency is upheld by Seven Pillars, seven esoteric ministries, connecting and sustaining the scattered worlds of humanity. The Mint, the Stadtholders, the Mews, the Pastorate, the Glossatrices, the Schematicians and the Secretariat. Between these are strung a web of influence and obligation supporting the Magnates. Technically, any man who owns property under the light of two suns is a Magnate. But only a few hundred families live like Magnates and can aspire to a seat on the Siegneuria. Feud and vendetta divide them, and civil strife has blossomed into outright war on many occasions. Exhaustion and the pressure of the Pillars brings ceasefire, if not peace. Still, mankind is changing.

On a thousand worlds, men watch for the coming of the gifted. In the Palace, gloomy masters tally up the days remaining to the Regent. Beyond human space, machine-mind legions and rogue Janissary-supremacists lurk. All know that this will not last.

It is the year 6,191, and mankind is changing.

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The Who

The Palace: Ornamented and honoured for millennia by the Maiors and a thousand pilgrims, the ancient and puissant of the Palace emerge rarely, if ever. When they do, it is, it is as a figure from legend sprung to life as they spread honour, wisdom and disruption in equal measure as they undertake spiritual quests.

The Paladins never claimed to be immortal, and even they have fallen. Paladins walking the worlds of the Regency are said to seek replacements and apprentices, to sit in psychic communion at the side of the Regent as the decades shuffle by.

The Janissariat: Muscle-wrapped brutes, made doubly disproportionate by ancient war-plate. Cyclopean spacecraft with pilots wired to their ancient systems. Bulging-eyed expeditionaries carrying rugged technology from the age of the machine-minds, seeking out new worlds fit for the many myriads of the Regency.

Why do they do it? Money. Glory. The quasi-acceptance of the Magnates. The chance for a regular supply of new recruits, so that their free company, their flotilla, their squadron of war-walkers may not slip into history, another failed servant of humanity.

The Magnates: Either in the cosmopolitan fashion of Terra or Procyon or Mintaka - or in ostentatiously local costume. Clothing, jewellery and banners show clan-badges, crests, personal heraldry, unit insignia and devotional iconography. A single magnate with her escort is a swirl of carefully chosen colour and symbols, moving as a glittering mass. A collection of magnates at a grand occasion resembles a watch mechanism in their jewelled, predictable movement. 

Behind all of it, the cocktail of duty and privilege and schooling and martial training designed to make a Magnate a great servant of the Regency - and his family, and his planet, and his household guard.

The Seven Pillars

The Mint: Every world of the Regency differs a little in its economic makeup. The officers of the Mint facilitate trade, interstellar banking and levy the minute but omnipresent tax of the Regency. Models of propriety and obedience in public life, this is matched by a heightened camaraderie after business hours.

The Stadtholders: On every world, there is a resource. Herds of livestock, paddies of rice, veins of rare ore, stands of pine. Perhaps the locals know how to look after it. But the Stadtholders can tell you how to make a profit off it, and keep making one for the next five generations.

The Stadtholders keep rural customs and are obliged to spend much time isolated in the field. But their coffers and connections go as far as any Magnate's.

The Mews: Hunched and beady-eyed, snappish and hungry, the Lords of the Mews are unhappy when on the ground. On the grounded star-dromonds and system-runners, the vast folded spans of the Banff Propellor Arrays wait for them. Transit among the stars is swift, thanks to the Curtmantle drive. Finding one's destination is the hard part.

Rare minds, possessed of a unique instinct - to dive out of Curtmantle space and settle on a new world, to see and seize in a single moment unafraid of comets or star-fire or dimensional shearing -  only these can draw the worlds of humanity together. 

The Lords of the Mews wait to return to their cockpits, to spread their ship-self's wings and seize the stars in their talons.

The Pastorate: The Regent knew that Mankind was Changing. The Pastorate are there to make sure that Mankind knows it too. Teachers, counsellors, ritualists - bearers of the vision for all mankind. Of all the estates of the Regency, the black-clad Pastorate are the most widespread, carrying the teachings of the Regent to every corner of human space. It is they who repeat his name once a terrestrial year in the Perennial Obituary. And in the round-arched aisles of their temples and retreat centres, they find and tutor the gifted.

The Glossatrices: Mankind is changing, and men will change from each other. Translation, cultural conventions, laws and mores, etiquette all differ in a hundred tiny ways from planet to planet. If you want to avoid a foolish mistake, find a Glossatrix. Poised, polished and unfailingly polite, the Glossatrices provide not only the desired finishing to raise up a young Magnate, but also are the best source of interpreters and translators in the Regency. This has also given them an iron grip on interstellar culture: the Glossatrices know best which art travels. 

The Schematicians: No one corporate body could control the industries of the Regency. The magnates and provincial governors are far too jealous of their own local power bases to allow that. But the plans, the blueprints, the secrets of industrial technique - these can be bartered. The keen-eyed, pin-sharp Schematicians offer precisely this: the knowledge necessary to maintain industrial refineries, chemical plants - and the dense urban populations needed to man these.

The Secretariat: Filing, assessing, numbering, stamping, inspecting, storing, retrieving, summarising, redacting, reviewing: they will do it. The Regency gathers much information: it is only the Secretariat who will retrieve it, with beribboned clerks working away at their ledgers on the stepped sides of the data wells, watched by supervisors decked in the dozen colourful ornaments they have earned by skill, service or outrageous flattery. The relevant form will have passed through their hands - at some point. 

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Other Notes

• Working title was The Infinite Regency. I like the time-limited angle better.
• Overall tone is Romanesque, not Gothic.
• The Mint dress like Hanseatic Merchants who have discovered Art Deco. And Private Members' Clubs.
• The Secretariat have buildings reminiscent of Indo-Saracenic and Dzong architecture.
• The Pastorate go for an overall Classical-Georgian look, but with numerous chambers devoted to a variety of artistic styles for contemplative purposes.
• The Glossatrices tend towards an early seventeenth century look - think Jacobean architecture and Dutch still-lifes. Dress probably tends towards 'Haute Couture Nun'.
• The Schematicians have very plain, very neat offices with off-white screens on the walls and plain wooden desks.
• I have less of a notion as to how the Stadtholders look, but some probably sound like Texas Oil Men.
• Even an undressed Janissary probably looks uncomfortably mannerist.
• Meeting a Paladin is like meeting a Grail Knight. Meeting a Janissary is like meeting someone from the Ring Cycle.

Adequately Feudal? Next Time: An attempt to sketch out a plot in this set-up.

Faufreluches: Feudal Future

Faufreluches: the rigid rule of class distinction enforced by the Imperium. 
'A place for every man and every man in his place'.

I'm calling this after the above concept from Dune because I've never been able to chase down its derivation. Anyway, as the last post made clear, the idea of the 'feudal future' has been on my mind a bit - perhaps, really, since this post by semiurge. 

Anyway, the question I have put to myself - and, by extension, to you: where does the appeal of the Feudal Future lie?

We can trace the derivation of the concept, certainly - Patrick Stuart does that nicely enough here. But there's a distinction between an idea emerging and its longevity. I think we must claim some degree of longevity for the popularity of the Feudal Future: Dune has gone through several adaptations - the last even being fairly well regarded. Warhammer 40,000 persists, even thrives. Leaving aside specific series or universes, recent science fiction has its share of space empires shown, to some degree, from within (no isolated farmboys): Martine's Memory of Empire, Leckie's Ancillary Justice, Muir's Gideon the Ninth. That Galactic Empires were the subject of parody or jest as early as Harrison's Bill, the Galactic Hero (1965) or Fit the Ninth of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (first broadcast 1980) is at least one further way to gauge this.

(From Fit the Ninth: 'The term imperial is kept though it is now an anachronism. The hereditary Emperor is now nearly dead, and has been for several centuries. This is because in his last dying moments he was, much to his imperial irritation*, locked in a perpetual stasis field. All his heirs are now of course long dead, and the upshot of all this....'

A dying but never dead space emperor? Nothing new under the fading suns.)

A working definition is in order. A Feudal Future is not necessarily one where monarchies exist - the Klingon Empire (or any given monarchy encountered by the heroes) does not make Star Trek a Feudal Future; likewise Le Guin's Rocannan's World and The Left Hand of Darkness. It must be in the future - the All-American Flash Gordon getting whisked off to Mongo is out. It must be off Earth, I would assert - which rules out the post-apocalyptic (e.g., The History of the Runestaff) and the near-future dystopian (Lazarus). A Canticle for Liebowitz must be considered influential, but not necessarily representing an entry in the annals of Feudal Futures. There must be a feudal sensibility among the protagonist's civilisation - which I think rules out Star Wars, which leans either to the blandly liberal or the totalitarian, despite the presence of Princess Leia (the NPR Radio version might sneak under the wire, however). Compare and contrast the populations governed by Firefly/Serenity's various cattle barons and planetary magistrates. 

You may dispute all the above - but that's what I'm working from in this. 

Alas, Anderson's High Crusade must also be excluded.

Anyway, a few possible answers, some inspired by contributions of my fellows. 

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Scale and Distance

The distance between the stars mean that any interstellar polity will have to have regional governors wielding significant power; whether they are consuls of the Greater American Republic or lords-lieutenant of the African Planetary Union or satraps of the Malay Star Empire. They don't have to be drunken or incompetent, but they will end up with a somewhat feudal affect. Even if one only has a veneer of historical knowledge, there's a sensical element to it.

Simplicity/Familiarity - Borrowing from History/Historical Fiction

'Knights in Space take cues from previous depictions of Knights, Blog Readers Unsurprised.'

To offer a trifle more detail on this - Feudal systems have lots of display of rank and lineage, lots of ties to personal motivations: We fight not over trade or human rights or the succession of our preferred heirs to the throne of Ruritania, but because my Father killed your Father. And we do it wearing our distinctive heraldry. (There's a difference, of course, between real feudal histories and fictional ones in the streamlining and simplifications of systems and groups. Even works that draw from a realist palette can be boiled down to Team Wolf versus Team Lion in the telling, no matter how long and thorough the appendices. Boil down further for adaptation; distill once more for water-cooler discussion.)

Space Opera may originally have been coined in reference to Soap Operas or Horse Operas, but larger-than-life depictions of interpersonal conflict in soaring language with obvious visual cues mean that the likeness to Wagner-Handel-Beethoven-Verdi opera would eventually be made. 

All this allows for various complexities to be spun around a simple, comprehensible plot and inter-character relations. As an image of this, consider the literal (well, translated) text of the libretto compared with all the on-stage goings on in this version of Giulio Cesare. Imagine how all that might be described in a novel, and the implications in the reader's reception of all the costume and set and so forth.

Mix-up possibilities

There is the joy and interest of seeing the familiar juxtaposed with the new. This is true of every science fiction work that referenced a New Frontier or a Wagon Train to the Stars - and the contrast is heightened when it is not merely rugged frontiersman in space but mendicant friars, or samurai, or fifteen-foot robotic knights. Vary as necessary for institutions, stock characters, &c.

Reaction to Secular/Rational Futures 

Let us say that the Feudal Future explodes into the wider consciousness with Dune in 1965, with Foundation as a respected forerunner. We get Lord of Light in 1967. Some of this is simply part of New Wave SF - though one wouldn't call (say) Dangerous Visions really related to any Feudal Future elements. We should also look to the wider 1960s cultural shifts.

Anyway, if the clean, smooth, bland, secular, rational, vaguely egalitarian (probably Western) future (or present) was being questioned, it should not be entirely a surprise that it might be questioned by dirty, jagged, vivid, zealously religious, instinctual, hierarchical futures**. Dune, The Incal, Lord of Light - all Dionysian rather than Apollonian. (Of course, this doesn't mean that every author longed for a dirty, jagged, &c, future. It may mean only that they wished to explore profitably ideas that might be encountered in such a future.)

It has not escaped me that the 1960s was a while ago and that Feudal Futures have persisted in popularity. But cultural trends don't spread evenly, and the very reaction I speak would reoccur in later generations***.  

Detail and Variety - Across the Board

Now, works of Science Fiction before any given Feudal Future may have imagined a number of different worlds or aliens or technologies. Wonder and strangeness form part of the appeal. But would these have been applied to the protagonist and the civilisation around him? Less likely. 

Of course, an Atriedes or a Hawkwood is more approachable and familiar than a Harkonnen or Decados. But for all that they act as (ostensibly) nice clean White Hat factions, they are participating in the wider space empire - with Bene Gesserit and swordmasters and mentats on their staff. Compare 40k; zoom out from that squad of guardsmen - who might as well be GIs with laser rifles - and you find commissars in gold braid, psychic email servers and cyborg priests singing a hymn in praise of the rack and pinion gear. 

It's not that a non-Feudal Future couldn't do this, necessarily. Think of Banks's Culture: as strange, in its fashion, as the Idrians or the Empire of Azad. Still, this is, I think, part of the attraction: participating in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, rather than being a tourist. No chance of beaming back aboard the Enterprise.

Add to this - and tying into the above point on Reaction - there's the aesthetic element: a rebellion against Little Boxes on the Hillside. Characters dressed in hulking Gothic armour or elaborate uniforms, interiors with handworked furniture and traditional portraiture, buildings (to say nothing of megastructures) dripping in statues and ornament. Hence my writing this so soon after reading Emphyrio, which both has an element of appreciation of the products of an isolated, stratified world and condemnation of the laws, mores and living conditions its inhabitants endure (aside from other ethical conditions).

Motivated Borrowing 

I've called this 'Motivated Borrowing' to fit in with the above; if one may borrow from history or historical fiction for plot reasons or a sense of delight, one may also do so with an explicit agenda (and a more focused one than the cultural motives I suggest above). It should come as no surprise that we depict history in a variety of ways: 'the Golden Age', the 'Time of Barbarism', and so forth. These may be caveated or hung about with subtleties as desired, or as the skill of the writer permits. These depictions may be consciously used to advance a particular view.

You know all this already: I, stepping a degree further, venture to suggest that the same is true of fictions aping history. This is most apparent in historical plays in modern dress - but could readily be extended to feudal futures. Obviously, a work positing a certain quasi-familiar but fictional political arrangement is in an excellent position to discuss government and politics. 

This is all in addition to those Feudal Future works that actively announce themselves as a satire, of course; Nemesis the Warlock is perhaps the definitive example. 

Anyway, another source of appeal: to have one's worldview reinforced by a depiction of the future referencing the past. Speaking in general terms, a left-winger might look at a Feudal Future and say 'How terrible! We should purge or reform the warlike and superstitious elements of our society!'; a right-winger might look at it and say 'Even in the distant future, conflict and belief will still be with us: we cannot rid ourselves of these and any attempt to do so will fail or cause great harm!' 

Of course, any depiction of a Feudal Future presumably could possess no more authority than its author possesses and correctly communicates knowledge of human nature - something which is difficult to assess. The two puppets in the last paragraph are both mistaken and any actual human being holding such a belief similar to either expressed would be capable of (at the very least) camouflaging them in caveats and subtleties. 

I don't think this is necessarily one of the stronger draws: there's a reason I separated 'Motivated Borrowing' and other Cultural Reactions. But it's not not there.

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Two questions, at the end of this remain to me:

1) What have I missed? What element of Feudal Futures draws you, if any?

2) Having assembled such a list can I devise, if not the greatest Feudal Future, at least an adequate one?

Contributions in the comments for 1). For 2)...watch this space.

* "Son of a bitch, they Golden-Throned me! What in the name of Almighty Zarquon do I do now?"

**Emmy Allen positions such a questioning under the horror umbrella in this post. 

***HCK's post 'Embodying Existential Debate' is a near-perfect example of just this.

February-March '23 Miscellany

A few things to mention here. 

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Layer Cake is a 2004 film. It is not about baking. 

It's about a business-like cocaine dealer in contemporary London getting into escalating situations within the criminal underworld beyond his cosy specialist niche. It may get mentally grouped with Guy Ritchie, but is in fact the directorial debut of Matthew Vaughn and adapts a novel by a chap called J.J. Connolly who appears to have done very little since. Daniel Craig as the nameless protagonist. All packed into a lovely compact one hour and forty-five minutes.

I don't suppose this is a spectacular looking film - though I do get a (vaguely nostalgic) 'Blair-era' sense from it. Not that I myself associate that period with drug deals - it's something in the way they make London look (institutions that once might have been stuffy looking open and casual), the mobile phones, the music in the nightclubs. There's some long slow sequences that work quite well. The bits dealing with the actual, tense, protracted business of being a middleman dealing in proscribed substances are worth imitating. 

You will find people who call this film 'Daniel Craig's audition to play Bond'. Not altogether untrue, I suppose, but don't go in expecting a performance like that in Casino Royale. If there is any Bond in it, it's the Bond of Fleming's books, which has only vaguely been captured by Toby Stevens in the BBC Radio dramas. 

(Perhaps also the bachelor pads, alcohol, stake-outs, tight-lipped meetings and vertiginous sense of being on over one's head contribute; Re. that last point - Fleming-Bond is not an expert in volcano lairs [is anyone?] and isn't supposed to deal with regiments of goons. Neither, I suppose, is Movie-Bond - but Pastiche, Parody and so forth eventually prevail). 

Craig offers a callous professionalism and relative lack of suave-ness. His Bond, though moderately craggy, is a rather polished marketable craggy.

Frankly, though, stand-offs and gunfights are the least interesting bits about Layer Cake. It's really about the monologues: narration from Craig's anonymous protagonist, speeches from scarred underworld veterans and his crime lord superiors - who have a wonderful sense of presence themselves; look out for Michael Gambon and Colm Meaney. 

And much of these are well-delivered and charismatic and not blatantly boastful or false - and to some degree self-serving or deceptive or manipulative. Or set rules that are promptly jettisoned when convenient. This is most obvious in the opening sequence - "I'm not a gangster, I'm a businessman whose commodity happens to be cocaine" - but it persists throughout. If gangster films are about power and society, this is a very middle-class film (that the opening sequence contrasts Craig with yobbos behaving badly abroad may be of note; see also the code-switching in the nightclub). Has the phrase 'a thriller of manners' been coined?

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Pilgrim. Found at Itch.Io by Mateo Diaz Torres, who also did A Most Thoroughly Pernicious Pamphlet. Anyway...

You have been chosen. As a member of one of the tower-sanctioned expeditions known as pilgrimages, you must descend into the unspeakable chaos of the ruined old world. As you go, you will be charting unknown territories and setting foot in ancient, powerful, and extraordinarily dangerous places. Should you return alive, the rewards will be great. [...] However you see your journey personally is irrelevant to the architects. They need information, technology, and updates from the world outside to keep the horrors below on the other side of the spire’s walls. Regardless of your reasoning, it is not a choice. You must go.

Appetite whetted? It's a neat little eighty-three page setting about adventuring into the ruins of the old world, full of indecipherable tech, killer robots and yet stranger things. The comparison that struck me reading it was Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines - more in tone than content, though the megastructures of both are a more direct point of comparison. Both are very busy, bustling post-apocalyspes. 

There's some low-lying religious theming (the idea of pilgrimage, a Babel-ish tower, demons, a fallen world), but not enough to become obvious or onerous. Evocative rather than blatant: there doesn't appear to be a definite kind of story you should be telling. Which I appreciate.

It also looks good. Sketch illustrations like those in the Pamphlet, boxes and borders in a simple but distinctive style. Compare Punth: A Primer or In the Hall of the Third Blue Wizard - apparently, I'm a fan. Not so fond of the Microsoft Word shape art used to fill in some of the white space. I see what it's going for in the slightly-gnomic blocks and geometric patterns, but it needs to look a little more finished if it's going to work properly. 

But if that's my biggest problem, this is at least a work worthy of your time. Pay what you want on Itch, so go and take a look.

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Jodorowsky and Gimenez's The Metabarons. I've been mulling over some thoughts on 'Feudal Future'-style space opera, and wanted to take this in. I'd read The Incal previously, and come across the whole semi-mythologised Jodorowsky's Dune. 

I've seen people call The Incal inconsistent, lacking in coherent world-building (which isn't everything, of course, but given the galaxy-spanning subject....). So it's no real surprise that Metabarons takes advantage of an episodic, generational tale to dart around a bit and use a series of left-over ideas - Cf. the castrated Othon von Salza and (Jodorowsky's) Duke Leto, and their method of making an heir.

Going into this knowing some of that, and plugged into the Grand Narrative of The Incal (which may or may not have been retconned?) almost makes this into, what, Funhouse Dune? The satyr play to Dune's Classical Tragedy? (But the Satyrs are Robots without the usual desire for drink and sex as a kind of meta-humour??) Though, actually, it's all too sincere and full of big Metabaronial emotion to be parodic, no matter how many times they mention 'Paleo-Marx'.  

Enough of this. Time to examine The Metabarons in isolation. It feeds you a stack of ideas and scenes and galactic institutions in quick succession. You never see an isolated farming planet; it's always a farming planet with a mystical secret at its core or a sect of psychic botanists growing beetroot the size of a Citroen 2CV by stroking iridescent beetles. Presumably there's a bunch of boring planets out there: the court of generic decadent nobles have to get their wealth from somewhere. 

And this is good fun! Inventive and notable and carefully illustrated. It's big and it doesn't stop being big. Further, it's unremittingly personal. It doesn't turn into being about Freedom or Justice or The Cause - rather, it stays about this Metabaron and their desires, and the interlocking of sexual desire and the wish for an heir. A most operatic space opera - especially how some modern productions can dial up the eroticism.  The Metabarons manages to work; that's the main thing. 

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Random second-hand fine: Jack Vance's Emphyrio. 

I had my expectations semi-set for this from the noisms post 'On Emphyrio and Vance's Libertarianism'. Still, such an interpretation didn't stay at the forefront of my mind as I read: there's enough world-building and simple entertainment. That must be a good rule-of-thumb for quality, no? If you read an article saying X is really about Y but you read it and you note Y but also interesting ideas or images A, B and C?

Anyway, the assorted craftsmen of the planet Halma live under Lords, Guilds and a snooping bureaucratic Welfare Agency (all libertarianism's foes combined into one Legion of Doom?). The Lords, in addition to owning key portions of their infrastructure, also export their finished pieces across space. There's got to be a planet of these fellows in every feudal future setting, right? Some fiefdom in Dune turning out cabinets for Atriedes and Harkonnen alike, some ascetic cyborg Chippendale in Metabarons. The emphasis just on Halma and the city of Ambroy keeps this pleasingly 'grounded'. 

I agree, incidentally, with noisms that the father of the protagonist, Amiante, is the real hero. Ghyl Tarvoke's deeds are clearly of an heroic stature, but they feel sort of perfunctory next to the slow, careful resilience of Amiante. 

The wonder of the goods produced on Halma and the resistance to mechanical reproduction is interesting - in an age of Ikea, the care spent on these by the narrative and the characters feels desirable. Of course, this might lead one to believe that the government and culture of Halma was likewise desirable, in that it protects and sustains such things - but the snooping and sniping by the Welfare Agency rather undercuts any argument in that direction.

Tonally, it rather differs from The Dying Earth or Lyonesse (the only other Vance I know). An exception for the leaping religion of Halma, which seems like it could slot as an episode in Cugel very neatly. This actually feels a little like a weakness to the novel: religion should fill or purport to fill some human need, and quite what it offers is never as clear compared to the Guilds or Agency. 

(Is it a problem of any novel of political rebellion that we never inhabit the mind of a true believer for the regime? Ghyll spends much of the first act confused or neutral.)

The actual final revolt feels oddly Burgher-ish. Like some event from Swiss or Flemish or Dutch history, with a foreign power routed and an honest-but-angered citizenry. 

Another novel worth your time, and one that has sparked a few ideas. Watch this space.

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Last and First Men; a strange film adaptation of Olaf Stapledon's history of the future. Released in 2020 posthumously by the Icelander Jóhann Jóhannsson and first introduced to me at Coins and Scrolls. 

I regret not watching this on the big screen. There's films that do not benefit from being watched on my laptop; this is one of them. 

I have read Stapledon, but a while back. I'm not sure there's a better way to adapt Last and First Men and still have it feel like 'a movie' rather than an art project. So: long, even narration by Tilda Swinton and lonely decontextualised cyclopian monuments. More than the sum of its parts? If properly approached. Moving? Maybe not. Something to appreciate? Yes.

***

War of the False Primarch: a blog fleshing out a conflict from Warhammer 40,000. An interesting fan-led project; a bit too Space Marine-heavy for my tastes - but it's fun seeing what people come up with an the various conversions it involves.

Stodgy to read, and I wouldn't mind a PDF of the material instead. But worth dipping a toe in the water and seeing what people have come up with.

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?

2026: A new copy was required....

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: The Majestic Vision and the Soul

A few terms:

As laid out in the Words of Procophon, those who subscribe to the Majestic Vision envisage a process of progression through the afterlife to a place of rest. The language of the Words is of course, rather different to modern languages in Calliste - literally older, and not from the same common Horatione family. 

Thus below, we have the various portions of the self - as referred to in the Words, in common, idiomatic parlance and titled under the way they might be referred to in a Schoolman's address in the vernacular. Depictions of the portions of the soul in secular contexts or discussed in later scholarship use the language of the Words.

The Majestic Vision's Halls of Learning are not, commonly, highly decorated spaces - beyond a few Beatific Flame motifs. Still, depictions of the soul are found in them. A small but well-kept Hall for a Reader from the School of Malicarn might have one main central room (perhaps high-roofed enough to have columns and side-aisles). A main entrance is at one end and a rostrum at the other. Behind a lectern at the rostrum will be lampstands and a bookcase with copies of the Words and other useful texts. Hall furniture is generally finely-made, if not outright elaborate. (Other common features might be a Reader's office, a porch, a series of study cells).

Any images - of Procophon and Cnoh, of various famous Schoolmen, or of the figures described below, are likely to be found on the walls of central room (if the rostrum is at the north end of the building, they will be on the east and west). Music and drama are not common in the various Schools, but recitations of certain texts (to various degrees of elaboration and ornamentation) is well-known. Popular, but not always meeting with Magisterial approval, is the 'recitation with images' where pictures, tapestries and painted screens are lit and displayed while a number of performers chant segments of some apt text - including, perhaps, the Distant Inheritance.

The Journey of Significance to the Distant Inheritance was first written by Magister Bulstrode of Tanguysland. It is a great allegory of the journey of the soul through the hereafter to a place of comfort, wealth, strength and belonging - featuring a party of travellers with their own unique characteristics getting into trouble with assorted bandits, bureaucrats, tricksters, obstacles and demons.  The plot begins with a man receiving news that he has come into an inheritance in a distant land. He requests leave of his aged master ('Master Cadaveri' or 'Sir Corpus' or similar) to go forth and pursue it.

Of course, relatively few people actually read Bulstrode's Distant Inheritance: it has been edited, abridged, localised, translated, illustrated, vetted, retold, serialised, adapted for recitation and glossed so often that it may be considered a specimen of folk tale, or possibly a highly specific sub-genre: 'a Distant Inheritance narrative from Myrchonog features an episode unique to the region, in which....'

Callistan art may depict the figures below in single portraits or in ensembles. Single portraits would be considered the basic, simple option: not necessarily lesser, but easier for a middle-of-the-road artist to get right, fitting to display in more spaces, less obviously prestigious. 

The applicability of all this to matters of magecraft is that the Majestic Vision has been the intellectual influence on Callistan society for centuries: older texts will refer to it frequently, as will self-consciously old-fashioned newer ones. The Great Bifurcation can't undo that.

***

Portions of the Soul-Entire

The Body

Frequently depicted in Callistan Art as .... an old man.

Referred to in the Words of Procophon as .... the Paleoangos

Referred to in common parlance as ....  Old Flesh

Personality in the Distant Inheritance .... Silent or senile.

The body that was, and shall be discarded. A minor figure in the narratives of the Majestic Vision, but omnipresent in artwork.

The Soul

Frequently depicted in Callistan Art as .... a deliberately plain everyman.

Referred to in the Words of Procophon as .... the Psyche.

Referred to in common parlance as ....  Ghost (often my Ghost, your Ghost, John's Ghost).

Personality in the Distant Inheritance .... Sincere but occasionally wayward protagonist.

That part of the soul with the greatest volition, the greatest connection to the human experience of decision-making

The Life-Image

Frequently depicted in Callistan Art as .... a (frequently nude) man in the prime of life, with major or long-lasting injuries marked in red on his body.

Referred to in the Words of Procophon as .... the Eikonosoma.

Referred to in common parlance as ....  Loyal Remnant

Personality in the Distant Inheritance.... Restless, Driven by appetite, Instinctive, Strong

The deeds of life upon the body are recalled by the travelling soul. Even if the soul is no longer embodied, ideas of body-like action persist in the form of the Life-Image. 

Embalmers and related trades will strongly suggest that a better Life-Image will be produced if their services are retained. 

A hand-coloured stylised monochromatic print of the Eikonosoma.
(Image is the 'Physical Instrument' Skill from the video game Disco Elysium).

The Shadow

Frequently depicted in Callistan Art as .... a hooded figure.

Referred to in the Words of Procophon as .... the Exoriaphoreus.

Referred to in common parlance as .... Shame

Personality in the Distant Inheritance .... Melancholy, Wry, Tempting

Despite being referred to as 'Shame,' The Shadow is all those things that a person has consciously rejected in themselves: not necessarily just base or vicious elements (though there is obviously the presumption by wider society that one should shun those impulses). 

For a celibate hermit, it might contain lust of the flesh; for an assassin, mercy; for a convert or other defector on grounds of principal, their former allegiance; for a former gambler, gambling. The thing rejected has to be a significant part of someone's self - not a season's fashion or an adolescent crush. 

The Social Being

Frequently depicted in Callistan Art as .... an older man clad in formal clothing (either a literal or figurative uniform), frequently with assorted medals or other honours. 

Referred to in the Words of Procophon as .... the Nomothete.

Referred to in common parlance as .... Glory (often 'Mister Glory', 'Sir Glory', 'Great Glory', &c.)

Personality in the Distant Inheritance .... generally proud and vain, though potentially quite personable and even protective. He varies the most with adaptation: possibly anxious and concerned with proprieties, possibly smug and self-satisfied, possibly boastful and hierarchical.

The part of the self that developed in response to or is enveloped by or even made by social laws and norms. Not purely meant to be a negative influence on the Soul, but clearly something of lesser relevance in the hereafter.

A popular belief is that the Social Being returns to monitor the deeds of their descendants, peers and those they have been generous towards. This meets with either the discreet silence of the Schools or the active condemnation of what is seen as ancestor worship. 

A hand-coloured stylised monochromatic print of the Nomothete.
(The 'Authority' Skill from the video game Disco Elysium).

The Sensibility

Frequently depicted in Callistan Art as .... a lantern-bearing angelically androgynous figure.

Referred to in the Words of Procophon as .... the Pneumaphos.

Referred to in common parlance as .... Soul's-sense.

Personality in the Distant Inheritance .... calm, hopeful, gentle but persistent. The most obviously affectionate portion of the soul. 

The sight of the soul: that which allows the Psyche to cast his sight forward up to the Majestic Vision. Not a mute quality, but one more associated with emotions than with precise speech.

The Forerunner

Frequently depicted in Callistan Art as .... a human-headed bird.

Referred to in the Words of Procophon as .... the Eidolon.

Referred to in common parlance as .... the Soul-Scout

Personality in the Distant Inheritance .... Musical, high-minded, mercurial, occasionally deployed as a deus ex machina.

The questing spirit, the spear-tip of the spirit - perhaps the most rhapsodised portion of the Soul-Entire, because in the Words and the records of the Schoolmen, it is by the motion of the Forerunner that miraculous power is wielded in this life. Of course, anyone trying to focus purely on this one spiritual muscle (as it were) is pursuing the Majestic Vision in such a way as would produce miracles.

Religion is somewhat out of focus in TRoAPW, but I felt like providing a little more detail to the Majestic Vision. Not an essential feature, but hopefully interesting all the same.

Produce of Punth

Following my own advice, I look to put down a little something about Punthite agriculture.

The majority of crops grown in Punth are quite like those found over the mountains in the North - be they varieties or outright different sub-species that prosper in the warmer, dryer climate. There are however some exceptions to this rule, a result of the tinkering done by the first of the Qryth that has resulted in that biome's particular set of circumstances. 

Some of their work merely produced larger, more nutritious, more resistant crops, accelerating the work that would normally take farmers (or nature, or the Divine) much longer. Sometimes, however, they produced far stranger cultigens. 

***

Awake, for morning brims in each bowl! Awake, for the service that brings plenty and the plenty that fuels service! Pour out the cup of correct ambition!

Phahk is grown largely in the hill country on the coasts of the Stained Sea. Phahk trees can grow as high as eight metres, have smooth red-brown bark and leaves that are usually a shade of slightly blueish green. It produces tawny or fulvous blossoms. 

After flowering, the tree produces thumb-sized berries, the colour of tortoiseshell. These are picked, sliced, dried, par-boiled and pressed. The resulting maroon syrup is diluted and drunk hot by the Qyrth as a form of stimulant: as wine is to brandy, coffee would be to Phahk*. 

Diluted Phahk is served in various concentrations. One part boiled and filtered water to One part Phahk is served to the Qryth in quantities like fortified wine; Three parts water to One part Phahk in quantities like wine or doppelbock; Five parts water to One part Phahk like strong ale. 

These are referred to as One-Over, Three-Over and Five-Over from the numbers generally shown on a Phahk service: 1/₽, 3/₽, 5/₽. Human beings can consume Phahk in small quantities safely but it is considered an acquired taste, as it is mouth-puckeringly tart. A good host provides ramekins of a smooth sweet custard or syllabub flavoured with fragrant herbs to go with it. 

When in the field, Qryth rations have been known to include a form of pre-prepared bottled Three-Over flavoured with aniseed, known as Campaign Phahk.

***

Let each function be marked. Let each mark be clear. Let clarity come from form and pigment. Let pigment be produced by the correct functions.

Along the main rivers of Punth, you will find occasional well-placed polders, blocks of colour in the dusty landscape. These are plantations of dye-shrubs. The dye-shrub grows no higher than two and half metres and requires plenty of water and care, but produces in the thick peel of its fruits and the thin curling sheets of its bark the ingredients needed for pigments. Punth architecture and custom tends to colourful symbols or decorations - this is where that comes from. 

A dye-shrub is not in appearance as colourful as fresh paint: the bark of a red dye-shrub looks about as red as a cinnamon stick until it is aged and ground.  The fruits are harvested in summer, the bark in winter and they produced different shades of the same colour. However, the processed peel is only seen by foreign buyers in winter and thus is referred to as 'Winter Red' or 'Winter Green', despite being harvested in Summer. Likewise, the processed bark is called 'Summer Blue' or 'Summer Orange'.

The dye-shrub is, however, largely produced for domestic consumption. Of far greater interest to Imperial or League merchants is the product of the mills and furnaces in Punth's chemic workshops, the fist-sized pearlescent clumps of 'Punthite Alum' that serves a superior mordant or dye fixative. 

***

The Beast feeds visibly. The Plant feeds invisibly. The Rock needs no strength beyond itself.  

The vast steeds and draft animals of the Qryth would take a vast quantity of regular fodder (to say nothing of more exotic dietary needs), and Punth is not provided with sumptuous meadows. Accordingly, a form of feed was developed for them, containing most of the substances that a Qryth mount requires in their diet. This is Twitchroot, named so for the quick and obvious responses it exhibits towards external stimuli, twisting gently to face the sun or shying away from a glancing blow. A common story in traveller's tales of Punth is watching an infuriated ox bash hard into a twitchroot - only to receive a blow from one of the plant's main limbs a few seconds later!

Twitchroot plants are faintly conical in structure, with between three and five thick roots visible entering the ground. Several limbs with thin needle-like leaves stand up straight from the top. The bulk of the plant is a sort of ochre, streaked with crimson, but the leaves are the colour of palm fronds. Twitchroot groves do not have to lie as close to the river as dye-shrub polders, but are still situated fairly close to watercourses or reservoirs. 

The bulbous roots are harvested one at a time. Each root has several large nodules on it: as long as the top nodule is left intact, the root will regrow. These nodules are heavy, almost melon-sized. They keep well in fairly cool conditions and are served to livestock roughly diced or mashed. Safely harvesting Twitchroot is done by splashing the sensitive uppermost branches with very cold water, which can stun the plant for an hour or so - allowing harvesters to produce the tough but slim saws needed to remove the roots.

***

For each man, two garment sets and two blankets. All else to be provided by the Servants of the People.

For every eight fields of flax grown in Punth, there is one field of the Sky-Princes' Flax.  This does produces broader leaved, taller plants. The cloth produced by these is whiter and finer than regular linen, requiring less bleaching and hackling.** Most importantly, however, it is free of several substances that the Qryth may be allergic to. Despite the first generation of Qryth's re-making of themselves and their descendants to better fit Terrae Vertebrae, the lottery of birth and bloodline does produce Qryth with greater sensitivities to the indigenous flora of Punth. The Sky-Princes' Flax is one way to avoid unpleasant rashes.

To a foreign cloth merchant, the linen produced by the Sky-Princes' Flax is merely a high-quality linen, of use only as a rarity (though it would rarely if ever be sold outside Punth). Most would probably take it to be merely a different grade of cloth or style of weave. A non-Qryth wearing the cloth next to the skin does stand a chance of an unpleasant but non-fatal reaction. Likewise, walking through a blossoming field of the Flax can cause more than the usual number of sneezes.

***

*I don't know if I care to speak ex cathedra on whether coffee exists in Terrae Vertebrae or not. I suspect the answer is 'not round here'.

**Again, I don't care to put the stamp of canon on it, but it's entirely in character for the Qryth to have produced genetically engineered crops but completely failed to re-create the mechanical cotton gin.