alex994
Hail Divine Emperor!
Expressing interest: Padimon's clan on peninsula east of the Pale City.
I'll give more when I get around to it.
I'll give more when I get around to it.
And while I could come up with detailed lineages for every player's family, as well as historical events contributing to mentalities and dispositions, I feel it would be contrived in comparison to making our way through 1,000 years of time with fast-paced updates. I want detailed family trees, reasons for lords are acting the way they are acting, baskets of casus belli, developed regional cultures, and so on. I could do it all by myself -- I did not change things around out of laziness.
But far better to get a few exceptional players together to interact from the beginning of settlement on Jyotnos, than to put those players in the shoes of lords they have little knowledge of themselves, dealing with unconvincing rivalries.
This NES will eventually become a story about many things: war, politics, and empire, to name a few of the most important concepts. All of this will be within a world where magic is all but dead, unknown to those who enjoy more practical pursuits, but still living as a flicker in far-away lands.
-> Most clans revere Luseysi and his subsequent heirs as a supreme god. The nine prophets who assisted Luseysi in the migrations are considered saints (Daryan, Erveta, Haimara, Innadi, Kolanty, Lioten, Padimon, Rodisana, and Serlensi).
The emperor's authority is religious moreso than political, though he does offer a considerable unifying presence.
-> Technology is at a mid-iron age level. Of course, we won't stay there.
<snip> Stuff about religion <snip>
Padimon: The Linguist. It was said that he knew over a thousand languages, including the languages of fire and birds. He was long treated as a heretic, until he came to Luseysi's aid, when Luseysi could not communicate with some of the fringe chiefdoms.
The Strategos said:One thousand years is a long time, the longest recorded family feud lasted ~400 years, why in the world would you need almost three times that length to explain a lord’s motivation? Also consider that any history is going to be as much mythologizing as recording what modern westerners would consider “history.” It is much more likely that a “recent” feud will be given a mytho-historic past than 100+ year history will impact present interactions.
The history of NESing seems to heavily suggest your fears are unfounded.
If there is anything that history has taught us, it is that for Pre-Enlightenment humans, magic does not actually need to exist for magic to be seen as fundamentally central to their worldview, even in the most “philosophical” and “rational” cultures (yes Rome and Greece, I am looking at you). I see no reason for it not to be the same case here.
I really am confused by your insistence on using “saint” terminology. Polytheism has bequeathed us so many more terms that encapsulate what you are trying to describe without bringing along the ideas of moral behavior that are encapsulated in the word “saint.”
This is a very abrupt shift in the meaning and function of the “Emperor.” It has only been ten years since the death of an Emperor wielding great political and military power and already the position has been emasculated to such an extent?
You said late-bronze above.
“Heretic” should be a meaningless term in the religious structure you have created. Perhaps you meant heathen (which while still anachronistic is at least a better term)?
Your religion section appears to me to be a little confused. Without forcing my ideas of what the religion should be I merely suggest that you consider the “newness” of the cult. Of course the spread of the cult is considerably helped by the polytheistic (ancestor worship?) culture so that people can add the cult to their old cults. Which should be emphasized (for the player’s sake if for no one elses), polytheists do not “convert” they “add.”
You mention that temples may contain statues of the old gods who no longer function as deities, but there is really no reason to replace them (unless the previous gods were locale-based deities, the gods of particular cities, forests, streams, mountains, etc. and for whatever reason the gods did not migrate with the people).
In addition, what concrete steps did Luseysi do to promote his worship during his lifetime.
As it is only 10 years since his death, his worship is really going to center around the places he promoted (which for purely political as well as sociological reasons will be mainly urban, and probably close to the capital) and the places those who wanted to flatter him built.
As for the issue about whether or not to start at such an early point in our history, or later, I am open to suggestions. As I've said, I'm not a veteran NESer. I don't know what NESers are capable of overall. No offense to you all, but not sure if its in our best interests to develop the world from scratch -- in fact, it very well could create more inconsistencies than do the opposite.
North King said:1) The Emperor? If this is possible, it might be fun to play a largely symbolic figure and write about politics in the Pale City. But I understand if it wouldn't be.
I am not describing a polytheistic religion. I am describing a monotheistic one.
The dictionary explains a saint as, "A person acknowledged as holy or virtuous." I thought it to be a fairly neutral term, compared to other religious words.
I was caught between him encouraging worship, or those around him encouraging it, or both. Did he encourage followers to write texts of his life, which became some sort of canon? Did he encourage the populace not to worship him altogether, but instead to respect his authority, as well as the authority of his heirs (and tell the populace to "worship the moon")? Did he know the area of his death would swell with followers only a decade after he passed?
The Strategos said:Really? I completely did not get that from what you described. I’ll just leave it with saying, eww.
I thought that this religion was polytheistic and assumed that it had the same character as virtually all polytheistic religions (in the west) in that ethics and religion were divorced. You can see, therefore, how as I was assuming ethics and religion were naturally divorced I would disagree with a term that is so heavily invested with moralistic meaning.
Remember the absolute rarity of written texts about a god-man during or even shortly after their lifetimes. Of the eastern religions, I know Gautama’s life wasn’t recorded for around 400 years after his death. In Greco-Roman religions, Apollonius didn’t have a life until 100 years passed (granted, Life of Apollonius did claim to use earlier written sources such as one by Apollonius’ disciple Damis, which is currently unknown outside the claim to be used by Life). The more familiar Jesus didn’t have written stories until ~40 years after his death. Autobiographies don’t come around until ~300 CE. Of course you can change literary history as this world has no connection with our more familiar world, but these things do suggest that it is at the very least unlikely for there to be written documents of a religious nature (as opposed to oral stories or say political decrees) about the Emperor so soon after his death.
I like this idea of multiple interpretations of the same faith which will develop through the "pre-medieval" era of the NES. On a more general note, [bear with me here], possibly Luseysi claims that he and his descendents would be the physical avatars of the Jade Moon and thus deserving of worship? I would think this the second most common claim of holiness (the first, I guess, is to claim to be descendant of a god... maybe this is more likely seeing their concern about bloodlines?)Luysesanor was meant to be monotheistic, in that its belief set is allied to a single, unifying force (abstractly, the light of the jade moon and the personification of that satellite -- and the fertility and guidance it brings; more literally, the worship of a god-king [will it last?]). Yet I have intentionally left things open-ended, so as to encourage worldbuilding from players eager to define the nuances.
A good idea is to ask every one to donate a piece of text about X event, and leave it rather general to allow creative juices flow. Say, do this once every turn during the pre-medieval updates. You take the texts you got (and they will be very varied) and pick the "best", but add elements from other stories in. Perhaps pick another divergent story and make a stand alone secondary verse. Example would be "What is his last Sermon at the Pale City?" and then weaving together each of our's personal tales into a single, generally agreed but wildly interpreted text.Excellent point. Then, would it not make sense for players to create their own orders from scratch, complete with written texts woven together with oral histories and given potential political agendas? I suppose I could come up with everything, and start us out further on, but it might be interesting if we can develop this from the onset, in-game. Though I'd also be more than willing to begin 100 years after Luseysi's death.
Terrance888 said:Defeating a tribe becomes defeating a hydra. Fording rivers becomes killing a river serpent. Saving a life becomes saving an entire clan with his bare arms, and offering short words of wisdom becomes great sermons about the meaning of life...