What the fuck is the Sun?

THE SUN

Officially, there are no sun cults on the great sea. The sun is not a god, certainly. It must be something, though.

Roll until sufficiently weird (d10)

1. It is the Spouse of one of the three goddesses, or maybe all of them.
2. It is the last Couatl Egg, and when it hatches it will bring peace to the world (or destroy it).
3. It's the Fifth Tower.
4. It's the invention of a wizard (whether invention means lie or creation is up for interpretation).
5. It travels deep into the earth every day.
6. It is the eternal battle of two archons of the earth.
7. It is the embodiment of the concept of truth.
8. It's what happens if you break one hundred oaths at once.
9. It's a ball of fusing hydrogen. What's hydrogen? Nobody knows, but it's in the Sun.
10. It's a god.

Excerpts from The Five Towers Codex*, as compiled by Sophos the Stylite

One of my players, I think. He probably read this book.

1. "Between the three souls of body and the four souls of spirit lies a sinew of considerable strength. This being the appendage which death, with sickle or sword, cuts. By gode or evil, this sinew may be made strong to refuse release even as the body decayes. As the bodey, the sinew must be fattened to keep strength, but the gall of bodey cannot flow. Thys being the reason few of gode faith live in rot, while many of evil eat men and souls."
2. A Symbol of Rite is known, which may lock the towers to the spirit. On [missing]... living man, this may lock the fifth tower. It is said that it is made out of herbs and gild when paint'd on the man or corpse.
3. Men claime two of towers are truly oubillets, but men have not seen the [missing]... truly towers which reach to helle. Of the fifth some say it spans sidelong, while others say it goes heartwise.
4. On the fourth floor of the fourth tower [missing]... great trysure and witchery.
5. Of gostly and bone frights, little thought is to be given. Many weak souls can not bring forth a bodey. They are of nature as shep or rams, much the same as the least being of elyments. They remain as souls who are weak to climb.

*It should be understood that The Five Towers Codex is not the Gaian holy text The Five Towers, but rather a commentary on it studied mostly by wizards, poets, and weird priests. The Five Towers simply details burial rites and prayers, and surprisingly says little of it's titular towers. The most it says goes along the lines of Take five keys and enter five towers, or lay here longer as long as the sun shines (When a copy of the text is found, I shall add this line in the original high gaian). It is generally accepted that two towers go to heaven, and two go to hell. Great theological debate surrounds the fifth tower, along with its destination.

All magicians are logicians

Hyper Incomplete High Concept

All the players are wizards. The setting is modern day. Each wizard has one axiom, of the form All Subject is Predicate or No Subject is Predicate. Subject and Predicate can be anything the player wants. Players can do anything a normal human can. Players can also Conclude and Justify their axioms. Concluding an axiom allows you to enforce the consequences of that axiom. Justifying an axiom allows you to enforce the cause of that axiom. An example: John has the axiom All Cats are Hairless Felines. John, if he encounters a cat (which is, of course, hairless), can Conclude from his axiom that cats would die in the winter of a  temperate location, and thus cannot exist here, at his home on the east coast, during January (the high formal logic version is All cats are Hairless Felines. No Hairless Felines are Winter Winter Adapted Felines. Therefore,  No Cats are Winter Adapted Felines). Alternatively, by expending far more power, John can Justify his axiom, backtracking along a foreign line of logic. Perhaps Cats are Hairless because a Cat (and, by association, all felines) is a kind of octopus (formally: All Octopeople are Hairless. All Cats are Octopeople. Therefore, all Cats are Hairless). How much power is expended whenever you use either ability depends on how many formal logic steps it takes to get to the final result.

Memes? In MY blogposts? Its more likely than you think.

Variations

• Mother Necessity: Wizards only have one part of their axiom (S or P) until they decide to use their axiom, after which it becomes unchangeable. 
• Nobilis Rip-off: No limit on how much axioms can be used.
• Define Subject: Each wizard has the same subject for their axiom. No contradictions.
• Informally: Power expended depends on how long it takes to convince the DM
• Principle Explosion: Wizards can take two axioms. Contradictory axioms are encouraged.
• Modernity: Wizards can use imaginary things as part of their axiom.
• Fuck Plato: All of the above

Fairies

They say (2d6):

2. They are Cruel. Child-Thieves and men killers. There is nothing good among them.
3. They are Tricky. Life is a game, or maybe a joke. You are the punchline.
4. They are Magic. Nothing truly makes much sense when they put their minds to things.
5. They are Old. They were around before you, and they'll be around after.
6. They are Lies. They don't exist. Don't listen to everyone else.
7. They are Complicated. Roll Twice.
8. They are Real. They exist. Don't listen to everyone else.
9. They are Young. Younger than a newborn, younger than the morning.
10. They are Mad. Everything makes so much sense when they put their mind to it.
11. They are Haughty. You are beneath them. They won't even acknowledge you killing them
12. They are Kind. Friends of orphans and widows. Good things flow from them like wine.
Evidently, they say a lot of things.

A Vernal World

Unrelated?

Design Philosophy

Lot's of OSR bloggers talk about the feel of most RPGs in a certain way. They call it An Aesthetic of Ruin or something and use words like autumnal, entropic, and bygone. Everything in their worlds is winding down. The empires are destroyed, technology has been lost, something, something, ravages of time. It's where all their dungeons and treasure and monsters come from. It's all very elegant.

Unrelated??

I, however, favor a vernal world. My worlds are new, or at the start of a cycle. The world is growing, and is growing kind. Before there was dark times, but now there is a season where people are working to make the ground soft and the rain warm.

Related????

I shall stop waxing poetic and tell you now how I try to run worlds striving towards the sun.

Let the players Make Things

The seeds the players sow should grow, even when unattended. When the players help an npc, that help will help the NPC in the future as well. If the players help a town, that town grows from their assistance. If they build a stronghold, that stronghold shouldn't devolve into chaos when they leave. Things should grow, not wither. These will be the great cities of summer.

Make the World Open Up

The snow melts and reveals things from another age. The flowers open to be enjoyed. It may take time, and it may take work. A prophecy might come to light, or a lost land might be found. Maybe it is smaller than that, like on a village scale. It's a season of discovery.

It may start Dark as Autumn

The end of autumn and the start of spring have the same sunlight. Make the players work for the dawn, sometimes, or maybe wait for it. Things can start hostile. Things can start hopeless. Maybe you choose to start in the middle of spring too. That's fine if you just want to see things grow already.

Here is Found Great Struggles

What is spring if not thunderous? The mythic battles of later ages will be fought now and will nourish the heroes of summer.

Closing thoughts

I lied when I said I would stop waxing poetic. Here's this: The world can grow and that can be just as interesting as the world dying. Let your players grow empires, learn, and strive sometimes. To fight a losing battle against darkness and decay in a world of evil and greed sometimes just isn't fun. To write a bit pretentiously one more time: Things run in a cycle, and when it has been autumn and winter so long, it must run to spring.

Related

Dreams and Wizards

Topology?

Imagine a disc shaped projection of a sphere.

Like this.

Points of interest are evenly-ish spaced on a sphere, but when projected like this, the center becomes more dense than the edge. In addition, the South Pole forms a ring around the edge. But the Earth is a sphere, and we can change the center of the map to focus on the South Pole.

Like this.

And it becomes inverted. Now imagine people lived on the projections. To them the world is disc shaped, the center is always denser than the edge, and there is a ring of water (or land) around the edge.

Wizards

But wizards are too cool for topological projection. In dreams, they can travel to the dreamlands, which is basically the Great Sea but inverted like you see above. Normally the great sea is in the middle, but in the dreamlands the great sea encircles the land. In addition, ruins in the waking world become more spaced out when you travel to the deserts, and more dense when travelling towards the sea (this may conflict with normal ideas of desert/ruin relationships, but just hold with me a bit). The reason why there isn't a huge pile of ruins in the middle of the Sea is because it's underwater (there are a few bits above the water. They belong to the last Neph). In the dreamlands, the ruins cluster in the center of the desert instead of the ocean, so there is a huge pile of ruins. Depending on who you ask, it's called Kadath, the Mountain of Sand, or the (False) Theophany. They call it this cause the gods live at the top.

needs more desert

But You Said Everyone Worships One Of The Goddesses

 As we all know from such a reputable scholar as Goblinpunch, spells are just soulstuff, bits of sentience, animals made of thought. The dreamlands is where these things reside, and where wizards snatch their spells from each night. Just as the greatest and most powerful men become kings, so do the greatest and most powerful spells. And a king made from nothing but thought and dream would, in the nomenclature of wizards, be a god. These gods sit at the ninth level of the Mountain of Sand. At the head of their table sits The Spell, Wish, exercising his dominion over all the dreamlands. At the gate stands their gatekeeper and messenger, Prismatic Wall. I'll go into detail about all the gods later. No one worships Wish any more than they worship a king, suffice to say.

Sometimes Prismatic Wall looks kinda like this, but made from thought

Alright, But Is There Loot?

Yeah, probably. There is spells to steal, magic items to find, one story even tells about the location of the idea of wealth. The problem is that men of the waking world are as incorporeal spirits there. Bargains must be struck with the spells there, much as spells strike bargains with wizards to affect the waking world. In addition, some wizards can brew tangibility potions.

But I'm Not A Wizard, How Do I Get There?

Poets can help with this. Due to their already powerful connection to the soul, poets can specialize in lyrical techniques to transport non-wizards to other planes. The body stays in the waking world, though. It also takes a lot of magic drugs for these poems to work properly. I'll write up a post for a poet class sometime.

Conclusion

The gods of wizards are strange and powerful, and their lands are familiar and foreign. It is unwise to disturb their dreams.

Exploring the Elfin Kingdoms

Who's winning the King's War today?

1.  A powerful and ancient second generation elf, hoping to win the war so he can die and pass the kingdom on to his children (and do it right this time)
2. A powerful and ancient second generation elf, hoping to win the war so he can achieve true immortality and reign forever with grace and terror
3. An eminent third generation elf whose father cleverly won land with political marriage and intrigue
4. An eminent third generation elf whose father won land by attacking his neighbors in dishonorable raids in during the great crusade
5. An eminent third generation elf who won lands for himself during his youth and has his eyes set on a beautiful princess in a neighboring kingdom
6. An eminent third generation elf who won lands for himself during his youth and has his eyes set on an plain princess in a neighboring kingdom for political purposes
7. An eminent third generation elf who won lands for himself during his youth and has his eyes set on a dirt poor and gorgeous human peasant in his own kingdom
8. A half-elf bastard knight who became a major player through the favor of his king
9. A half-elf bastard knight who became a major player through sneaky stabby tactics
10. A Human? What?

No, but seriously, who's actually winning the War?

Witch-Queen Pim is, though none of the other elves will admit it. From her city in the sea, she reigns over all the elves warring upon the land. Her magical power is unmatched anywhere in the world. In the dreamlands, she is next to a god and has deals with the most powerful among the dreamland's sedentary deities. When she steps upon the mainland, the war stops so the elf-kings can lay their coats at her feet.

Average out the above pictures to see what Witch-Queen Pim looks like

[Her kingdom in the sea is pretty cool so I'll write about that sometime]

What is this kingdom like?

1. Lots of domes and spires. Light pink stone and dark wood. Shepherd peasants live in bright tents. Heath dominates the land.
2. Sloped Roofs and green-painted wood. Kites affixed to every surface. Peasants work ripe vineyards. Knights wear hand-stitched scarves detailing funeral rites.
3. Arcades below support gardens above. Streams run in every direction, starting rivers in other kingdoms. Most peasants are grain farmers and are often raided by the neighboring kingdoms.
4. Buttresses and spines decorate the palaces. Peasants practice forestry and live in cottages. Knights wear the chitin of large spiders.
5. Crystals adorn turrets and crenellenations. Peasants live below ground and are often miners. Shells are used as currency where gold is common.
6. Fortified mansions replace palaces here. Peasants most often hunt, so meat is plentiful and eaten undercooked by the nobles. Horns and antlers replace weapons when steel is scarce.
7. Almost the entire population dwells in decrepit and beautiful ruins. Peasants farm glowing fungus for ethereal elf-bread. Armor still bears groves where runes were writ in the last age.
8. Roll again, but it's entirely underground. If this result is rolled again, it's further underground.

What menaces this kingdom?

1. Non-violent heredity squabbles
2. Violent heredity squabbles
3. Famine
4. The elves are killing their human peasants
5. Big bad monster
6. Roll twice more. This result can be rolled again. Elf kingdoms suck for humans.

How big?

1. Literally just a hamlet
2. 1d4 hamlets, 1 town
3. 1d4 towns, 1 city
4. 1d4 cities, 1 capital

As a rule of thumb, they fit in a 6-mile hex. They can be larger, though.

This one is ruled over by King Locrantz. He's kind of a jerk.

Why isn't the witch queen smiting them all now?

No one knows.