Temple and Church Generator

A series of tables designed to produce buildings that are places of worship, with a number of features - architectural, social and so forth. This is not a 'place of worship generator'; stone circles or sacred groves are out. This also rather places itself in an urban context; a town large enough to have multiple temples. A list of real world inspirations will come at the end.

This all acts as a compliment to my Religious Processions post - though it is less Roman; more London-like. Nonetheless, the two should be able to overlap. Even if you find yourself sacrificing a White Ox in the Methodist Central Hall.

Why write this? Aside from an interest in ecclesiastical architecture, it seems to me that architectural detail sometimes takes a back seat in description. This is not super detailed and doesn't require that you tell your Perpendicular from your Decorated. Nonetheless, buildings should have an impact on players, especially those built to impress (or those that cannot help but do so). Many fantasy worlds bring religion to the fore; this is doubly true if Clerics or Prophets (or Mendicants, or Dervishes, or Disciples or Pietists or what have you) are among the player characters. Further: temples, churches - the seats of so many great occasions, a focus of communal life - these should not be all cast from the same mould. Even if they are of the same faith, from the same region or as an article of faith must be built to a specific plan. Let there be variety!

Likewise, there was an intent to remove them from a 'Lean Times in Lankhmar' style religious quarter and put them in districts; within a wider context. Yes, there are Forums, Acropoli, Kremlins, Cathedral complexes and the like, but I hoped to imitate parishes and wards: teeming urban life. Prayer and holiness being no small aspect of life.

Moreover, the more details you have of a place, the better use that the GM or players can make of it. There is, naturally, a time for detail and a time for broad sketches, but one should be able to 'zoom in' on specific scenes - and will require a form of description by which to do so. Go out; practice your descriptive writing on a building sometime: could you describe well enough to hold the man features of it in someone's mind? I have linked to this interview before, but there is very real benefit in being able to describe something, even in an age when you can just find a picture of it on your magic internet brick.

I suggest there is even an appetite for this. I have no great knowledge of the Assassins's Creed series of video games, but folk certainly seemed to appreciate the possibility to get up close to and exploit Florentine churches. A different medium, doubtless, but not without impact on another. If you want another example, look to Victor Hugo and The Hunchback of Notre Dame  - a book very focussed on buildings. Or indeed, Ackroyd's Hawksmoor. The mysteries of P.D. James also tended to be fairly stuffed with architecture.

Some of the below ideas will have a social impact; others a physical one. A fountain in the square by the Church will be of interest to the hydromancer; the more church officers there are the more people there are to convince to give you the key to the Holy Water Cellar; a copper roof will have an impact for the lightning wizard whereas a lead roof may offer some protection from the magical radiation of a baleful comet.

	d10 Building Material
1	Red brick
2	Yellow brick
3	Limestone
4	Flint
5	Marble
6	Stone - dressed
7	Stone - rough
8	Stone - heavily banded
9	Decorative tiles
10	Covered in stucco

                                         

	d6 Window style
1	High and Classically proportioned
2	A riot of stained images
3	Narrow, swirling patterns
4	High set, decorative tracery
5	Low set, small windows
6	Narrow, set back arrow slits

	At least3d20 Features and scheme
	Notable Exterior Feature	Notable Interior Feature	Overall scheme
1	Clock accompanied by statues	Tall iconostasis	Gothic ‘Dome’
2	Clock, with clockwork figures	Intricate rood screen	Baroque, decorated dome
3	Circular colonnade around spire	White and gilt pillars and ceiling	Four towers, one at each corner
4	Numerous gargoyles	Whispering gallery	Very tall spire with many sides and windows
5	Flying buttresses	Numerous memorial plaques on the walls	Flat-topped tower
6	Ornamental balcony	Faded flags hang from the celing	Numerous turret-topped ribs across the roof
7	External pulpit	Ornate fan vaulting	Thick twin towers at the front
8	Flat front with rising curiliques	Hammer-beam ceiling	Ridged, pyramidal spire capped with a statue
9	Protruding turret	Intricate, well kept, wall paintings	Circular, focussing on a central platform
10	Onion dome	Wide second tier	Broad triangular pediment and columns
11	A Sacred stone is set into a wall niche	Transi tombs	Tall, square tower with a cupola
12	Rounded, barrel-vaulted roof	Simple wooden panelling	Only the tower of this church remains
13	Squat, round tower	Ornate wooden panelling	Long and low roofed, with many arches
14	Ornamental porch with caryatids	Plaques with scripture	Wide, with a large entrance underneath a great arch
15	Square tower, diamond shaped upper level and three small turrets	Crypt in imitation of pilgrimage destination	Wider than it is long
16	Long, curved scrollwork on the front	Box pews	A high, narrow arch supports a tapering spire
17	Copper/Lead roof	Stove among pews	Square, underneath a wide dome
18	Gilt statues in stone niches	Elaborate altar canopy	No tower. High, thick, buttresses
19	A series of urns decorate the roof line	Gilt and mosaic decoration	Perfectly round, with a low dome.
20	A balcony occupies the front	Elaborate lamps and symbols hanging from ceiling	Unassuming, unornamented, at a similar height to buildings around it.

	At least 2d20 for infrastructure.
	Place in Urban Infrastructure	Place in Religious infrastructure
1	Island church, right in the middle of the road	A Peculiar, outside the usual hierarchy
2	Burial place for a noble lineage	Devoted to fallen soldiers
3	Centre of worship for a specific Guild	The Seat of a Bishop/High Priest
4	Centre of worship for a society of lawyers	Shares space with another denomination
5	Attached to an infamous prison	Devoted to a foreign population in the city
6	Attached to a law court. Those condemned to death have their last service here	Attached/formerly attached to a Monastery/Convent/Nunnery/Abbey (&c.)
7	Outside the city walls	A synod or prominent committee meet here
8	Terraced among houses and shops	An Ecclesiastical court meets here
9	Attached to a barracks.	Attached to a school
10	In a rough area	Former temple of the unbeliever
11	In a prosperous area	Contains a holy relic
12	By the waterfront	Former/current parish of a radical or controversial clergyman
13	On a viaduct	Respected for the quality of it’s music and liturgy
14	The temple is close by a neighbourhood of non-believers	Former/current residence of a militant order
15	Coins are held in safety here before being inspected to ascertain their quality	Church-run hospital
16	Large Churchyard	Devoted to an obscure divine figure
17	Meeting place for intellectuals	An especially devout congregation
18	Leper chapel (or set aside for other quarantined persons)	A rather less than devout congregation
19	Close to a Market	Well-staffed with priests and lay assistants (possibly including anchorites)
20	Close to a fountain, conduit or other water supply	Definitely not well staffed with priest and lay assistants

Inspirations include: The Temple Church, Inns of Court; St Dunstan's-in-the-West, London; New St Pancras, Greater London; St Clement Danes, London; St Mary Le Strand, London; All Saints Margaret Street, London; St Mary Woolnoft, London; St George's Bloomsbury; Westminster Abbey; Westminster Cathedral; St Magnus Martyr [inexplicable splendour of white and gold]; St John's Smith Square; St James Garlickhyhte, London; St Olave Old Jewry; St Sepulchre without Newgate ['The bells of Old Bailey']; St Bride's, Fleet Street; St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London; St George's Garrison Church, Woolwich; Methodist Central Hall, London; Quaker Friend's House, Euston Street, London; St Alphage, Greenwich; St Chad's, Shewsbury; King's College Chapel, Cambridge; Jesus College Chapel, Cambridge; St Edward's, Cambridge; The Round Church, Cambridge; Ely Cathedral; Cordoba Cathedral; St Mary's, Whitby; St Peter and St Paul's, Pickering; The Pantheon, Rome; The Jerusalemkerk, Bruges; St Anne's, Bruges; St Walburga's, Bruges. 

Go forth and investigate for yourself!

Questions for readers: Do these produce unique, interesting buildings?

Are any categories confusing?

Does this rely too heavily on the listed examples?

Is anything missing? Is anything superfluous?

Centaurs outside Eden

As the last post, design principle for Terrae Vertebrae was that initially that the races elder to humanity all balance against one another; see libertarian Dwarves, community-centric Elves. But I lacked a proper balance against Fauns and Satyrs (Caprines). I had invented them as a Gnome substitute, but since associated them with the 'Southern Influence' of C.S.Lewis's The Pilgrim's Regress (which is a blasted odd thing to grasp at for Character Alignment, but there you are).

What balances Caprines? Speculations at the time included Dvergar, Hrossa and centaurs.  Thinking about it now, a Marshwiggle would make a good contrast: deriving from Lewis, known for their gloom, enduring of the cold and ultimately, disciplined and logical (consider Puddleglum's role in the climax of The Silver Chair). [See also comments to this; the Caprine, as 'not a Gnome' is also 'not a Halfling'].

But creating a Northerner or Anti-Caprine class that slots into a putative 'Proto-Vertebrea' setting as a Prophet replacement requires a bit of mythological heft - which knocks out the Marshwiggle for this role (though by no means out of the picture altogether).

All caught up? Now, read on....

Dvergar are too similar to Dwarves. Hrossa, as Marshwiggles, lack that heft. As the title suggests, I think centaurs are the solution.

'But' says the Classically educated reader 'Centaurs are violent and savage, despite exceptions. They are unsuitable as a Regress-Northern species. Besides, they have a basis in Greek accounts of horse-borne nomads, set against the static and agrarian Greek city-states. Not quite Northern. This will not do.'

These are not unreasonable arguments against the centaur as the Anti-Caprine. However, my influences are relatively widespread.

First, consider the horse as a symbol. Yes, the wild horse is most Romantic and spectacular. But the horse as known to Western civilisation is a draught animal; hardly the lowest beast of burden, but not one let to roam free either. The horse's might and splendour is seen as something that is governed, and enhanced by being governed. Consider the uses of the horse in the Equestrian Portraits of Charles I.

Think also of the chariot and the stagecoach: horses - more than four, even - cooperating in drawing the burden across the countryside. Mention of the Chariot draws us nicely to the Allegory of the Chariot. Horse(s) and Man together are the (civilised) Human Soul. This is not the only link between the Rational and the Equine: consider Gulliver's Houynhnms - Rational to a fault and certainly inimical to humanity. Orderly and peaceable beasts, to be sure - but not altogether pleasant ones. Let us not forget that Lewis conjured the Northern as a diversion from the true course.

[A game for those of you who wish amusement: watch an episode of Star Trek and mentally replace every mention or appearance of Vulcans with Houynhnms.]

Speaking of Lewis, let us not neglect our Appendices N. Much twentieth [-first] century literature conjures the centaur as a wise teacher (every dwarf is Gimli; every centaur is Chiron). Narnia is an example; Harry Potter another.

What is more, the Northern temperament in The Pilgrim's Regress is not opposed, as such, to savagery or indulgence - even if austerity is one manifestation of it. The giant 'heroic nihilist' Savage feasts and drinks (from the skulls of his enemies, no less). Among his followers, one tribe is listed as 'Gangomani' (others being Marxomanni, Mussolimini and Swastici). Given the Northern temperament and the time of writing, the persons conjured are more likely the loyal triggermen of Capone-esque mob bosses than desperate muggers and school drop-outs. The Gangster, as conjured, is hardly teetotal or celibate - but rather indulges his passions at a given moment. Consider the stoic, cold maxim of Coppola's The Godfather: "It's not personal. It's strictly business."

So, yes, you can do a Marlon Brando impression as a centaur mob boss and not have be out of place. Moving away from such a specific genre trope, the 'work hard-play hard' culture would not be unfitting for a Regress-Northern character. Indeed, if the most Regress-Northern one can be is somewhat like Savage, the most 'centaur-esque' centaur need not be unlike the violent, rapacious classical centaur. 

Having taken you on that little journey, let's descend back to a firmer footing.  What does a Fifty-Two Pages centaur class look like?

THE CENTAUR

Size: 2

HP - d6+1+ CON +/-.

Attack Modifiers - None, initially
Mind Save 7 + WIS +/-
Speed Save 5 + DEX+/-
Body Save  7 + CON +/-

Knowledge    Notice Detail   Hear Noise   Handiwork   Stealth   Athletics
      [XX]               [ ]                        [X]              [ ]              [X]             [X]

Starts with one extra Language, and Spells: 2+INT bonus.

Level Advancement: +1 Melee, +1 Missile every Fourth Level
                                    +1 to all Saves every Odd Level
                                    +2 Spells per level

Centaur movement is as a Heavy Warhorse; that is, 15. However, climbing or anything that involves gripping with the feet is more difficult. Even a simple obstacle counts as Hard.

Spells cast as Prophet. A Centaur, as Regress-Northern belongs to "rigid systems whether sceptical or dogmatic, Aristocrats, Stoics, Pharisees, Rigorists, signed and sealed members of highly organised 'Parties'." This limits their spell choice, just as a Prophet's faith does.

Likewise, it gives them a 'sacred' weapon. There is a weapon emblematic of their creed; one they are trained or accustomed to use. To return to the Gangster-Centaur, this may merely be that Our Gang uses Baseball bats and The Gang the Next Block Over uses straight razors. (This starts to sound less like The Godfather and more like The Warriors).

Centaur encumbrance, as a dwarf, is as a STR 18 character. However, a third of these slots must be packed and unpacked by another character. (The human torso cannot turn 360 degrees.)

A Centaur can be ridden as a horse (though there may be taboos about this). However, it encumbers (as riding a horse) and may interfere with the centaur's abilities.

Much as Half-Giants, for armour to count as full-body, it must be built for a centaur. A humanoid mail-shirt (or similar cuirass) can be worn, but counts as Partial.

***

I am not an equestrian myself and have concentrated in this post more on cultural ideas than biological ones. Readers may wish to examine the SFF and Equines column from Tor Books. There are even some centaur specific posts, with this convenient diagram.

Opposites Detract and Ante-Eden Adventures

Tying into the last post on the Monastery of the Sword...

A design principle for Terrae Vertebrae was that initially that the races elder to humanity had an influence on different cultural strands of nations and states in Vertebrea. Succinctly put, contact with polytheist Dwarves drew out one set of religious impulses; contact with pantheist Elves drew out quite another. This wasn't quite carried over as fully as it might be into the full thing, but the shaped stone was re-used.

So then: Dwarves are polytheist, individualistic - libertarian even. Not unwilling to cooperate with one another, but rather self-reliant and self-driven. This notion of the Dwarf is in part a reaction from what has been before.

(No Scots accents. In writing this, it did occur to me that the dwarf of cliche might be seen as a melding of unpleasant Caledonian stereotypes: Dour Calvinistic pennypinchers and/or drunken berserkers. This needn't be the only route for Dwarves. I recall one conversation about a Renaissance Italy inspired setting in which Switzerland was an inspiration: mountains, independence, banking, heavy infantry.)

Further, there's something rather grounded about this, in terms of how it fits together. If anyone can do the whole 'pulling oneself up by the bootstraps' affair, or is able to live self-sufficnetly away from civilisation, it will be the folk who endure hardship better than humans, or are better craftsmen, or can carry greater loads. Dwarf as self-made man? If you like. 

Elves (same link as above) are panthiest and community focused. If everything is divine, everything deserves respect.  Vegetarian aside from when a beast must be culled- they can innately sense when this is acceptable. ‘Utopian’ culture [peaceful and harmonious to inhuman or impossible levels; good-place and no-place]; innate understanding and empathy for the group.  Would be confused and distressed that a human does not want to join in the games. This descends by stages into something that reaches the faintly dystopian as things get altogether Brave New World or altogether silly as things start to resemble the Flower Children of the 1960s - or an understanding thereof.

At least since Tolkien, Elves have been in touch with nature; being sensitive of the world around them and the people of it. That the keen-eyed and long-lived would become socially apt and unwilling to disrupt is not perhaps surprising - only a little less sensical than libertarian Dwarves.

Here is one set of opposing influences. Another is the Giants and the Fey.

The Fey I did not spend much time on, beyond imagining them to be out there, much of a piece with Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Whimsical, otherworldly, cruel, immensely powerful but bound by codes of manners.

The Giants are described here. Vast humanoid beings, adept in the ways of the world, intensely physical. The inspiration is more Jack the Giantkiller than Jotunheim, but the Nephilim and Tim Powers had a lot to do with it.

The Giants are of the world and things physical; the Fey are of another world and things magical: appearances, illusions. A Giant is, in stories, often easily fooled: their senses, however acute, are deceived. The Fey are repelled by the things of this world: iron, notably. Even common courtesies such as being thanked; codes of obligation and respect. Rumplestiltskin even resisted having his name known. Of course, a Giant as such is altogether too much to be put into a game - hence Half-Giants. The Fey equivalent - which I never as such concived - would likely be the Changeling.

Finally, then, the Caprine. The Faun and Satyr. What are they? What do they represent? I have thought of them as wilful (not untrue) or worldly (if not in the Giant physical-power definition of the term). Neither is untrue, but neither seem enough.

A solution: they are the 'Southern' influences of C. S. Lewis's The Pilgrim's Regress discussed and more fully defined here.  Just how Southern is a matter for individual Caprines.

I never fully conceived of a Northern kindred to set against them, though less worldly Lewis creations like the Sorns did occur to me. The Pilgrim's Regress does have Northern - and deliberately non-human - Dwarves, though the term has been used already and to represent something different. But the rigid systems and rigours of Northern life do suggest a cousin of the Dwarf: the Duergar - or the Dvargir of Veins of the Earth, devoted only to Work and Blood (which is very Northern; just ask the giant Savage). Not that the Caprine-opposite would necessarily hit those extremes. Centaurs - so often portrayed in modern works as wise and stern sages - might be another alternative (perhaps they have rejected their wilder past, and thus cling to strict rules).

***

This is all very interesting, but what use is it?

Well, the balancing point of all this is Man; the neutral, the centre ground. If you will.

But let us imagine a setting - let us call it Ante-Eden or Proto-Vertebrae - before humanity is created and placed in Vertebrea. There is explictly a Creator, but a distant one. It may be the Eightfold God, but there is no Eightfold Faith - for reasons best known to the Creator, Aspects of the Godhead or such concerned

These six proposed races exist in a land (Giants Proper and the Fey in the background). Those races opposed to one another are in tension, possibly even conflict - with allaiances of convenience with the other four.

The six races can fit nicely mechanically into the classes of The 52 Pages. Dwarves and Elves are pre-existing, Caprines replace Gnomes, Half-Giants as Fighters, Changelings as Wizards. 'Northerners' (centaurs/sorns/duergar) are Prophets: limited in weapon selection - they are only trained or restricted by a code to one weapon - and limited, if skilful in choice of spells (unless heterodox wizards). Rogues rather slip to one side. If nothing else, this is an explanation for the different powers of Character Classes.

This would be sufficient by itself: adventures in a young land, full of energy and antediluvian beasts. A party of adventurers driven by contradictory impulses.

But then a legion of angels claim a patch of prime real estate and start laying out wonderful gardens. How will these protagonists respond to the coming race? The promised capstone of creation? Will they make common cause with a Miltonian Lucifer-analogue? Will they welcome the new inhabitant of the world? How disappointed will they be in humankind (as personified by Ask/Embla, Meschia/Meschiane, &c.)?

[To return to Lewis again, you may wish to read Perelandra.]

This is fertile ground - though it seems quite devoid of ruins and dungeons. Not to mention a theological mire. But fertile enough that I should like to put together a Changeling class for The 52 Pages, and to sketch out the Northerner or Anti-Caprine.

The Monastery on the Sword: Part One

...in which an adventure is laid out.

It is written that there was a great giant that once stalked the moors. He would seize by force or terror all that he could, threatening death by the sword for those that resisted. Those that resisted him, by magics or might were killed, stabbed or crushed as took the giants fancy.

The dungeons and vaults of his home filled with captives and loot. But one day, he came across a Holy Man, a great saint. His words compelled the giant, so that he could not do else but listen. When the Holy Man was finished speaking, he realised the weight and horror of his sins, and on that spot he thrust his sword into the earth.

The body of the Holy Man is preserved in a distant abbey. The Giant spent five years in prayer and good works, then left these lands, never to be seen again. But out on the moor, the sword remains, thrust upright into the dark earth, stark against the sky.

Whatever the truth of this tale and those like it, the sword remains. Because of the history of the blade  and desirous of solitude it became the site of hermits - in fact, stylites. Those who could mount to the hilt of the sword, there to be alone, closer to the Divine, sheer under the eyes of Heaven.

The community of the religious expanded and integrated into the present-day orthodox faith. But the Monastery retains its unique characteristic: a settlement below, and cells above on the sword. Indeed, this has become a real advantage of the Monastery. It is a wonder, an attraction for pilgrims. It is a splendid vantage point for charting routes, or for a beacon to offer a path across the fog-wreathed moors. It is a stronghold against most anything that might assail the monks. It is likewise a secure place for a vault, full of the riches of the pilgrim trade - and for the coffers of the great and the good seeking security.

This is a wealthy and prosperous place, if fatalistically overshadowed by a towering blade, some hundred yards high. But is all as it seems?

***
Quick note: Column One is a straightforward rumour, that might be communicated by any given person with an inkling of the Monastery. ]

Column Two is the 'crossroads'. It might be an extension or explanation of the rumour ('Straight Over'); it might be a shocking twist ('Veer left/right'); it might be an outright contradiction ('Double Back') - or some combination of these. The crossroads presumably comes from somebody 'in the know'. There will be a worked example further down.

RUMOUR	CROSSROADS
The famous vault at the hilt is empty.	The monks have been running a fraud all along.
There have been a series of mysterious deaths at the base of the sword.	The influence of the Giant lingers in the blade - the Giant, that is, in his wilder days.
A gang of bandits have been seen around the monastery, terrorising pilgrims.	The bandits have a high-profile contact within the monastery.
One studious monk has concluded that the Giant was instructed to place the sword in that mound specifically by the Holy Man.	The Giant was indeed so instructed - as part of an expansionist scheme by the Church to push back the fey from that region. The steel sword did a genuine number on the Ley lines.
The monks have not been behaving in a very monk-like fashion; lewd, greedy, extravagantly comic - or else are oddly intense and devoted to their duties.	This is the influence of the fey folk: either they are bespelling the monks, placing them under the influence of the chaotic fey, or they have failed to do so, producing the opposite reaction: order, to inhuman levels.
A local nobleman resents supplying the large quantities of oil used by the monks to polish the great blade (in return for a mere peppercorn).	Among the many pilgrims, there is a skilful thief who hopes to steal the charter that confirms this. The missing charter would put the noble in an advantageous position if it goes to law.
The portion of the blade in the mound is almost rusted through.	It is indeed - and the monks are making regular high payments to the Wizard’s Guild in order to keep back the malign rust.
A band of half-giants from the north are coming to the monastery. They believe the blade is the secret to becoming as their giant ancestors.	It is not possible to become a giant. It may be possible to gain the soul of a giant.

RUMOUR: Fraser the butcher told you that the vault in the hilt is empty.

STRAIGHT OVER: It is! The pilgrim trade isn't what it was; the vaults have been emptied by desperate monks.

VEER LEFT: What are you talking about? The Vault is full. But there are dead bodies accumulating by the foot of the sword, because of the influence of the Giant that persists in this place.

DOUBLE BACK: The vault is full. Fraser doesn't know a bloody thing.

***

Two notes on Setting:

1) I have used my own, largely medieval European Terrae Vertebrae setting as a background for this. That said, I think it sufficiently flexible to end up in a number of settings with a powerful established religion, pilgrimage, giants, &c. It seems like it could be placed very well in, for instance, a Buddhist monastery of Tang dynasty China - or something like it. I have been deliberately vague about the Holy Man - who could be a Saint of the Church, or a Bodhisattva. The larger than life deeds of Buddhist divines in for instance, Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West, could fit the story quite well.

2) Giants, Half-Giants and other notions in the above derive partially from ideas developed in Terrae Vertebrae. It may be desirable to familiarise oneself with them, however rooted in well-estalbsihed myth they may be.

***

COMING ATTRACTIONS: the folk and places of the monastery, and its surroundings.

A Terrae Vertebrae rooted background article, tangentially related. 

Plato's Critias: An Aspect

I have been briefly digging back into Plato. The Timaeus and the Critias are those dialogue where we first have a mention of Atlantis, for those who are interested (there's a lot more to it, naturally, but Atlantis is there).

Put out of your mind the ocean, the bridges, the viaducts, the canals, the sunken land. Consider in isolation the following:

There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Poseidon; and the ten kings, being left alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the god that they might secure a sacrifice which was acceptable to him, hunted the bulls, with clubs and nooses but no metal weapon; and the bull which they caught they led up to the pillar and cut its throat* over the top of it so that the blood over the inscription. Now on the pillar, besides the laws, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty curses on the disobedient. When therefore, after slaying the bull in the accustomed manner, they had burnt its limbs, they filled a bowl of wine and cast in a clot of blood for each of them; the rest of the victim they put in the fire, after having purified the column all round. Then they drew from the bowl in golden cups and pouring a libation on the fire, they swore that they would judge according to the laws on the pillar, and would punish him who in any point had already transgressed them, and that for the future they would not, if they could help, offend against the writing on the pillar, and would neither command others, nor obey any ruler who commanded them, to act otherwise than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This was the prayer which each of them-offered up for himself and for his descendants, at the same time drinking and dedicating the cup out of which he drank in the temple of the god; and after they had supped and satisfied their needs, when darkness came on, and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful blue robes, and, sitting on the ground, at night, over the embers of the sacrifices by which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of them had an accusation to bring against any one; and when they given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down their sentences on a golden tablet, and dedicated it together with their robes to be a memorial.

[Translation from Wikisource/Desmond Lee in the Penguin Classics edition]

(*I can only imagine with a knife of hard wood or stone or bone.)


There is an almost Mesopotamian air about this: the violence of the hunt, the robes, the inscriptions. Part of me almost wishes them to don the blue robes in the sacrifice, so that memorials are of robes stained with blood and ash. The whole thing has the air of ritual and magic, with the primality of animal sacrifice and the antiquity of wooden weapons. If you were to tell me the barbarians of the Chaos Wastes got up to this sort of thing on high days and holidays, it would not surprise me. For Plato, it is so unexpectedly...metal (if you will).

No wider point here, even if I might use this in something sometime. Just thought I'd share it.

The Gardens of Ynn: Some Thoughts

It is perhaps a minor mark of my descent and status that I have spent a certain amount of time wandering around parklands attached to stately homes, or about botanical gardens. There is a certain odd feel to this; something a little unsettling about bright sunshine and places built to take advantage of that. It is not an environment untouched by human hands, or one shaped for a specific function, like a ploughed field (which still retains certain characteristics of landscape and place). Such gardens are larger than any mansion: they are not enclosed by a ceiling; even a greenhouse is in some sense open to the sky. If such a place is well-kept and tended, it takes on a feel of its own, quite unlike other sub-urban gardens, carefully kept in line with their homesteads, or the minor cultivation of a village green.

The process of walking through them, as an outsider, need not be off-putting (though the carefully planned village and grounds of Portmeirion was used as the set for that classic of television The Prisoner for a reason). But it is quite different from many other such interactions. A few things come close: exploring some of the sites of Classical Greece and Rome - my mind goes more towards Olympia and Epidaurus than Pompeii or Mycenae (bits of the video game The Talos Principle get close to this) I think a long time spent in the rows of a vineyard might come close. A garden centre or nursery might also be like this, in a distant and diminished way (the commercial aspect is distracting - archeological sites and stately homes only try and sell you something in the gift shop).

All this may well be by way of saying that Emmy Allen is mining a promising seam, if she wishes the Gardens of Ynn to truly be, as the subtitle has it, gardens 'of surreal delights'. What is more, I suspect that the garden element resonates a little stronger in this work than any element of the inspirations she cites - however clear the signs of Wonderland, Narnia or Ghibli are in the paths of this enchanted place.

I shall note, by way of ending this segment, that Gene Wolfe knew what he was doing in putting temporal distortions and unrealities in the Botanic Gardens in the city of Nessus (The Book of the New Sun, The Shadow of the Torturer) - and also that if you plan to run The Gardens of Ynn, it would be worth spending a few hours in a set of gardens yourself, acquiring the grammar of horticulture before attempting dialectic or rhetoric (consider also this interview with Jacob Hurst; spend some time with a flower catalogue or some other source of botanical vocabulary).

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Of the Gardens of Ynn, then, what may be said? They are a set of gardens, in a 'perpendicular world', accessed by supernatural -if worryingly simple - means. But this once luxurious place has been devastated: it is in ruins, with the machinery that once sustained it erratic or broken. The creators are dead, fled or debased. That which destroys it lingers still - as do many of the inhabitants. [More aesthetics of ruin?]

The environment it invokes is both marvellous and pitiful: think of an abandoned or neglected greenhouse, the plants within grown too large, pushing dusty panes of glass out of shabby frames. I have emphasised above the strangeness of a well-maintained and vast garden (vast in terms of size, but sub-divided many times into discreet areas: walled gardens, hothouses, firing ranges, hedge mazes - few, if any, rolling fields). Allen provides a decent collection of ways in which it may be very much not well-maintained.  My instinct would be to allow the early stages of exploration to be in relatively well-preserved and uninhabited parts of the Gardens. The exploration system leans towards this, though it would not ensure it. Perhaps Layer Zero (that closest to the point of ingress) could have a few sub-divisions explorers wander through as a kind of overture to set the mood of the piece, though it would be likely contrary to the feel of Gardens or OSR principles of design to have this continue for long.

Those ruined locations are naturally teeming with danger. Ancient devices and magics abound - often of a genteel, tough hardly less than perilous disposition. The location details table offers a double layer of variation to all this (and could again be left of for Layer Zero). The parasite table is, naturally enough, teeming with all the horror things that grow or crawl can produce.

On top of these, the beasts and inhabitants that still roam the gardens have the same air of distorted purposes and reduced natures: golem gardeners or those decorative raptors, the peahawks. Here especially Allen shows her influences in the form of living chess sets and piscine or batrachian servants (and, yes, The Jabberwock). The presence of vast Ambulatory Puddings is inexplicable (does one make or consume puddings in the garden?) but very welcome indeed. There are twenty puddings and they are all super; I may have to make a few of my own.

All this is without considering the dreams, or mysterious musics that provide insight through 'synesthetic psychedelia'. Likewise, without considering that which devastated the Gardens, or what those Gardens become in their furthest extremities. I shall not venture to say much on either. Both are in keeping with the air of the Gardens, but there is no perfect end or final act to The Gardens of Ynn. This is quite proper: it is an interlude, a stroll in the gardens - not a forced march, an epic trek or a cavalry charge. This might be smaller, but it is not lesser, or shabbier. Besides, you are warned going in that it is for lower-level (if not lowest level) parties.

Give it a try, by all means. But it may be something that needs easing into: a tone must be evoked and set by a conscientious GM - just like any other adventure, perhaps. But certainly the case in this tight and enclosed place of magic and artifice.

See here for Emmy Allen's blog and here for a place to purchase The Gardens of Ynn.