Year 50,000: The Bellaron Sacrifice Chamandra

Previous history

     Year 0: The Brun return to the frozen north 
          Year 30,000:  The cleansing ritual of Oparron

(I started off the players with How The Beast of the Sea Slew the Weak.  The title alone made them apprehensive.  The fingers began pointing in Connor's direction almost as soon as the story was concluded.)

The Oparron tribe has crossed the island chain, in boats and rafts, for millennia. In that time, their society has changed; those who are strongest survive, and those who perish weren’t strong enough. Leaders of the tribe (now called Bellaron) are chosen by combat prowess; a loser who survives, which doesn’t happen often, is exiled. A loser who fails to survive is purified: that is, boiled or burnt. Mates are often selected by contest as well, with men fighting for the right to a woman or, just as frequently, women fighting over men.

Upon reaching adulthood, men and women must undergo a rite of passage, to do something daring and possibly deadly. Thousands of years ago, such demonstrations included hunting game alone; more recently, demonstrations involved far-ranging expeditions to find new islands, or deep-diving demonstrations to bring up pearls.

Now, as the seas are rising, their islands are disappearing, but salvation is in sight: land is just visible on the horizon.

The leader of the Turning Shell tribe has organized expeditions to neighboring islands to bring back as many trees as can be found, to make rafts to get the people to the mainland. The leader, Windstrong Ravvy (M, 50) is a tough, judicious leader. Yes, the trip to the mainland is perilous, but we cannot remain. Some will die, but the strong will make it.

Not all are happy with the decision to go. Many of the younger generation follow the words of Nightsky Chamandra (M, 16) who says he is the strongest who ever lived. He has personally killed seven men in combat, he can have any mate he wants, and he is not afraid o the water. He will remain behind with all his mates and any who will stay. In fact, Chamandra claims that the Sea Spirit spoke to him and told him he was immortal. He will remain behind and the tribe will witness that no harm comes to him.

Ravvy says he cannot allow this. Those that follow Chamandra include most of the women of childbearing age, and without them, Ravvy will have a short-lived time on the mainland.

The medicine woman of the Turning Shell tribe, Copperdawn Dainar (F, 43) is not much use. Although she agrees that the waters will consume all the island and it is not safe to remain, it is also not safe to go. The berries which grow on the island are key to fertility: without the seaberries, we have no children. Have you not noticed that a woman only bears children when she eats of the seaberry? Have you not noticed that men only sire children when they have eaten the seaberry? There is a reason we use the seaberry in our rites of passage ritual, she says; we cannot abandon the islands, and yet we cannot leave. Our way of life is doomed; the world is ending; game over, man, etc.

That is nonsense, says Queenfisher Abda (F, 22). We all eat of the berries. Who here has not? In any case, the sea will support us. I will show you the way. I, who have dived deeper than any, and I who can remain below the water for hours at a time, will show you how the sea can sustain us.

Chamandra and Ravvy are squaring off to see which of their people will follow them.

What The Players Decided  

"He says he's immortal?" asked Connor.  "Let's kill him.  That will solve it.  They won't pay any attention to him once we kill him off."

What if he is immortal? I asked reasonably.

"Oh." And they went back to the drawing board.

"Hang on, that purification ritual," Joe the Leader said, glaring at Connor.  "The whole burning and boiling heads thing. If he is immortal, he'll be the last to fall. So who will purify his remains? He can't leave his people. What does he say to that?"

"I am immortal," said Chamandra. "The question shall never arise."

"So he says he's immortal," the Joe said, trying again. "That doesn't mean he can protect the people that stay behind. Doesn't he care about them?"

"If they're strong," Chamandra says, "they'll survive. If they don't, they weren't strong enough."

"Boy," said Connor the Mystic, "we really messed these people up."

"What do you mean we?" asked Dave and Joe, together.

"All right, let's test his immortality," Joe said, coming back around to Connor's first solution. "He doesn't seem to afraid to demonstrate it. If the people see that he's not immortal, they won't be as likely to take his advice and remain on the islands."

"We'll make him dive into the water and stay there for ... like, two days," Dave said.

"What about that water-breathing chick — Abda?" Joe asked.  "She can stay down for hours. What if she breathes air into his mouth?"

"We don't let her go down with him."

"What if he can breathe water too?"

"Hmmm. Okay, let's not use water. Let's say, All right, you're immortal, do as you will. Before we depart the island we must perform the purification ritual for you. For if we all leave, who would perform these rites for you? Just step over here and stand in this fire..."
 

They built a giant bonfire to purify the body of Chamandra prior to his death. If he really wasn't immortal, he'd die, no problems, and we don't have to worry about him.

Chamandra was happy to oblige, and gathered the people before the fire. "I accept my purification directly from the hands of the Four Warriors, the only ones who have the power to do so—"

("I knew he was going to do that!" said Joe.)

"I will die, but I will be reborn—"

("Aaargh, why didn't we think of that?" asked Dave.)

"—for I am immortal. You must now leave my islands. You will rue the day that you ever chose to leave."

He then stepped into the fire and burned to death.

The Players looked at each other.  "Oh, great," said Joe.

Results  

The effects of this event are too complex to enter into here, but suffice to say that the tribes of Brun who would now populate the mainland would have a strong element of sacrifice in their mythology.  They would all tell the tale of Chamandra, who was sacrificed to make the rising waters fall.  At the time I prepared this event, I thought it might be amusing to introduce a character that was actually immortal, considering how the Players would continue to return to the world and see the changing face of culture and technology.  Wouldn't it be fun to see one familiar face?  I did not, however, expect the Players to immediately resent this supposed immortal and order him burned to death.  You might say that the Players hadn't handled this particular Event very well.  I say that they gave me a gift, such that any GM would love to receive.

How the Beast of the Sea Slew the Weak

When the world was young and the seas were cold and the skies rained, the Island People did long ago live in the Land of the Setting Sun.  Their leader, a mighty leader called Axe-Hand Oparron, led the people to a place where there was nothing but water on all sides, and here he told them to rest and prepare for the hunt.

As the people rested and prepared, Four Warriors came forth from the Land of the Setting Sun, and they called out a warning.  But the people did not listen, and behold!  Two giant beasts of shell and horn emerged from the sea, and did slay five of the people.

Huntress Javaz said, “We must slay these beasts in kind,” and she led her mighty warriors to the battle, and they did kill the beasts of the sea.

And the mighty leader Axe-Hand Oparron said, “You have done well, you have slain the beasts.  Now we hunt.”

But the people were starving and two of the weakest of them ate the flesh of the beasts, and those people turned red in the face and died at once.

And the people said, “These are not beasts that we can eat!  Axe-Hand Oparron, what shall we hunt?  For there is no food.”

Huntress Javaz said, “Only the strongest among us can eat the flesh of these beasts.  Dare you to see if you are strong, or if you are weak?”

And Axe-Hand Oparron consulted Warrior Zoad and Mystic Olan, and they said, “From this day forth, on the day when a boy becomes a man, and on the day a girl becomes a woman, each shall taste of the sea berry, and each shall partake of the flesh of the sea beasts, and we shall know if they are strong.”

And thus it was so.

And Huntress Javaz said, “And if ever question arises who is to hunt, the hunt shall be led by the strong, and not by the weak.”

And Mystic Olan said, “And if ever question arises who is to be our medicine man, we shall choose the one with the strongest spells, and not the weakest.”

And Axe-Hand Obarron, who was wisest of all, said, “And if ever question arises which is the strongest, remember the Four Warriors, who saw the beasts of the sea when others saw it not.”

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 Brun Clans

A Timeline of Events in the History of the Brun 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 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:  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.

Year 50,000:  The Bellaron Sacrifice Chamandra.  When a hotheaded youth arises in the Bellaron tribes, claiming to be immortal and promising his people have nothing to fear from the rising oceans, the tribes are tempted to remain behind and not migrate to the mainland.  Chamandra is sacrificed to the gods in the cleansing ritual.