(Just to keep the players on their toes, I started them off with a piece of mythology that was surprisingly ... accurate. This was The First Pilgrimage, the tale of the people of Cha.)
We return to the eastern continent. The Ovron sorcerer tribes are the most advanced civilization of the plains, possessing mathematics, currency, a code of laws, bronze, and drama, but they are by no means the only civilization. There are others.
First, the Drogol. They have adapted to life on the unpredictable tornado-swept plains by becoming nomads. They plant ground as they find it, abandon it just as easily, and harvest from whichever fields seem to have survived the stormy season. Their agricultural methods are slipshod, as they spend no more effort than necessary — their philosophy is, “Why bother? The winds may come north this year.” They carry most of what they need on the backs of donkeys. The Drogol are a polytheistic culture just barely out of the Stone Age; they have and can work bronze, but they rarely mine it themselves. Like the Ovron, their southern neighbors, they believe in a demon-filled world where forces of nature are wielded against helpless humanity. The Drogol, however, have given up trying to appease them. “Why bother?” they say. “There is always another demon.”
The only city of note among the Drogol is Olghoq, a semipermanent camp and bazaar, usually found in the same general area but prone to moving every year.
What the Drogol have become, living on the fringes of Ovron society and taking what they can to survive, is very skilled raiders. The Drogol have inherited the fatalism of the Ovron and converted it into a daredevil code of machismo. Tempting fate is not sufficient for the Drogol; they must poke Fate in the eye and call him a pansy.
It isn’t any wonder that the Drogol developed the arts of magical camouflage and of swift movement, for their lifestyle depends on fast strikes, attacks from ambush, unseen reconnaissance, and quick retreats. Surprisingly, their culture is accepting and egalitarian, unlike the Ovron; in a world where a downtrodden lower class can simply ride off to the next hilltop and start his own rival clan, laws and castes are not strictly enforced. The mark of a good leader is solving his clan’s problems with diplomacy, and fighting other Drogol as little as possible. “Why bother?” they ask. “You never know how many you’re fighting.”
The Drogol commonly raid their more settled neighbors to the north, the Ototek. The Ototek are mired in the Stone Age, but they live in well-built cities for all of that. They have observed and learned from their southern neighbors; the best-traveled among them know what the Ovron cities of the plains look like, and they have done their best to imitate them. The walls of Bihotinep are stone, their buildings are stone; and the impressive ziggurats that serve as temples are also made of massive, cut blocks of stone. All was built by hand, for the Ototek have few beasts of burden available to them, and with the little magic that they know.
The Ototek still recall the stories of Chamandra and the sacrifice to the sea god, although in their more modern adaptations, Chamandra is the god Monka, the sun god, and humans are sacrificed for his pleasure. The Ototek use their Stone-Aged weapons for gladiatorial combat, taking the ancient survival-of-the-fittest habits of the Brun to grisly new heights. Elaborate combat arenas have been set up for the Ototek’s enjoyment; the competitors are sometimes Ototek criminals, or captives from other nearby cultures, the Drogol raiders especially. The fight is always to the death; only the winner has the honor of being sacrificed to Monka. Sometimes the Ototek release prisoners into the arena with wild beasts for blood sport.
This shockingly primitive culture had the ill fortune to arise in a region without copper, without tin, and without even gold; the only metals at their disposal are erratic iron ores that can be found on the surface, and silver — which, for the most part, they haven’t the tools to extract. They are the survivors of a prehistoric line of Brun tribesmen that crossed the land bridge without any surviving magic users. As a consequence, their magic rituals are entirely their own, developed independently as magical talent arose among them. Their spells often involve ritual sacrifice, blood, entrails, flame, and boiling skulls. Berries smeared on the face, only in season.
The third culture north of the Ovron lives on the Gulf of Dawn. The Cha are far advanced in technology and culture beyond the Ototek and the Drogol, but they are not numerous. Their society is conservative and ancient, but fragile. They have advanced bronze working and metal casting, silver currency, mathematics, and music. They are the only culture on the eastern continent to possess both horses and cattle; they have cotton from Sathad, rice from Thos Ophos, and skelt from Skeltern. They sail in the Gulf of Dawn using boats reminiscent of the Bazik catamarans; they write their stories and draw maps using an alphabet derived from the Jorannian cuneiform. Their advanced technology is a patchwork, as if they had drawn at random a selection of inventions the world over, each from a different period in history. The Cha seek to understand their technology as best they can, but their people are relatively few, only twenty thousand or so, and they cannot by themselves reproduce and improve upon the efforts of all the inventors of the world. At best, their understanding of technology is a synthesis of the work of others.
The leader of the Cha is Chamandra (M; ~56,250). He and all his people are immortal. They are his descendants, and have inherited from him the ability to reincarnate. Technically, this means they are all related, although the relationships are usually more complex; a reincarnated spirit may be reborn into a different family than his previous incarnation.
Prior to death, the people of Cha perform rituals that they have developed over the years. The rituals encourage the reincarnated spirit to be reborn close to home, often within their own village. If the departed person cannot be reincarnated within the village, he or she is born into a different race somewhere in a nearby culture. The child is then raised in the new culture, and upon reaching adulthood he or she makes a pilgrimage back to Shezy.
The people of the Gulf of Dawn are avid star-watchers and have named a great many constellations in the heavens. The stars help guide them back to their native lands when they become reborn in a far corner of the globe. They know many languages, for as they are reborn they learn a new native tongue; and they study maps to help them return home.
Once every few lives, a Cha will die without benefit of ritual. This is sometimes deliberately done, and sometimes the result of accident or misadventure. The departed Cha will become reborn in any distant culture in the world, living his life among other people and learning their technology, before eventually finding his way back. Some Cha are gone for generations, unable to get back during one life, and forced to wait until the next. The period between death and eventual return to the city of Shezy is known as the Pilgrimage, and it is through these Pilgrimages that the Cha have acquired such a potpourri of useful knowledge the world over. Some enterprising Cha heroes even managed to bring back breeding pairs of livestock, crop seeds, and ships.
The Cha are facing no immediate danger; there is no crisis on the horizon; there is no prophecy of disaster. The people are, after all, effectively immortal — sometimes people don’t come back from death — but otherwise there are few earthly threats that worry the Cha. All things can be overcome in time, and Chamandra has had more than enough time.
That, in fact, is the problem. Chamandra, the leader, has summoned the gods privately, apart from his people, to demand an answer to his existential crisis.
“Great gods,” he says, “I do not know why you have put me here on this Earth to be born again and again, and to die again and again. I have lived for more years than I can remember: one year for every day in a hundred years, or even more. I have lost count.
“I have seen every corner of the earth, I think, and I have been born under every star, and met every king of this earth. I am tired of being reborn, great gods, when I do not know my purpose.
“When I was younger, I enjoyed my immortality. I had been cleansed at the hands of the Four Warriors, personally blessed by the spirits, and sent on my way, and I was deathless. But I learned to be not so rash, and to protect my people as I swore I would do. I have tried to keep my people safe, and teach them the Pilgrimage, and show them the world. My people look up to me. I am the Eldest.
“But I implore you, Four Warriors—” here he looks at Temu— “and this goddess of foreign lands whom I know not, please tell me my purpose on this Earth. I have gathered knowledge here in Shezy. I have seen the Earth. I have lived for tens of thousands of years. There are those, whom I have seen, who live in lands to the south, and they worship the name of Chamandra as if I were a god. I am no god. I have not the power of the heavens to save mankind. My only power is to die. Tell me, great gods, teach me my purpose on this earth, or take this burden away from me. I can go on no further.”
What The Players Decided
At first, hearing the story of The First Pilgrimage, the Players gloated to hear that finally, some civilization somewhere didn't revere Chamandra or treat him as an all-knowing savior. The Chamandra of The First Pilgrimage was arrogant, cocky, boastful, and was humbled by the things he had experienced. I'm sure the Players were pleased to see their arch-enemy brought low, even as they were curious where this Event was going.
Then we came to the actual civilization that Chamandra had built, despite being surrounded by barbarism. They heard Chamandra's plea to release him from his burden of immortality. They saw the repentance and the humility.
"He's repenting now, I like it," said Connor.
"I know," Dave cried. "It sucks. I kinda feel sorry for him now, all those years he had to live."
"What did we do to him?" Jack asked. He had been present for the original cleansing ritual, way back in Year 50,000.
"Somebody made up a ritual," Joe said darkly in Connor's general direction.
"Was he immortal before that, though? He said he was immortal. He probably already knew," Connor said.
Chamandra had said that the Sea God had promised him that he was immortal, I reminded the Players.
"So what do we do with him? Can we take him up to the afterlife* with us?"
"He's one of us," Connor insisted.
"He's not one of us," Joe said. Joe had had enough of Chamandra for all these centuries. So had I, frankly; that's why I wrote this scenario.
"We have to take him with us," Connor insisted.
"Are you saying if he's tired of coming back," Joe said, "he has to ascend and come up here... with us?"
"He'd be the new guy," Dave said. "He'd get to do all the crappy jobs."
"He's not going to be one of us," Joe said firmly.
"Even if we get rid of him, there's a whole city full of Chamandra," Connor said. "They're all Chamandra. We can't get rid of him completely."
"They're not Chamandra. Maybe they just have a culture that really believes in reincarnation," Joe said.
Then how do they keep coming back from all over the world, with everybody else's inventions? I asked.
"That's how the painting got down there!" Connor said, realizing what it all meant. He was referring to the pictographic representation of the Cleansing Ritual that had been painted on the cliff walls on the island of Joranne. That had puzzled them mightily at the time; how did the Jorannian people find out about Chamandra? They had their explanation.
"Chamandra probably painted it himself," Jack said.
"They're still not all Chamandra," Joe said, getting back to the town of Shezy.
No, I agreed. They're descended from him. At some point he had a wife, or wives, who gave him sons and daughters. Some of them were reborn in nearby tribes, the Drogol or the Ototek or the Brun, and they walked back. That's how their culture has grown over the centuries, and why they have such a diverse racial stock. They're literally made up of every race on Earth. Some more than others, of course.
"What are we going to do with him?" the Players asked each other.
"We'll tell him that his work is done," Dave said. "That his purpose was to build this civilization, and now he can rest. We'll take him to the afterlife. He can sit down with Dytoclanes and play chess with him, or something."
"He'll have to choose a successor," Connor said.
"No," Joe said, putting his foot down. "Let them worry about that. That's not our job. If Chamandra had wanted to pick a successor, he'd have given us three people to pick from, or something. We take care of him and we're done."
"I still think he's one of us," Connor said.
"He's not coming with us," Joe said.
"What do we tell his people?" Connor asked. "That he died and went to heaven?"
They're astrologers, I said. Point up at some stars in the sky and say, That's Chamandra.
"I like it," Connor said.
Results
I won't know the results of this round until I have prepared for the next round.
*Earlier in the evening we had become diverted into a discussion about the Afterlife, and how it might appear in this world. Dave's suggestion was for a tiny little place for the good people to go, and a tiny place for the bad people, and a vast cosmic space in between known as the Weaselly Middle Ground. On a more serious note, the Players did wonder what it was that their god-characters might be doing in between the times they were summoned to the planet. Was there an afterlife? they wondered. A Mount Olympus, a Valhalla? What do we do in between crises? "If there is an afterlife, and we have anything to say about it," Dave said, "I'm going to make sure that philosopher, Dytoclanes, is set up. Nice summer place, the works. Every time you give me a hard time about the Weaselly Middle Ground, I'm gonna quote that guy at you."
No comments:
Post a Comment