Year 50,000: Exile Of The Swift Hand Tribe

Previous history

     Year 0: The Uman's six-fingered child is saved
          Year 30,000:  The Mannut discover mining

(To give the players the proper background for this scenario, I gave them The Tale of Uman the Hunter and the Feast of Four Stones.)

The tribes of Mannut have mined the original veins of copper for thousands of years, off and on.  One tribe or another attempted to extract useful ore from the site until the lode was played out.  That location is now long abandoned, because the clan, now called the Evanu, haven’t the technology to remove copper from ore.  They did learn the basics of mining, which taught them how to search chalk beds for flint, and how to mine for salt.

Salt, of course, has many uses, and must be found everywhere that humans settle.  These tribes use salt as a meat preservative, and use salt to consecrate the graves of their dead.  It is, however, much easier to gather salt along the sea, for the sea also provides food.  The tribes gradually moved away from the mountains and onto the plains.

The priesthood class has become powerful, backed by the warriors — the two classes which received the gifts of the necklace and the spear-point, and told to guard the secrets of the tribe.  Now they must deal with the changing environment, as the seas rise, and old hunting grounds vanish.  As the plains of the north become ever warmer, game becomes smaller, and the larger game moves to higher (colder) elevations in search of food, and many tribes follow behind.

A small tribe of hunters, the Swift Hand clan, has encroached upon the salt mine of the Spirit Fox clan, who are righteously horrified.  You were extracting minerals without a medicine man?  Are you trying to cause earthquakes?

The Spirit Fox clan, mighty and numerous, has decided that the Swift Hand clan must be punished for their crime, and exiled.  They are given two choices:  we will exile you into the Stony Pass, where only the phantom trees grow, or we will seal you into the Tomb of the Silver Serpents, where the caves go on forever and only the suncap mushrooms grow.  Each of you will be allowed to take one animal of your choice, male or female. 

The Locations

In the Stony Pass, high above the plains (and therefore out of the hair of the Evanu miners) grows the phantom tree.  Phantom trees are magic-wielding plants that, during the blooming season, use illusion to project delicious fruits, fragrant blossoms, brilliant colors, and whatever else it can do to attract bees, birds, insects and the like.  When it is not in blossom, the illusions disguise the trees so they cannot be found, either projecting false images of trees or shielding the trees to appear as stones.  They are fruit-bearing and surprisingly nutritious.

In the Tomb of the Silver Serpents, caverns deep under the mountains, grew the suncap mushrooms.  Suncaps are thaumovoric fungi that consume ambient magic and produce heat and light as waste products.  They only grow in areas of high magic concentration, and they can be toxic to any magic-dependent creature such as the silverhead, a snake that hibernates inside solid rock, near geothermal vents, by transforming itself into a a vein of silver.  The light produced by suncaps is sufficiently close to the brightness and cycle of sunlight that surface plants can grow in it — in fact, many plants already grow in those caves.

The Animals

Keerfoxes are small, black-furred canids that hunt at night.  Their fur gives off a faint magelight, about equivalent to bright moonlight, visible only to those who have Magery.  It is quite intelligent.  Generally they eat small prey, such as birds, rabbits, rats, and vermin (plentiful everywhere).

Rock goats are large, slow-moving goatlike beasts with thick, almost metallic wool.  They are difficult to hunt with bows or spears, have almost no nutritive value, and few predators.  Their use to the tribe is as a pathfinder, because they possess the ability to turn the inedible edible.  Rock goats graze on sand and gravel, but their droppings are almost pure rich loam, perfect for frming.  Within days, often, plants will grow from the droppings, seemingly spontaneously.

Slime boars are tusked pigs that excrete their waste through their skin as a foul-smelling, slippery goo.  Not surprisingly, few predators try to bite them.  The slime boar’s wonderful trick is to cause a rapid healing effect in the things it eats, animal or vegetable; it can graze for days on one small patch of plants, which regrow only to be grazed again.

There are five offenders:  two men and three women.  Their names are not important here, except that there are two with Magery (one man and one woman), two (or three) hunters, and a toolmaker (or two).  The Magery-talented woman also hunts; the Magery-talented man also makes tools.

I presented the players with two questions:

1.  Where will the people be exiled to?

2.  Which animals will they take with them?

What The Players Decided  

The first thing the Players wanted to know was whether I was asking them to pass judgment on these people.  Were they guilty?  How could they possibly argue against a tribe that had been caught red-handed?  What were the rules of law?

I clarified:  the offenders had already been declared guilty, and all that remained was to decide upon their punishment.

They then turned to various ways they could break the rules, and offer the offending Swift Hand tribe a little extra help.  They could sneak some additional animals into the caves later, perhaps.

It occurred to them that perhaps after all the trouble they'd had to introduce mysticism back into this tribe, perhaps it would better serve the culture to enforce the rules fairly.  They then turned to ways they could merely bend the rules.

"Do we have to send five of the same animal?" they asked.

 No, you could mix and match.  One animal for each exile, that's the rule.

They talked it over and realized that, at best, they could send two species:  a male and a female of one, and a male and two females of another.  Even then, the breeding would be pretty thin.  Two males and three females of one species would be a stable enough breeding population.  Even more genetic diversity could be squeezed out of the animals (bad metaphor!) if they sent in females that were already pregnant.

The keerfox, the Players said, would be useless underground.  Its primary benefit was to cast light for those people who already had magical sight; in the caverns, light was already provided by the suncap mushrooms.  The mountain pass with the phantom trees didn't appeal.  By elimination, they ended up exiling the Swift Hand clan into the caves in the company of five rock goats.

Joe the Leader had one final trick up his sleeve.  "So they got exiled for mining without the company of a shaman, right?"

Yes, that's true, I said.

Joe nodded.  "Then I ordain one of them.  They've got to have a priest."

Results  

The most immediate result for the exiled Swift Hand tribe was that they would easily survive the supervolcano explosion in Round 4.  If they took on any adaptation from animals, as the half-human half-aguen did, that animal would be the rock goat.  In the tiny confined spaces of the caverns, where their suncap lighting was limited to high-magic caves, they would be able to grow crops on a limited scale.  Their religion would be perpetuated, in some form, because Joe had made certain to ordain one of them as a new shaman.  If only they hadn't been so enthusiastic about prosecuting the letter of the law and reinforcing the tribal custom of exile...

The Tale of Uman the Hunter and the Feast of Four Stones

Before the sun was made and all the Earth was snow and ice, Uman the Hunter led his people down from the mountains, and there in the plains they met a tribe that was bewitched by an evil serpent.

And the Serpent told his people that he craved the son of Uman, for the Serpent said that none of six fingers shall live.  And the Serpent said he would eat the son of Uman, and the tribe that was bewitched did call for blood.  But Uman saw the wicked enchantment upon that tribe, and he called upon the Four Spirits to destroy the serpent, and the earth shook, and the people of the serpent were killed, and those who were not killed were scattered in fear.

And even as Uman drove away the Serpent People who had been not killed, there was a man named Tukla the Fox, and he was a wily warrior.  And Tukla saw in the serpent’s fallen cave that his people had hidden away a glimmering stone that men call kuplar.  And Tukla did raise up this stone and say, “This stone was granted to us by the Four Spirits, and it is a Sign.”

And then Nutah, the Wise Woman, said that it is a sign, and with her great magic she called upon the Four Spirits, who shared the secret of the stone with her, and taught her secret spells, and they said to her, “All who follow you must guard well the sacred trust of the stones of the earth, for they hold mighty secrets.”

And Nutah said that she would, and all who came after her.

And the Four Spirits said to her, “And you must watch well the people of the tribe as they bring forth these stones, lest the magic of the stones become wicked and slay your people.”

And Nutah said that she would, and all who came after her.

And one of the Four Spirits reached into the stone, and he did pull from it a glimmering spear that glowed like a sunset, and he said, “Where is Uman?  A mighty warrior must have a mighty weapon.”

But the people did say, “Uman has fallen!  He has chased away the great Serpent of the wicked clan, but the Serpent in its last did bite him, and Uman is no more.”

And so the Four Heroes gave the glimmering spear to Tukwa, saying, “From this day forth, you will be the leader of Uman’s people.”

Tukwa the Fox then did lead Uman’s people to a great hole in the Earth, and he did say, “Here we will guard well the secrets of the stones, and here we will leave the body of Uman.  We will return him to the Earth, where the stones will keep him secret.”

And Tukwa’s people did lay the body of Uman inside the hill, which is now called the Hill of Four Stones.  And there was a great feast, the first Feast of Four Stones.

After they had their feast, they raised four stones in honor of the Four Spirits.  The first stone was white, and the people did cook with it; and the second stone was gray, and the people did carve it; and the third stone was black, and the people did make fire with it; and the fourth stone was the glimmering stone of orange and green that men call kuplat.

And ever since then, Tukwa’s people have dug for the four stones, and they have been called Evanu, which means Stone Seekers.

Round 3

The third round of the game was actually our second actual physical gathering, since we had played the first two rounds in one night.  That had required a certain amount of anticipation on my part; to prepare the various alternatives in  the second round, I had to predict a range of actions the players might take, translate those actions into major historical forces, and devise new scenarios based on how I estimated that society might evolve.  That method had limitations, in particular the difficulty of predicting how civilized humans would view primitive historical crossroads.  I had already seen how the players were averse to taking extremes.  Where the ancient civilizations were apt to solve their problems with brutally direct methods, with war and conquest and death, the players were trying to shepherd their cultures with compromise and diplomacy.

Diplomacy doesn't stop famine.  Compromise doesn't stop the seasons.  Until their civilizations had the means to survive the great catastrophes of their age, diplomacy and compromise would be limited tools.  Still, I couldn't see the players abandoning them entirely, and therefore their actions would be hard to foresee.  At this stage I concluded that one event at a time would be best.

Since so many years had passed between the last events and these, I decided that the clans* had entirely forgotten the true nature of what had occurred.  They had passed down their recollections and interpretations from one generation to the next, and the actual events had been converted from history into myth.  To represent each clan's interpretation of the historical events that preceded it, I began this round to present the players with a written Myth for each clan to precede the Event.

Year 50,000:  The Interglacial Period

All tribes are being affected by the major event taking place in the world's geology:  the planet is getting warmer.  Everywhere, glaciers are retreating, ice is melting, and seas are rising.  What were once seashores are becoming tidal flats, or drowning in salt water.  The warm subtropical band around the equator is becoming a tropical sauna.  Plants and animals are adapting to the warmer temperatures, migrating in search of food, or dying out, changing the balance of flora and fauna available to the hunter-gatherers.  Their ancestral hunting grounds are changing.  In all the clans, there is environmental change that they are just barely conscious of.

The Thrian Telepath Chooses.  The devotion of the Thrian aguen herders is tested when the ancient bridal exchange ceremony is in direct conflict with their promise to keep the herds safe.  The players cannot decide whether to allow the Big River tribe to slaughter the herds, or to destroy a new civilization of half-human, half-aguens, and so they put the entire decision into the hands of a telepath descended from Temu.

The Evanu Exile The Swift Hand Clan.  When a small tribe of Evanu break the law against mining without the supervision of a priest, they are exiled.  The players choose the method of exile, sending the Swift Hand clan into the caves, accompanied by the rock goat.

The Hybesh Valley Is Burning.  Two distinct tribes of the Abequa have evolved:  the Ascenders, who are strong climbers, and the Leapers, who appear to be developing the capacity for gliding between the treetops.  The two tribes disagree how to handle the raging forest fires that are consuming their valley — is it their quest to stay and guard the trees, or to follow the herds?  The players elect to send the tribes in both directions at once.

The Teyo Nami And The Moon Tiger.  When the moon tiger confronts the people of Teyo Nami, separating their souls and frightening the people, the players are called in to destroy it.  The question of placing the souls back into their rightful bodies, however, they leave up to the tribe.

The Bellaron Sacrifice Chamandra.   They have crossed the island chain in search of new lands, for the seas are rising.  They have finally come within sight of the mainland, but it is a very great distance to sail.  The tribe cannot decide between following their leader to the mainland, or following Chamandra, who claims to be immortal and is not afraid of the rising waters.  Immortal, are you? the players ask.  We can disprove that theory.

Players

Joe the Leader

Dave the Artisan

Connor the Mystic
Jack sat in this week.  He was a long-time roleplayer I had known for years, but who hadn't been free for Game Night lately.  His frequent absence was one reason we had started this campaign in the first place.  Not that I'm blaming you, Jack.  Jack was assigned the role of the NPC Storyteller and loremaster.

*About my use of the words tribe and clan:  I will try to maintain clarity when I write this blog, because we are talking about so many different and varied people.  When I say clan, I mean many thousands of separate hunter-gatherer tribes that reside in that general area and have the same mythical interpretation of history. When I say tribe, I mean one hunter-gatherer unit consisting of 30-60 people and only a few interrelated families.  The players, as the Great Spirits, are called down by a tribe which is facing a crisis that I feel will help to shape history to come.  The survival advantages thus conveyed to that tribe will help its stories spread to the rest of the tribes in that clan.  By no means are all the tribes within a clan identical or monolithic in culture, but they will share some common elements for the sake of simplicity; there's simply no way to create the complexity of ten thousand separate tribal units, each acting on its own.

Rounds 1 and 2

The very first gaming session was in some respects the least interesting, even though we covered two rounds of progress.  I say this not because the concept wasn't good, and I don't mean to suggest that the Players weren't keen to sink their teeth into such an unusual concept.  I merely mean that none of us had any idea what to expect from a campaign of this kind — its scope, its magnitude, its complexity.  We didn't know what kind of consequences we might face.  I didn't have a good notion how even to prepare such a campaign, because as far as I knew, nobody had ever tried anything like it.

Since we had to cover two rounds of the game in one night, it meant I had to prepare Round 1, Year Zero with a limited palette of consequences.  I imagined various cultural forces which might come into conflict, such as curiosity, mysticism, tradition, medicine, discipline, fear of the unknown, and pit them against each other in what I hoped were relative binary ways.  Either mysticism would win, I expected, or rationality would.  I was prepared for either contingency, with a string of if-then statements woven into my preparatory materials.  If the players chose to do X, I would follow up with Scenario B, and so on.

I hadn't anticipated the dedication to which my apparently Taoist campaigners consistently sought the Middle Path.

Players
Joe:  the host of our gaming nights, my best friend for 25 years, and the Leader of the triumvirate.
Dave:  a friend of several years, whom I met while doing a play for a local theater company.  He would play the Artisan.
Connor:  a friend and co-worker of Dave's who had been incorporated into our gaming group; his role was the Mystic.

Year Zero:  The Earth Gathering
The Dar tribe loses their leader and their medicine man as a result of an earthquake which destroys their cave.  The survivors seek answers, blaming a deformed six-fingered child of Uman, but the Great Spirits deny them justice.  In fact, the Great Spirits insist that the Dar offer up one of their women to Uman's deformed child as a bride when he comes of age.  A Dar midwife, their only remaining healer, attacks Uman in her rage and despair and is killed.

The six-fingered son of the Uman tribe is allowed to live despite his obvious mutation, and no special mystical significance is attributed to the earthquake.  The Uman boy is prophesied to become a great leader and wizard, and is promised a bride of the Dar people when he comes of age.

The curiosity of the Pagh toward the reason for the earthquake leads them on a quest into the mountains, to learn why the earth moves.  Perhaps the Earth has rising and falling cycles, as do the Sea and the River.

The Kufu are encouraged to add a medicine man to their tribe, and take on Tor the Sage of the Pagh.  They return to their ancestral lands with a renewed appreciation for the value of strong medicine.

The Brun warn that although the sign of the earthquake is meaningless, the sign of the lunar eclipse is worse.  Their fears are ignored.  The Brun return to their cold northern lands, unsatisfied.

Year 30,000:  Hominid Migration
The Drim Acquire A Telepath.  The tradition of bridal exchange is interrupted when the Drim suspect a young healer to be possessed by evil spirits.  The Great Spirits demonstrate that her telepathy is actually beneficial, for young Temu is the equal of old Ral the Raven in a contest of skills.

The Mannut Discover Mining.  The Mannut tribe discovers a copper deposit when an avalanche destroys their cave.  Nobody is harmed, but the Great Spirits warn that any further investigation into the stones of the earth would require the presence of a skilled shaman.

The Abequa Enter The Great Valley.   After wandering for millennia in the high mountain passes where food is scarce, the migrating Abequa reach a valley where flora is lush and fauna is unimaginably plentiful.  The sudden surplus almost crumbles the discipline within the tribe, and there is a crisis of leadership.  Only Jebba the Healer can bring back the mighty huaca alive.  Reluctantly, she accepts that it is her Quest to lead her people, for among all of the Eagle tribe, she is best suited for the task.

The Ayuté Have Two Toolmakers.  When Noves, toolmaker of the Ayuté, is killed by a tiger, the tribe looks to his son Novan to fill the role of craftsman, though he has not the skill of his father.  There is a challenge from Faya, even younger than he but no less adept at making weapons in her own particular style.  When the two types of weapons are put to the test, the women of the tribe are far more successful catching fish than are the men, and the balance of power in the tribe begins to shift.

The Cleansing Ritual Of Oparron.  A tribe is being pushed farther out onto a rain-lashed peninsula, where food is scarce and tempers are frayed.  Discipline can no longer be maintained, and some hungry tribesmen secretly hunt for crabs on the seashore, without bothering to share their bounty.  After three people die from shellfish allergy, a phenomenon the Oparron are not equipped to understand, the Great Spirits are there to help.  The eating of crab meat is a rite of passage all must undergo, to determine if one is strong enough to suit the needs of the tribe.  A grisly pyrophiliac cleansing ritual is invented as a purifying rite for the bodies of those slain.  Soon after this, the Oparron advance out across the lowlands and onto the island chain that spans the North Ocean.         

The Uman Clans

A Timeline of Events in the History of the Uman Clans

For a full rendering of the game's timeline, start here with the Stone Age, or here for the Bronze Age.

Rounds 1 and 2: The Paleolithic Era
 Year Zero:  The Earth Gathering.  The six-fingered son of the Uman tribe is allowed to live despite his obvious mutation, and no special mystical significance is attributed to the earthquake.  The Uman boy is prophesied to become a great leader and wizard, and is promised a bride of the Dar people when he comes of age.

Year 30,000:  The Mannut Discover Mining.  The tribe discovers a copper deposit when an avalanche destroys their cave.  Nobody is harmed, but the Great Spirits warn that any further investigation into the stones of the earth would require the presence of a skilled shaman.

Year 50,000:  Exile Of The Swift Hand tribe.  When the Swift Hand tribe breaks the rule against mining without the supervision of a shaman, they are exiled into the Caverns of the Silver Serpent.  It is not an inviting place, so their tribesmen are generous and give them rock goats to keep them company.