Under Sleeping Suns: Liber Deus

Some more World Building Theory this week. Today, you get some resources that I hope will help you as you proceed down the path toward getting a more complete, richer, fuller campaign world.

Back over here in "The Hour's Getting Late," I brought up a couple of points about religion in the real world, and how I built the Church Of The Nine to reflect the various aspects of churches and how they interact with their faithful – making the faiths of Loris far more than just Stop-And-Heal shops for adventurers.

I talked about how churches meddle, how they expect certain behaviors from their faithful and their priests, and how there's a very large difference between belief and worship in the context of a Fantasy RPG. All very important things, and worth paying attention to as you build up your game.

Now, I've got seven years of higher education under my belt to tell me about the ways and methods of organized (or not) religions and how they get their believers to do what they need to have done. But most of you reading this won't – nor should you. So how can you get that information? How would it be best to really get a good overview on how the various aspects of a religion might interact? How they could, for instance, take eight different Gods (whether they're part of a single pantheon or not) and make them all not only work together, but still maintain their individual flavors and foibles?

Well, the first and most common answer is to base the religion and church on what you know. I know a lot of people who, when building up the faiths for their game worlds, took inspiration from their Catholic or Protestant upbringings, and based the clergy of their fantasy religions on the authority figures from their real-world faiths. This works fine, and is the basis of many a good game I've played in.

But what if you want something a little different?

I'm going to point you at an old book. It's from 1990 and it is one of the "core four" of the "Complete Handbook" series, published by TSR (before they were bought out by Wizards Of The Coast), and was written by the very awesome Mr. Aaron Allston (who I freely admit wrote one of my favorite books of all time, Galatea in 2-D, check it out). The book in question is a valuable and incredibly under-stated resource for tackling all the big, grand, sweeping themes of a religion, as well as all the "fiddly, crunchy bits" that so often get left out when creating an in-game religion.

I am of course referring to The Complete Priest's Handbook. Don't buy in to the 1 or 2-star reviews, those people have (in my opinion) completely missed the point of the book. Where many of the other 2nd Edition "Complete" series brought in the power-creep that would become so common in the non-Core supplement series (seen very clearly later on once 3rd Edition hit the shelves), the Complete Priest's Handbook did exactly what it said on the cover: It provided rules and guidelines for building priesthoods and religions that were well developed, well-put-together, and different from the "generic cleric" of the main game. Yes, many of the options "reduced" the power of the Priests and Clerics in the game, but they all made sense, and they all fit together quite well. They pulled the Priest out of the "healbot with a hammer" role and added layers of depth and complexity that enabled roleplayers to craft pacifistic worshipers of the Gods of Peace, or heavily armored Crusader Clerics of the Three Sisters Of Battle, or anything in between. The point of the book was not to provide "more powerful" clerics, it was to provide GM's and players options for depth and detail in their game world's religions.

If I said that the bulk of the original inspirations for the Church Of The Nine didn't come out of this book, I'd be lying. As I started building up The Nine in my head, using my love of mythology and my classes in philosophy and religion as a starting point, I got my hands on this book at my Friendly Local Gaming Store, and didn't put it down for a week. I scribbled down notes and page numbers almost non-stop during my waking moments, and when I wasn't in class or at work, I was poring over this book, deciding all manner of things that had never even occurred to me. I keyed upon the concepts of give-and-take in the powers and abilities of the various clergy of The Nine. It was here that I decided... no, more like discovered, really... that the Lightbringers could not wear armor, nor could the Woundhealers. Their combat capacities as a whole were grossly lacking, but as a result of this, their healing magics were greater and broader than those of, say, the Keepers of Moran. Although Moran was a more powerful god than either Kalis or Tara, the breadth of the powers of his clergy was fewer, and their role more specific. It was this book that made it clear to me that it was okay if not every member of a Deity's church could cast spells – sometimes it was okay for the gift of a God's magic to go to only a select few, those "Adventurers" who were destined for greater things.

Moreso than any textbook or book on myths, the Complete Priest's Handbook quickly became the most valuable piece of literature in my collection in regard to making sense of the Church Of The Nine in terms of a roleplaying game. It provided me with the differences between the concepts of celibacy and chastity, and how those played in to the formation of certain strictures in real-world religions, and how to translate them into a game world without breaking the "feel" of that world. It gave me ideas on how and why clerics of certain faiths could, for instance, cause the undead to flee while others might be powerless in their presence. It brought up the concept of traditions and routines, the idea that nearly every real-world religion has certain basic, fundamental behaviors that they cling to above all other things (circumcision, for instance, or the concept of communion through transubstantiation of foodstuffs). It gave me insights into the differences between inherently peaceful and inherently warlike faiths.

Now, I realize that this entire essay thus far sounds like I'm basically trumpeting this book, and let's face it: I am. That book did for me what I am attempting to do for you with these essays: it took the ideas and knowledge that I already had and showed me a way to put them together that not only made sense, but felt like it was right. The book helped me to fill in the gaps in my campaign setting, helped me to solidify the various bits and pieces of the game world that I hadn't even realized were missing, and brought me a good, clear shot of consistency training when I needed one. Mr. Allston, in the event you ever read this: Honestly, thank you.

So where am I getting with all of this, besides go buy that bloody book? Well, first, if you are looking to understand how religion can be applied consistently and persistently across a game world, go buy that bloody book. Yes, parts of it (a lot of it) is repeated in later books by other authors. Yes, a good portion of it no longer applies mechanically to "the game," and yes, it is 20-some years old. But it is a damn good resource, and I can't say enough nice things about it. Secondly, my point with this essay is this:

It doesn't matter if you have meticulously researched your Grecian Mythos, or your Egyptian Dynasty Of Kings, or your Eastern Orthodox Christianity. You can recite names and dates and the complete lineage of Popes all you want, until you're blue in the face – none of that will matter if you can't put it all together in a way that feels like it is right. Take a moment to reflect on what I've talked about so far with the Church Of The Nine.

* It's an intruder religion. The Nine are, for all intents and purposes, usurpers of the power of the Eternal Kings. It doesn't matter if Astares and Graalis were orphans of The Sunfall (rather like their cousins Alzin and Alfin). The Eternal Kings had that power, and The Nine took it.
* The Nine either stole that power, or they took it back, using Astares and Graalis as conduits for it.
* The Nine had to ask the people of Loris to worship them. As a result, the interaction between the Church and the Gods, and also the People and the Church, is a bit of a tricky one.
* The various Gods of The Nine each have their own unique roles to play, and each of them has their own power and influence within the Church itself, as well as society as a whole.
* The Church Of The Nine influences society by maintaining a constant presence in the lives of the people – the children of the Allied Nations are educated, medicines are distributed, crops are tended. The Church Of The Nine is everywhere in society, keeping the wheels of civilization turning.
* The Church maintains statuary of the Gods, including Kolas The Outcast.
* The statues of Kolas are kept standing, but with their mouths and eyes carved out – the Gods of the Nine can apparently see, speak, and hear through their statues (or so it is believed).
* The Nine and Kolas speak to their faithful through songs – the importance of music and song is a longstanding and multi-cultural keystone in most real-world religions, taken to a higher level in Loris.

Last week, I talked about the difference between the Toybox, Sandbox, and Vacant Lot methods of world-building. I'd like to give credit where it's due and say that it was The Complete Priest's Handbook that pushed Loris out of the Toybox and into the Sandbox. All of the things I just mentioned about The Nine and their Church are a result of using the ideas, methods, and suggestions found in that book and applying them to my existing knowledge (and the things I would learn later in school and on my own) in a consistent, methodical fashion. And there's that word again: Consistency.

It would be easy to say that the only thing you really need to worry about when you're building a campaign setting for any RPG is consistency. Easy, but also wrong. Yes, consistency is a large part of it, but so too is information and comprehension. I've said this before, but as I continue on with these essays, I plan on showing you – whether you're the experienced GM or player, or the newcomer-to-the-hobby with your first set of dice and a ton of questions – how I put things together, why I put them together that way, and what it means in regards to the rest of the campaign world. I hope to provide you with information (what I did), comprehension (how I did it and why I did it), and consistency (how it impacts the rest of the game world).

Hopefully you've figured all of this out already, as you've been with me for the last quarter-year as I've trekked through these wilds. But, just in case you haven't, I hope that makes it clear, and gives you a good reason to keep coming back. I will if you will.

Under Sleeping Suns: Putting It All Together

So far, I've talked about a lot of things in relation to Loris and how it all fits together.

I've touched on how history buries all evidence of itself and how that doesn't necessarily fit in with the vast majority of Fantasy RPG worlds.

I've talked about an important historical figure and his direct and lasting influence on the culture, methods, and societal mores of the world at large.

We've had a discussion on how culture and society vary based on things like geography, politics, tradition and languages – and not simply based on the color of someone's skin or whether or not their ears are pointy.

The concept of patterns, as well as the importance of mythological currents and mainstays, has been discussed in the creation of a solid, consistent and persistent spiritual "center" for the cultures of the game world.

These pieces of World Building Theory, along with the rest of the essays (dealing with World Building Practice), have all been specifically chosen by me for one singular purpose:

To assist GM's (new and old) with getting their game worlds off of the page and into the imaginations of their players by helping them make their game worlds consistent, believable, and most of all, rich in depth and character.

Now, let's be clear: I do not pretend to be an expert or a high-demand professional when it comes to writing Fantasy RPG's. My published credentials are few (although I do have them), and even though I have been pleasantly surprised when someone at a convention comes up to me and says "Hey! You're Jim Milligan! I ran your Mekton Zeta mini-campaign set and I loved it! Even better, my players loved it!", by and large I have not made a ton of breakthroughs in the realm of self- or sponsored- publishing.

But I do know my history, and my mythology, and I know more than a little about anthropology and the theories of cultural drift and migration. And so while writing these essays, the underlying theme that I have been weaving through all of them has been a subtle one: Internal Consistency. Your game world can be the most ridiculous, absurd, comical thing in the history of all game worlds, ever, but as long as it is internally consistent, you're golden. Don't believe me? Read Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (or watch the incredibly well done television movies, they're awesome). Discworld is played for laughs just as often as it is played for subtle, macabre, insidiously clever horror, and it is rife with callbacks and references to real-world myths and fables, but it is – above all – internally consistent. Even when it isn't, even when it breaks its own rules, it breaks them in such a way as to keep the suspension of disbelief. When Pratchett breaks his own rules, he breaks them just enough to make sure you don't realize he has until the deed is done and you've already bought in to the new way of things.

Just like in the Discworld, the myths, legends, religions, cultural mores and beliefs of the real world are not always internally consistent. I'm sure that as intelligent, well-read gamers, you've noticed that simple truth as you've gone through life. And here's the nice part about that:

Knowing that religions, myths, and history often contradict themselves within their own chain of events enables me to create those same ripples and folds within the world of Loris, and make them behave in a manner that is internally consistent with the rest of the campaign setting.

Do you get where I'm going with that? I know my way around mythology and history (I'd damn well better, I studied it for 7 years in college), and because I know my way around it as well as I do, I am able to drag out the various repetitive functions and foibles of the mythological models (be they Greek, Egyptian, or what-have-you) and apply them to Loris. As well, because I understand and comprehend that history is made up of discoveries, mistakes, conflicts, and most importantly people, I can apply those things to Loris as a whole, and in the doing, create a very rich and bountiful tapestry that quickly becomes more than just a series of names and dates on a laser printed player handout. 

When creating a game world, whether you are new to the concept or a seasoned GM with numerous campaigns under your belt, it is really easy to forget that in order for your "starting town" to get to the place it is today, it had to be populated by people that came from somewhere else. The importance of that somewhere else, all the little fiddly bits and pieces of history and influential persons, are why I've been writing these essays. They are designed to show you the why's and the how's and the who's  that make up the world of Loris, and to show you how - in my own way - I have been working toward making a solid, believable campaign world.

It is really easy for a GM to say "Man, I really love this particular kind of Elf! I'm gonna stick them in this part of the game world, and then run them up against these Dwarves as their life-long enemies!"

Okay, cool. Elves and Dwarves, fighting one another. I can get behind that. But why? Why are they fighting one another? Why are they living so close to one another in the first place if they don't get along? Seems to me they'd not want to live close to each other if they don't like the other culture, right?

See, now, the new GM has to answer these questions. And these questions lead to other questions. And it never really ends.

There are two ways to build a game world, and that's one of them. I call it the "Toychest" method. It's the one where you start out small and build out and "up" from there: You pull a toy out of the chest, and make up a story about it. Then you pull another toy out of the chest, and make up a story about that. Eventually, you've got a series of toys on the floor, each with their own story – and they may not always fit together seamlessly, but you will always get an interesting tale out of it. Here's a good example of a "Toychest" game world:

You begin play in your home town. One day, while you and your friends are out hunting for deer in the forest, you return home to find that a Green Dragon has come in and destroyed your entire village. Your quest now becomes the goal of gaining enough skill and power to kill the Green Dragon, and in so doing, you venture out into the world around you.

In this example, the GM builds the world as you go, and you and your companions find new and exciting adventures – but all along the way, your GM is answering those questions. Why are there Elves fighting Dwarves here? Why is there a forest right up against this desert? What happened in those mountains over there?

This is a perfectly reasonable and viable method, and I've done it more than a few times myself. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. It can be immense fun and I enjoy doing it.

Another method is the "Sandbox" method – The GM sits down and says "I have this big blank sheet of paper, and on it I'm going to draw a map. And on the map, I'm going to put these five civilizations, and they will interact in this fashion. And these races shall be here in the North, and these here in the South, and these others over here in the East. And there shall be magic, and it's going to be awesome."

The advantage of the "Sandbox" game world is that it's really big, and from a macro level, the GM can pick you up and put you down anywhere, and you'll be able to know that there will be something there to interact with. Sandbox games are usually found in the form of pre-packaged campaign worlds. The Forgotten Realms, for instance, can be considered a published sandbox-method campaign setting – just one that's already had all of the fiddly bits filled in and set down for the GM.

The big disadvantage of the sandbox-method for building a campaign world is that, unless the setting is completely under the control of one particular GM (say, your very own home-brewed campaign world), where you go with your game will not always be where the creators want to go with the game. This ends up with the "Well, that's not what happened in my game!" syndrome coming to pass every time the creators release a new supplement. While not the biggest drawback, it can be frustrating.

Loris, however, was built using what I call the "Vacant Lot" method. Think about a vacant lot. The one down the street from your home, where something once stood, but stands there no longer. There's now a big patch of land there, and at first blush, it seems empty and barren. But if you look, there are little remnants of its history, things that have been there since the house was standing. An old doll, or a few pieces of broken furniture. Some pieces of the foundation may be found, covered by weeds and the turned-over dirt of the lot. This is where I started my entire world-building method with the question of "What happens when all the Gods of a world die, and new ones show up to replace them?" In essence, I generated a vacant lot and started building on it: the world of Loris is built on the castings and remnants of a world that has come before it. Just like in the real world, where nearly every civilization in history has been built on the remnants of those who've come before it, Loris is built on the old vacant lot. As it is built, it incorporates the little bits of character and remnants of the previous house, as it were.

So how does this all tie together? Well, hopefully, Under Sleeping Suns will provide new and established GM's with all three methods of World Building in a neat and tidy package. How?

In last week's post, I was asked the following question:

"How do you intend to help new GMs in their world-construction exercises?"

 

The answer I gave spoke about internal consistency and the persistence of history, and talked about providing a sort of a-la carte method to allow the GM to craft their own path in the game world – by choosing from a series of Scenarios, Root Causes, and Impacts, the GM, essentially, gets to play around with a toy chest in a sandbox on the Vacant Lot that is the world of Loris. The framework – the world of Loris itself – is the vacant lot. The magic, cultures, myths, and peoples of Loris are the toys from the toychest. The maps and nations and meta-plot allusions are the sandbox.

At least, that's the operating theory.

Under Sleeping Suns: Cogito Mundi

So, last week, I opened up the floor for some questions about what sort of things I have in mind for Loris (and Under Sleeping Suns as a whole), and while I didn't get nearly the inquiries I'd hoped for, I did get a few good questions - a couple of which are of the really good, deep-digging variety. I'll save those for last, as they're the best, and that's what you do with such things.

Okay! Let's dive in!

Is Loris a Heliocentric universe? It's got two suns, so how does that work?

Loris is not Heliocentric. In fact, it's quite Loris-centric. Somewhere around here I have a quick-and-dirty Orrery of the Loris system. Let me find it.

Okay, so. Here's the Earth. No, wait, wrong line. So this is an incredibly out of scale and not at all scientific representation of the known universe around the world of Loris. It's a rough estimate made by astronomers and astrologers who don't have precise stellar cartography tools in an attempt to show their cosmological domain as they know it.

It is also, however, mostly factually correct. Barring distances and orbital planes and the like, this is an accurate map of the Loris universe. As you can see, Loris sits at the center of the cosmos, and everything else revolves around it.

Loris itself is a world roughly the same size and density as that of Earth (I think I figured out it's actually something like 1.125 Earths, once, long ago), and currently has a surface that is about 80% covered in water. It has three moons, Ymera, Unim, and Neleo. These moons are named in an early Keverite dialect, and their names mean First, Second, and Third, respectively. In Haraki, their names mean Daughter, Son, and Dragon. Linguistic drift is awesome!

The people of Loris, by and large, know that their world is round, and they know that things revolve around it. Even if they didn't have The Nine to verify these things for them, simple observational evidence (the way that shadows are cast on the moons when the suns are warming the other side of the world, for instance) would be enough to provide these details.

Next up on the list are the Sun Sisters, the Sleeping Suns themselves, Alzin and Alfin. Daughters of Doan, Lord Of Light, and his wife Mur, Queen Of Air (some scholars think that Doan's "true" wife was perhaps Beshef, Lady Of Starlight, a nearly forgotten and relatively minor Keverite goddess... these scholars are usually relegated to the back rooms of the libraries and aren't taken very seriously...), the Sun Sisters now slowly spiral around one another in the same orbit that their father's divine form once traced daily. Doan, like all the Keverite Gods, had both a mortal and divine form, and when the former was slain, so too did the latter perish. The remaining priests of Doan, along with Doan's allied Gods, sang the two radiant princesses to sleep. Laying them down in beds of glittering crystal, their mother (Mur or Beshef, you be the judge!) set them spinning in the sky where they might never again be harmed by the cruelties of Man. Their slumbering dance takes them twenty-eight hours to complete - each hemisphere of Loris gets roughly fourteen hours of daylight - and Alzin is always the first to rise.

Alzin is slightly redder in hue than her sister, and her mortal form is depicted as having hair slightly longer and darker than that of her twin.

There is a near-fanatic cultural importance placed on making sure the Sun Sisters never wake up, by the way. This is important.

Next is Hurac, which in Keverite means Forge and in Haraki means Cauldron. It is believed that Hurac is a world made of fire, ash, magma, and burning stone. What few telescopes are powerful enough to pick out details of the Red World usually reveal a world covered in clouds and what looks like the smoke from enormous, angry fires. The Nine do not often grant details about Hurac, save that it is "Not for the concern of Mortals."

Finally, Kelon (Keverite Jade, Haraki Greed) and The Goslings round out the Loris system. Kelon is bright and green and it is believed that this world is a great forest, or perhaps a glittering emerald. Some legends speak of the Keverite Gods forging their weapons and armor from the wood of the trees of Kelon, and of loyal and faithful hunters, or bold and stout warriors, being rewarded with a final challenge upon Kelon's surface before their spirit was given its final rest. Very few telescopes exist that can even pick out details on Kelon, and like Hurac, The Nine are rather silent on its disposition. The Goslings are a cluster of five glittering objects that trail about behind Hurac. Although they almost always form a neat line behind the green world, they do sometimes change position, and have at other times "milled about" over the course of years or decades, as a group of goslings might do when disturbed.

There are some five dozen easily recognized constellations in the night sky over the lands that make up the Allied Nations, such as The Huntsman, The Lovers, The Gambler and The Whore, and the ever popular Eye Of Astares. Much like Earth, most sailors look toward a particular, unmoving point as their guide home: Jengo's Tooth, which is not truly the tooth of the dead God Of Luck, knocked free by the killing blow from Kolas, but it's a good folk tale, and it is a bright, tooth-white star, just the same.

Why is it called "Under Sleeping Suns"?

Well, part of that was just answered up above, but another part of it comes from my own inability to do anything by half-measures. Remember Rajual DaCarda? Yeah, so, this guy? Massive engineering, scientific, theological and philosophical genius. Also a painter, one of the first non-clergy practitioners of the surgical method, and a prolific writer and poet. While developing him for historical and meta-plot purposes, I worked up a series of Sonnets, Villanelle's, and other poetry forms of his work. Among them, one of his most well-known works, "The Free Man's Path" opens with Sonnet One:

“When bright from Heaven 'ere the Sun King fell
And silver blood of Kings now turn'd black
Into fifty score and more years did all
Fall to torment of tyrants will and wrack.
Through reign of Lies and War, to rain of glass
Sons buried before fathers and mothers grief
Until Flowers bloom vouchsafe'd the pass
And did lead lost souls to songs of relief.
Now see! Burned skies and forever Kings
Shall no more bear down our noble spirit!
Freedom like clarion bells through morn’ rings;
And brings tears to eyes of those who hear it.
Swear none shall take the freedom won this day,
As our path now under sleeping suns lay.”

So, not only is it a literal reference to the Sun Sisters, the mortal and divine forms of which legends tell us are now set in motion around the world of Loris, it's also a figurative reference to a DaCarda poem (one of his most popular, even) that in and of itself also references a series of historical events - The Sunfall, The Age Of Kings, and The Rain Of Glass. So many cross-references! It's almost like I know what I'm doing!

Why only three PC races in Under Sleeping Suns?

If you don't mind, I'm going to defer this one down to the bottom, and combine it with another question. 

You keep talking about The Gods Of Light And Darkness. What came before them? Why don't you have a complete recounting of the creation of the world?

Part of this harkens back to what I spoke about back in Coming Up From The South: the idea that when you have a complete and factually accurate recounting of the history of the game world, that more often than not the players or GM will lose the sense of discovery and wonder that comes from uncovering the unknown and peeling back the layers of history and mystery that blanket the world. Part of the fun of playing these games is discovering new things, taking bold new adventures, and seeing the world through the eyes of your character. Where's the fun in any of that if you (or your character) already know all there is to know? The Gods Of Light And Darkness are who they are and where they are for a reason. Before them is a time "before time," which of course means "nobody remembers this era, anything could have happened, and probably did." The GOLAD are credited with pulling the world out of the "Nightmare Age" (or the "Age Of Darkness," or the "Age Of Formless Night," take your pick), ripping reality apart, and settling it down into The Knot. That's some pretty fantastic, game-changing levels of power, there. If the people of Loris want to start keeping track of time from when the GOLAD got their game on? That's a pretty good place to start.

Now, I do (of course) know what happened before that. And there are seeds of it throughout the game world. The players and the GM get to discover it. Pretty cool, eh? 

What game system is Loris intended for, if any?

Right now? I'm currently running world-based playtests under Pathfinder, by Paizo, and have in the past run the world using everything from The HERO System to R. Talsorian Games' Interlock and Fuzion systems. Ultimately, I had hopes that something along the lines of the Star Wars Saga RPG would become the "fourth edition" of "the game," but that was dashed. I have some plans in mind to re-jigger the Pathfinder RPG rules into some more Loris-friendly forms and make a PFRPG-compatible sourcebook, but that's a ways out.

More than anything, Loris is supposed to be a campaign setting first and a rules supplement second. I want to give new, inexperienced GM's (or old, well-seasoned GM's who don't feel like creating their own game world) something to sink their teeth in to. Players, too. I hope to make it work.

Does Loris have a scientific method, as in a philosophy of observation and experimentation (to put it lightly), and does the discipline of magic fall into this?  If so, how?

Yes and no. There was historically no need for such a thing, especially during the Kever Age and the Age Of Kings. If the people needed the knowledge, they could get it through the Priesthood of the GOLAD, or later if the Eternal Kings decided the knowledge should be provided, they did so. Under The Nine, however, the "way of scholars" has been encouraged - priests and clergy of all levels are encouraged by The Nine to seek out the way the world works, and make it known to the common person. I've mentioned before that The Nine mandate that the public be educated. This is a matter of religious duty for the various churches of the Gods, then, and is something that isn't taken lightly. Magic, as in the arcane powers woven and focused by Magicians, is not so much a part of this method as it is a dovetail to it. Magic requires intense experimentation, focus, and a whole lot of trial-and-error. It's literally different for every Magician out there. Sure, the various schools and colleges have their "home" methods, but even so, within the school there will still be an ever-so-subtle variance between every Magician within the halls. Because of this, Magicians and their ilk are usually quite astute in terms of cause-and-effect (or, if you prefer, the Conjecture-Hypothesis-Analysis-Theory path).

It should be noted, however, that it is the "way of scholars" that has led the Woundhealers of Tara to understand that some illnesses and diseases are carried by agents and vectors that are not visible to the naked eye, and can only be found through culturing, careful observation, or direct Divine revelation. In essence, this is the formation of a sort of Germ Theory: the Woundhealers know that sickness can be caused by exposure to outside vectors, and is not caused by "miasma," or "etheric vapor" or the like.

How do you intend to help new GMs in their world-construction exercises?

I've thought a lot about this, and to be frank, there is already a ton of material out there for new and upcoming GM's in terms of building their own worlds. Paizo (see previous link, above) and many others have a plethora of essays, handbooks, campaign-building guides, and the like. While almost all of them are genre- or system-specific works, a good number are system/genre agnostic, and all of them provide good, solid advice from world-builders a lot more savvy than I am. There is very little I could add to the discussion.

But there is something I can add: And that is the concept of internal consistency and the persistence of history. I've spoken before about how history eats the evidence, and how time erases all footsteps, and I think that this is somewhere that I can really provide a good, solid set of instructions and advice. I also feel that a lot of pre-fab campaign worlds, in an effort to provide something "new, bigger, better" often forget their origins. They end up offering new and exciting things, sure, but they also end up with what's commonly referred to as "power creep," and in an effort to make the new thing shiny and desirable, they just use increased power levels to entice the players and GM's back, rather than using the revelation of secrets, or the solutions to mysteries, or richer, more intricate historical tapestries.

As far as providing the up-and-coming GM who wants to use Loris as a jumping-off point, I was hoping to use an option that I've seen put to great effect in games such as R. Talsorian's Mekton Empire: that is to say, "Here is Scenario A. You can use it as written, in which case Scenario A is caused by Root Cause B and has Impact C, or you can choose Root Causes B1, B2, or write your own (B3)! And then, grab Impact C1, C2, or write your own (C3)!" This method provides a lot of flexibility and numerous campaign options, and in so doing provides the following:

• It gives the new GM a good, solid, internally-consistent jumping off point that shows what the writers had in mind (Scenario A, Root Cause B, Impact C), as well as some branches that the writers think are pretty cool (B1, B2, etc).

• It shows the new GM good places to make up their own stuff (C3!), as well as providing a framework for how that new stuff can interact with the larger game world as a whole.

• It means that while no two GM's will have a precisely identical campaign world history, as they will certainly choose different paths and story-branches, any official game world updates that come out will still be close enough to the main "trunk" of their games as to not completely invalidate the adventures they've gone on, or force them to retro-script their games. At least, that's the plan.

And now for the last two questions, one of which I deferred earlier, and will now wrap in here:

Why only three PC races in Under Sleeping Suns? Do other races exist? Are any of them (like certain D&D races) inherently good or evil (which would seem to go against the approach you're espousing here)? 

Okay, in that order:

Because I said so.

Maybe.

Certainly, yes.

Okay, those aren't good answers, but they're factually correct. Let me expound a bit.

Why only three races? Well... There are only three PC races in Under Sleeping Suns because I have long felt that the addition of tons of Non-Human races in fantasy RPG's has stopped being about telling stories in which people have to overcome prejudices and predispositions toward other people, and more about "How can we shoehorn this particular non-mainstream or obscure aspect of Human culture into this type of racial idiom?" Someone more brusque than me said "Non-Human races in Fantasy RPG's have basically become methods of exploring non-Western, non-Anglo civilizations in a safe suburban environment." I don't know if I'd go that far, but it's certainly a valid observation, to a point. I want the conflict and culture-clash in Under Sleeping Suns to come from actual, real-world reasons: geography, economics, philosophy, education, and the like. I don't need a world in which artificially introduced conflicts based on whether or not all the Blue Skinned Elves just for whatever reason don't get along with the Green Skinned Elves and their Brown Skinned Dwarf friends. I'm also going this route due to the "everything and everyone has a part to play" nature of the game world. The Haran and the Ulehu - as a whole - have an actual, integral role in Loris' history, that will eventually play out. They're just as important as Humans in the grand scheme of the meta-plot. Adding much more than two non-Human PC races, in my opinion anyway, just waters down the soup.

Do other races exist? Well, the answer to that is a definite "maybe." Consider that Humans, Haran, and Ulehu all came up North out of the jungles of Saron at the same time (even though the Haran and Ulehu are considered "younger" than Humans for some weird culturally ingrained reason). If there were other races out there, they either didn't come out of the jaguar, serpent, ten-thousand-other-things-that-want-to-kill-you infested jungles, or they broke off and went further South. The current "known" world - if you were to overlay it on a map of the Earth - stretches from what amounts to Norway and the British Isles in the North, to Ethiopia in the South. You're looking at Mauritania as the furthest charted Western expanse, to Turkey and Iran in the East. As bounding boxes go, this is a lot of land to cover. So while it's entirely possible that there are other player-capable races out there, none of them have been found in that sandbox as yet.

Are any of them inherently good or evil? Well, if there's another race out there that has an ulterior motive within the meta-plot, and whose entire cultural and spiritual make up was based around the concepts and tenets of evil - that is to say, oppression, tyranny, and power at all costs - then they would certainly be considered "racially Evil." If such a race were out there.

There are absolutely Humans, Haran, and Ulehu that fit that description. These people are evil, pure and simple. But they are not racially so. They are not born with a lust for wanton death, destruction, and chaos. The problem with evil, true evil, is that it thinks it's good. These people, in all likelihood, most likely honestly believe that they're doing this because they're the only ones who see the truth for what it is. And that is, in and of itself, even more dangerous than someone who is born chewing scenery.

Now, as to the idea of someone who is just systematically, endemically, evil? I'll point you to the many varied works of Rajual DaCarda, especially during his Reflection Period as your answer. You might want to listen to The Offspring's tune "Conspiracy Of One," while you're at it.

Just saying.

Under Sleeping Suns: What Do You Want To Know Today?

Fanfare and Trumpets

It's Question And Answers Time!

I'm really wanting to drum up some conversations on the essays I've written here, so to do that, I'd like to take some questions from you the readers (*cricket noises*) and provide answers. I know all of the stuff that needs to be known about Loris, all stuffed up in compartments in my head, but that doesn't mean that I'm necessarily providing all of it in the essays I've written so far.

So I think going out to the readers (*more cricket noises*) and letting you ask me some questions with which to give me prompts for more exposition might be just the thing.

So here ya go, here's your chance to get all up in my skull-meats and get me to put on my Basil Exposition costume (it's groovy, baby), and spell a few things out that I may have unintentionally glossed over.

Here are a few I've already gotten:

Is Loris a Heliocentric universe? It's got two suns, so how does that work?

Why only three PC races in Under Sleeping Suns?

You keep talking about The Gods Of Light And Darkness. What came before them? Why don't you have a complete recounting of the creation of the world?

What game system is Loris intended for, if any?

Drop me some questions here, or over on the Paizo Forums thread that bears my dirty fingerprints, and I'll make sure every reasonable question gets answered. And by "reasonable," I mean that no, I will not buy you a pony. Even if you hold your breath until you turn blue. 

Under Sleeping Suns: The Wind Began To Howl

I've spoken previously (here, here, and here) about the Cosmological makeup of Loris, and have gone on a few talks about the interaction between The Waking World, The Veil, and The White – It's safe to say that by now there's a good sense that The Waking World and the "higher" strands of The Knot have their junctures and their chasms: there are places in the world where The Knot is stronger, and places where it is weaker. In these places, the spirits of The Veil are able to cross back and forth between their home and the world of mortals. The Veil stands as a deliberate barrier between the world of Man and the world of other things.

Stop and consider for a moment, if you will. If the historians and scholars are correct, then The Gods Of Light And Darkness set The Knot in place, stripping each strand out from a far more chaotic and unified reality, and basically completely rewrote what was an entire universal order. That takes a lot of power, and a lot of effort, and it raises a lot of questions. How did the Gods – who, let's remember, set up The White as their own domain, from which they should never be able to reach The Waking World – exist not only in The White, but also have physical forms upon The Waking World with which to eventually wage the war that led to The Sunfall?

One obvious answer is that the legends are mere parables and that the Gods didn't actually come down from on high to wage a war. But there are just as many points of interest and evidence to show that exactly that happened: The Gods Of Light And Darkness existed in flesh-and-blood form upon the face of Loris, and interacted with their worshipers daily. Some scholars will point out that as the Gods Of Light And Darkness set The Knot in place, that surely they must have known some way of traversing the barrier of The Veil to get from The White to The Waking World. Surely, as The Knot was their creation, they knew the secret methods to get around their own restrictions. In other words: the Gods most likely cheated.

This line of thought, of course, brings up another set of questions and concerns, namely: what about all those dark, unspeakable things they cast down into The Lower Dark, and the nightmare creatures that inhabit The Howling? If the Gods could circumvent The Veil and come and interact on the surface of Loris, what about the unknown darkness lurking in the other two strands of The Knot? If, today in the Age Of The Nine, the songs of The Nine can reach out through The Veil and reach the hearts and minds of mortals, who is to say that the songs of evil creatures, from deep within The Lower Dark, cannot pierce The Howling and do the same?

It's this sort of thinking that keeps young philosophers and priests awake at night, let me tell you.

Along with a contingent of reassuring, parental-voiced elder priests, I would like to be able to say "Oh, don't worry about that, The Knot is secure, and the denizens of The Howling can only affect you through your dreams, or in indirect, archaic ways or only at certain points of ancient power." But, well, that would be a lie.

Just as there are places and conditions in which The Veil touches and intersects with The Waking World, and just as the sixth layer (the "spirit path") binds the five strands of The Knot together, there are inevitably going to be more than a few times and places that creatures from The Howling make their way into the world of Man. The creatures of nightmare have their special paths and doorways into the world of terrified children and the valiant parents who protect them (or die trying, sometimes all too literally).

When I set out to craft the world of Loris into a campaign setting, one of the things that I decided, very early on, was that I didn't want a game world in which the adventurers got their jollies (and large portions of experience points) by beating up short, ugly people with bad teeth and inexplicable treasure hoards. The primary conflict in Loris is between the hearts and minds of other people, people who (with one or two exceptions) look like everyone else. Basically, I didn't want a "monster-fueled economy," I wanted a world in which you couldn't tell if someone was evil just by looking at them and saying "That's an Orc, it's guarding a chest, kill it!" For one thing, that chest might have been a family heirloom, and for another thing, you and your buddies are the invaders in this frontier fort, bucko. Well, you get the picture.

As Loris is a world that runs in cycles (or at least, appears to be), and one of the primary points of each cycle is a war in which one half of the world goes for the jugular of the other half, I wanted to have the "monster" population be different from the normative tropes you'd find in just about any other Fantasy RPG. Shakespeare's "The Tempest," along with the cinematic homage "Forbidden Planet," are two of the primary sources of inspiration for the way that things work in Loris. Specifically, the concept that Man is his own worst enemy, and the dark fiends of his own psyche are the ones that do the most harm. With this in mind, I decided that the "monsters" in Loris would tend to take the form of other people: most often the Kolanthans, but frequently people in normal society that just happen to be terrible, foul-hearted jerks. This is why there are no ancient forests full of Elves, no mountain halls where the Dwarves keep their own council, no happy vales with their comfortable Halfling homes. No, Man rules Loris, and Man is the elder race on her surface. The Haran and Ulehu are ubiquitous, but go largely unnoticed (on a good day) by most of Humanity. They've been slaves, targets of violence, and the recipients of overt apologies from more than one King. From the perspective of the Haran and Ulehu, Mankind is probably the meanest, nastiest monster on the face of the planet.

With that knowledge, then, comes the additional knowledge that there are things out there, in the dark, that would happily slip into your skin while you slept, hollowing you out and eating your memories, only to get up in the morning and pretend to be a loving father to your now widowed and orphaned family. Just as there are kindly, caring, benevolent spirits that cross over from The Veil in the form of ghostly animal guides, luck-spirits, Brownies, and the like, there are also cruel, vindictive, malevolent entities that would just as soon feast on the fear and terror they can cultivate from you and those around you. The denizens of The Howling are the bringers of nightmares, fomenting unease, discord, and wickedness wherever they can. The darker they can make the world, the more they feast, the stronger they become.

And that's part of the key to the way things work in Loris, really: The Nine will point out that not even Magicians can truly make something from nothing – Magicians tap into cosmic energies and shape them, just as priests draw from the energies of their own faith and the faith of their flocks to bring about miracles. The spirits of The Veil and The Howling create neither good nor evil within the hearts of Man: they can only augment and feed what is already there. Where there is good, the good spirits and powers blossom. The opposite is also true: where there is evil, the darkness grows and feeds the dark spirits, empowering and emboldening them. It gives them form, and purpose. It leads to the rise of men who shed their skin under the light of the three moons, becoming wolves that terrorize the villages of the hills. It brings about the skulking, skittering footfalls of swarms of insects that rise up from the underbrush of the darkened forest and scream with the voices of a million wrongfully executed men. It unleashes The Starving Man upon the bedrooms of naughty children, where he will leave the youngster dead by morning, belly eaten clean through to the mattress.

It is for this reason that the Houses Of The Nine do their best to instill strong senses of morality and decency upon their flocks. They cannot forcibly curb the dark urges of Man, but they can instill a sense of community and harmony within their supplicants. They can remind them that the strength of the good in the world is only as strong a frightened child's resolve. The emotions, actions, and will of the people of Loris, then, actually shapes what happens in the world around them. Where there is goodness in the hearts of the people, the world prospers and light shines. Where there is darkness, so there is the growth of evil. And just as with the "soft spots" in The Knot where the creatures of The Veil can sometimes cross, so too there are those places – wicked trees gnarled like grasping claws, or swamps and mires seemingly intent on letting no man through their depths unscathed, or caverns that breathe like a living thing – where The Howling and its terrors become all too real.

With all of this said, it should be evident that these incursions by creatures from The Howling are just as rare as those of their counterparts from The Veil. The influence that those dark things have on Man is usually quite small: more often than not, the cruel landowner who beats his servants does so because he's a terrible person, not because he has been possessed by an evil spirit. As said before: Man is probably the meanest, nastiest monster on the face of the planet.