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.

Under Sleeping Suns: Two Riders Were Approaching

You're almost through the closing verse of "All Along The Watchtower," I promise you. It won't be long, now.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, when the Eternal Kings took hold of the power left on the face of Loris after the demise of the Gods Of Light And Dark and gathered up the various people that would become the citizens of Harak-Ur, they didn't get all the people who lived in Kever and its outlying neighbors. A good number of people remained in other areas. As previously discussed, there were quite a number of cultures left over after Kever fell, nearly universally blasted back to their primitive roots when The Sunfall took place. As said: Kever was the most powerful civilization of its time. It was not, however, the only civilization.

After the Eternal Kings moved their followers and faithful up out of what remained of Kever, they trod north and slightly east, into an enormous, mountain ringed valley – what would become Harak-Ur. Along the way, they lost and gained in number as some chose to stop in what were (hopefully) safe, fertile lands, or as other hopeful supplicants took up the march out of the ruined lands that had once been Kever's Valley Of Life. Today I'm going to talk about some of those people (or rather, who they became), and one of the civilizations that survived The Sunfall in relative health. Well, for certain values of "relative health," that is.

I've mentioned the war between the four Allied Nations and the Kolanthan Empire in previous essays. As will be dealt with in more detail later, the war itself has been going on for over a century – war is a very tricky, long-running endeavor when you have magic and the ability to get the wounded back on the field with a few incantations. I do intend to go into the details on how such a long-running conflict impacts the world around it, especially in environmental, cultural, and economic terms. One of the more immediate impacts, though, is that of population displacement. This is best described by discussing the Doro "invasion" of the Cualish free States.

The Doro are descended from one (or more likely, several) of the groups of Kever refugees who decided to give up on the march to this promised "new land" and stay behind in a relatively fertile, presumably safe stretch of land between Kever and Harak-Ur. If the Vetrur are modeled on a spiritual and cultural amalgamation of the Iroquois and Norse archetypes, the Doro have evolved into a combination of the Apache and Mongol traditions and attitudes. These are a fierce, powerful people. Their strength and trade comes from constantly reinforced family/clan ties, and they are pretty much the undisputed masters of the equestrian arts across most of the known world. They inhabit the plains and steppes of the lands to the east of the Kever desert, and for a good long while were immune to the depredations of the war with the Kolanthan Empire.

(As a side note, those of you who are culture buffs like myself will realize that there are a good many differences between the overall umbrella of the Apache tribes and the Mongols. Unlike the spiritual mesh that became the Vetrur, I had a hard time reconciling some of these differences. In the end, I decided to keep the religious tolerance/openness of the Mongols above all - these are a people who are very practical and pretty much just want to live and do their thing, regardless of what their neighbors believe. I also ended up keeping the Matrilineal marriage/family customs of the Apache tribes, along with the spirit-focused, shamanistic aspects of both of their spiritual systems – like the Vetrur, these are a people who are very close to the spirits of the land. They've had to be, without the Eternal Kings to guide them, and like the Vetrur they were quick to hear The Nine when those Gods arrived on the scene.)

Because of their general disposition of keeping to their own affairs, the Doro were unfortunately slow to understand the true threat of the Kolanthan Empire and what it meant in terms of disrupting their way of life. At first, they were content to let the strangers from the Southwest come into and move through their homelands. There was plenty of room, and the strangers didn't seem very interested in the Doro, per se. The strangers kept to their trails, and they mostly stayed near the coast. There was little to concern the clan councils and elders.

Without warning – as that is always as these tales begin – contact with many of the west-most and south-most clans came to a halt. Then, as winter fell some years after the first sighting of the strangers, came the smell of smoke on the wind, and the children sent to run ahead of the armies of the strangers. Feet and hands cut and let to bleed, with no shoes on their feet or clothes to protect them against the cold winter ground, the children had been sent ahead as a warning: The strangers were coming, and those who would not turn away from The Nine would be put to the sword.

As The Nine say it is the righteous path for the strong to protect the weak, so the largest, strongest clans sent their riders out into the south. Half a million strong, the riders and their mounts thundered across the prairie, and shook the earth so mightily that they say that a new riverbed was pounded into the ground by their passing. Those who returned were like ghosts, the very life drained from them, their spirits broken. Phantoms and specters haunted the survivors, the spirits of the fallen sent by the Kolanthans to harry and ravage their once-beloved kin. The clan councils and elders acted quickly, and with great sadness: they commanded the Doro to leave their villages and clan holdings behind, take only what they could carry, and ride fast and swift to the North, toward what had once been Harak-Ur.

This is how the Doro came into conflict with the Cualish Free States. With relatively little warning, the Easternmost of the Free States suddenly found hundreds of thousands of Doro refugees flooding into their lands. The Doro had been traveling for weeks, months, even, seeking to escape the destruction of their homeland. The Kolanthans left little for the Doro: the largest herds of horses slaughtered or captured, the mighty Auroch herds nearly obliterated to feed the bellies of the Kolanthan armies, rivers fouled with the corpses of those who would not take up the Book Of Kolas as their only true word. The Doro were hungry and desperate. They had little energy or faith left in them to reach out to their new landlords and make humble requests. They saw good land, with clean rivers and ample game, and they did what anyone in dire straights would do: They took it.

Suddenly finding themselves facing a conflict on two fronts – The Kolanthans in the south and the Doro to the east – the various governors and councils of the Free States did the best they could for a time. They split their attention and their forces, trying to maintain the alliances and treaties they'd forged with their allies while also defending their natural resources, and for a time it worked. Eventually the pressure from the Free States whose land was being systematically annexed by an ever growing number of Doro immigrants grew too great, and the entirety of the naval and infantry commitment of the Free States was withdrawn from the war effort so that they might focus on their internal issues.

Angarn and Cymrik, both far and away stronger than Vetris in terms of naval power, both committed more forces to make up the loss of the Cualish contingent, but the leadership of these nations all knew that without the Cualish forces, their war efforts would eventually falter, and the Kolanthans would once again rule the seas between their lands. It took nearly a decade, but eventually diplomats from Angarn (Angarn does produce some very good diplomats, let me tell you!) managed to broker not only a truce, but a deal that would benefit both the displaced Doro and the Free States as a whole. Focusing on the fact that the Doro, like the rest of the Allied Nations, all worshiped The Nine, the diplomats from Angarn brought in priests and elders from both sides, and sat them down to formulate a plan to reclaim the Doro homelands.

With warships flying the flags of Angarn, Cymrik, and a dozen Free States, the Allies laid siege to four strategic seaside ports held by the Kolanthans. Bolstered by arms and munitions given to them by the Free States, and riding alongside two full legions of Angarnian cavalry, the Doro used their traditional knowledge of their homeland to move an immense army quickly and relatively unmolested down into the Kolanthan occupied land. Over the course of a year, the four Kolanthan holdings were razed, and the Doro regained a sizable portion of their homeland. With a firm Allied colony established at Fort Vallus, the Doro and the Allied Nations found themselves at peace and focused against a common goal: The end of the Great War, and the removal of the Kolanthan Empire from the face of Loris.

Unlike the Doro, the people of the nation of Vulasha and her sister nation, Celinia, would not be so fortunate as to recover from the Kolanthan invasion of their territories. Vulasha and Celinia, a pair of young cultures at the time of The Sunfall, managed to maintain a relatively strong identity and level of advancement following that catastrophe. Essentially two large cities facing one another across a wide, slow river, the Vulashans and Celinians enjoyed ample fishing, plentiful farmland, and resource rich hills on both sides of the bowl-shaped valley they resided in. The river that cut through the valley eventually led to the sea, and thus the people of the twin cities were able to trade with Kever by both land and water. They were well protected from the majority of the devastation of The Sunfall, although the fire that fell from the sky still scarred them greatly and destroyed the bulk of their farmland.

Recovering from The Sunfall took centuries, and required the people of both cities to expand out beyond their previously perfectly adequate valley. In the centuries that followed, as the land of Harak-Ur grew and thrived, Vulasha and Celinia scrabbled back up from their cultural devastation and re-established themselves as best they could. Over time, the river that divided the valley took on a near-legendary level of importance to the people of Vulasha and Celinia. Eventually, all the land to the west of the river became the Kingdom of Vulasha, while that land to the eastern side of the river's shore became the Kingdom of Celinia. The River Valley Cities became the River Valley Kingdoms: two nations united as one in spirit, but each independent and strong in its own right. As with the Doro and the other outlying civilizations, they had no Eternal Kings, no divine power to heal the sick and injured, no near-Deific power to guide them through difficult times. The people of the River Valley Kingdoms did have a particular advantage, however: They had magicians.

The Great Library of Doan in Kever held a copy of every tome of learning necessary for magicians to ply their trade. The River Valley Cities, between them, had a full set of copies of those tomes. With these, they were able to restore a large portion of the pre-Sunfall culture. Though it took them nearly three centuries, they were able to restore a large amount of their blighted land, and with it, their prosperity. Having worked so hard to restore their land, the people of the River Valley Kingdoms When the Kolanthans – rushing southward to their "promised land" as part of their self-inflicted exile in conjunction with the Night Of Burning Eyes – arrived on the continent of Saron, the River Valley Kingdoms were there to greet them.

The people of Vulasha and Celinia were not friendly to the Kolanthans. Kolas had slain Jengo, and the effects were felt all over the world, here included. The servants and supplicants of the Mad God Kolas were outright shunned, driven out into the lands beyond the River Valley Kingdoms and into what was believed to be nothing more than still-stricken land: blighted and barren of all but the most basic levels of subsistence. Unfortunately, Kolas' followers had been preparing for this exodus for some time, and had a goodly amount of materiel, supplies, and resources available to them. Within a few decades, the Kolanthan Empire was formally established and capable of defending its borders. Within a century of their arrival on Saron, the Kolanthans had attacked and conquered the (relatively) small country of Ikurn. A handful of years later, the Kolanthan Empire fell upon the River Valley Kingdoms and devoured them whole.

Those few refugees that escaped the destruction of the River Valley Kingdoms told tales of hundreds of legions of troops, each bearing the flag of a the Mad God, each led by a ruthless and powerful Sorcerer Priest: the Inquisitors Of Kolantha. They spoke of how the Inquisition marched as one, the echo of their boots roaring like thunder through the valleys of the twin Kingdoms. They wept to recount the grisly treatment that the Haran and Ulehu suffered at the hands of the Inquisition: No attempt to convert the Small Cousins was made. Only Humans were ever given the chance to be spared the point of a spear or blade of a sword. The Kolanthans brought the songs of their Mad God and the incantations of their magicians. They brought fire and steel and cannon and steed. They brought destruction on a scale not seen since The Sunfall.


Sadly, there would be no cultural reprieve for the people of the River Valley Kingdoms. The Great Alliance had not yet been formed, as Kolantha and the nations of the North would not enter into any sort of serious conflict for decades. With Angarn, Cymrik, Vetris, and the Free States separated by hundreds of miles of open sea, the goings on in these far away, barely understood lands was of no immediate concern to the countries that would eventually form the Great Alliance. It wouldn't be until almost fifty years after the successful destruction of Vulasha and Celinia that the Great War would break out. By that time, all traces of the once affluent, influential River Valley Kingdoms was eradicated, buried under the weight of the arrow-straight avenues and promenades of the ever-expanding Kolanthan Empire. Perhaps, somewhere out there, records exist to tell a curious soul about the now vanished people that lived there not so long ago.

Perhaps not.

Under Sleeping Suns: A Wildcat Did Growl

So for the record, I know I skipped two entire verses of "All Along The Watchtower" in writing these last four essays, but I assure you it was deliberate and not accidental. That being said, let's talk about the Spirit World and its interaction with The Knot in Loris.

Last week, I mentioned in passing the spirit animals of the Vetrur, and way back here I spoke on the Cosmological Makeup of the universe that Loris resides in. In both of these, the assertion that there is a spiritual world separate but intrinsically bound to the physical world is clear and concise. In today's examination, we're going to dive into that for a while.

When The Nine began calling out from The White with their songs, it was the Vetrur who heard them first. The Vetrur legends will tell you that it's because their fierce Northmen ancestors were pure of heart and spirit, both strong of character and flawless of courage. This is no doubt at least partly true, but scholars, philosophers, and other learned folk will add this specific item to that list:

The Knot is tied in such a way that in some places, two or more of the Five Worlds touch and overlap. In some places this makes the walls between the Worlds very strong, and in others, it makes the walls so thin and weak as to not be there at all. Thankfully, the latter are very few and very far between, else the Demons of the Lower Dark might break free and run wild across the face of the world. With The Howling firmly set between the Waking World and the Lower Dark, the beasts that live within that wretched place can only foment nightmares among the living. That is what is promised, at least.

But the sixth strand of The Knot, the nameless "spirit path," does bind the Five Worlds together, and it does at some times and in some places enable interaction between the Waking World and the spirits and creatures that live within The Veil and The Howling – with good and ill coming from both, as such things do. In the north lands of the Vetrur, the spirit path is very, very strong.

The Vetrur can best be described as having a cultural base that draws heavily from both the Norse and Iroquois traditions. They're not as incompatible as you might initially think, really. To the point, however, is the focus on the rite of passage that each of the Vetrur, man or woman, boy or girl, must undergo in order to truly understand the world around them. Through the years, this set of rituals has become very well organized and planned out - there are even contingency rituals in the event that the "normal" set doesn't work to help the soon-to-be-an-adult find their new path in life. If the practice of spending up to a week in a sweat lodge, fasting save for water and elk's blood, reciting ancient chants and focusing on the flame of a candle doesn't do it for you, well, there are a few back-up plans to try.

Because of their traditions and cultural openness toward such things, coupled with the thinness of the barriers between three of the layers of The Knot, the Vetrur are as a people acutely aware of the interaction between the world they inhabit and its neighbors. A child laughing at nothing is more likely to be asked what spirits she is playing with than she is to be thought mad or addled. Vetrian legends and myths speak frequently of hunting parties led out of certain death by kindly spirits, often portrayed as the immortal, ephemeral paragons of the very creatures the hunters were seeking when they became lost in the storm. More often than not, the tale ends with the hunters realizing that their desire to kill and bring home as many of the creatures as they could was misguided, and so they learn humility from the spirit, and remember to take only what is needed. While some of these stories are no doubt merely that – stories – the bulk of them are factual accounts that also happen to be useful as morality plays.

The Vetrur, then, were perfectly positioned to hear the songs of The Nine first. As the Silver Door was opened at a juncture of The Veil and The White, so too is the homeland of the Vetrur a juncture. All things have their spirits, from the lowest beetle to the mightiest of pines. The lakes and rivers of their harsh homeland are the blood of the land, the mountains its bones, and the earth its flesh. Everything that lives within the Waking World has a counterpart in The Veil, a spirit-guide, if you will, that a strong connection must be cultivated with in order to truly live. Through their rituals and traditions, the Vetrur youths reach out to their guide and bond with it. When this has been done, they go out into the world as new people, with new, secret names, and face their homeland head on. It is a wild, hard land, a place that cannot be bent to the will of its inhabitants. Rather, they have had to learn to bend themselves to live with it, as part of it. Though they recognize the power of The Nine and their right to dominance over the world (they are the Gods, after all – usurpers or not), the Vetrur also recognize that the spirits of the world deserve their due respect and that it is better to listen to what the land has to say than it is to simply plow it under and build on it. Oh, the Vetrur farm and plow and build and till just as any other people, but they do so with the mindfulness that the land can bury them at a moments notice, should it choose. The Vetrur are not better than the animals, they are not stronger than nature. They have no Last Good King giving himself up and becoming one with the land so that his people might never know a famine, as the citizens of Angarn have. They have only themselves, and that is all they need.

The Vetrur, by and large, see themselves as one with the natural world – they are a part of life, as it is a part of them. Greatness of spirit and deed, then, are what set them apart from the rest of nature. A common Vetrian homily is that while everything is born and everything dies, the only thing that is eternal is the name of one who has lived their life to its fullest. Honor, they say, never dies.

There are and were other nascent cultures that heard the songs of The Nine and sought to strengthen the ties between The White and the Waking World. In what is today Kolantha, there were the nations of Vulasha and Celinia. Though they've long since been torn asunder and reduced to little more than ash by the Kolanthan Inquisition, the people that would come together to form those nations held strong ties to the spirits of the rivers, oceans, and savannahs that bounded their homelands. As the Vetrur and their far-flung cousins to the south turned more of their ears to the songs of The Nine, the Gods gained in power, and took up their path toward reclaiming the long-misused power of The Eternal Kings. The Reign Of Glass began when The Eternal Kings refused to become agents of The Nine on Loris, and began sacrificing their own subjects in a final, futile attempt to gather up vast reserves of spiritual power with which to fight The Nine. The Rain Of Glass was the result, and Harak-Ur was buried beneath molten flame.

Rumor and legend has it that what remains of Harak-Ur has become a weak spot in The Knot, and that nightmare creatures from The Howling now prowl about that devastated wasteland, hunting for the restless dreams of brave and foolish adventure-seekers and tomb robbers, hoping for a meal of terror and dread. Others speak of forgotten horrors from The Lower Dark becoming flesh and blood in the shadows of the shattered and ruined Ziggurat temples of the dead Kings. Very few have been so foolish as to seek out the truth of these tales. Fewer still ever return.

Under Sleeping Suns: Outside In The Distance

A question that's come up in my recurring Under Sleeping Suns game (... what, you didn't think I just slapped all this down on paper and expected it to work without play-testing it, did you?) is "If all these people in the Four Nations came out of Harak-Ur with The Last Good King, where did they get all these different cultures from?"

That's a very good question, and it bears examining. The short answer is: They didn't.

The longer answer is that the refugees from Harak-Ur that would spread out and invest themselves in the lands that would grow into the Four Nations didn't walk into a tableau of pristine, untouched wilderness. There was no vacuum there, bereft of native inhabitants and waiting for a bold new Manifest-Destiny-style expansion across the landscape. There were native cultures, living and working and going about their merry business, when Almaria Rex led the survivors out of Harak-Ur and in to Angg Dath (in Haraki, "Safe Valley").

"But what about the history of the Eternal Kings leading the survivors of The Sunfall out of Kever and into Harak-Ur?" you ask.

Well, that did happen.

Kever was the greatest and most powerful civilization of its time. It was the shining beacon of cultural advancement during its era – with massive irrigation projects using the twelve sacred rivers as their source flow, the Sun Kings of Kever fed millions of people and connected their numerous cities by way of cheap and efficient water travel. The temple-cities, obelisks, and massive pyramids of Kever still stand today, a testimony to the once mighty empire and the permanence of its reach. Kever will forever be remembered as the most prominent and influential civilization in the history of Loris. But it was not the only civilization of the time.

Through the traditional methods of exploration, expansion, and cultural drift, the people of Kever spread out just as you'd expect them to. They sailed, walked, and rode out into new lands, where they set up camp and branched out into new and different cultures all over the known world. Many of them had centuries to develop, grow, and mature. A few of them even managed to become nearly unrecognizable when compared to their Keverite origins. When The Sunfall occurred, and fire rained down from the sky, it wasn't just Kever that was for all intents and purposes wiped off the map: it was just Kever that played host to the bulk of the devastation.

In the years following The Sunfall, the powers of the Gods Of Light And Darkness coalesced and manifested in the original Eternal Kings, who would in turn use that power to gather up the various survivors of the cataclysm and lead them out of Kever and into Harak-Ur. Where the Keverite refugees had Eternal Kings to bring their people into a new, prosperous land, the other, outlying civilizations had no such benefactors. Those smaller nations that weren't completely destroyed and turned to ash were blown back into the rough equivalent of the stone age - losing nearly all of their culture and history. Where they may have once had centers of learning and magic, now they had little more than mere survival as their priority. With the Gods out of the picture, there would be no more healing chants, no answers to the prayers for a good harvest, no hymns to quiet a raging sea and bring the boats home safely.

So, as Harak-Ur rose and fell, so too did the other, outlying civilizations scrabble their way back to some semblance of their former standing. Though they would not be able to compare to the majesty of Harak-Ur (which would still pale to Kever at its height), they nevertheless developed their own cultures, traditions, languages, and more. Even though their many disparate peoples would eventually coalesce into the Four Nations, at the time of the Reign Of Glass, there were hundreds of small pockets of civilization outside of Harak-Ur. Don't tell the King Of Laws this, either, but as the Eternal Kings degenerated into madness, there were also those many brave souls who, over the years, managed to escape from Harak-Ur and into the lands beyond the mountains that encircled the Land Of Kings. Most of these lucky survivors would in fact be the progenitors of the Cualish Free States: a jumble of loosely affiliated, constantly bickering City States if ever there was one.

So, when Almaria Rex led his survivors out of Harak-Ur and into Angg Dath, he led them out into a world that already had people in it. Lots of them. As the Dark Century came to an end, the Haraki people had spread out, intermingled with their neighbors, and begun new lives. The Haraki refugees and their descendants are in nearly every case directly responsible for the coalescing of many smaller civilizations into larger, stronger nations, make no mistake. But they did not simply walk out into a series of blank-slate landmasses and set up national-identity shops over night. It took a good long while, and a great deal of effort.

Interestingly enough, it would be the various clans and tribes of the Northern lands, the people who would unify and call their home Vetris, that would be the first to hear the songs of the Gods Of The Nine. Not the Eternal Kings, not the downtrodden and desperate commoners of Harak-Ur, but these fierce, proud Northlanders. With their spirit animals and their harsh, unforgiving homelands testing their resolve at every turn, the people of Vetris lay claim to the honor of being the first people to open themselves up to the return of the Gods to Loris. Scholars and philosophers argue about why this would be to this day, but the Vetrian mystics and priests insist it has a very simple answer: The Vetrians were the only people on Loris who were attuned enough to the "heart beat" of the world around them. When the Gods Of The Nine first sought to flex their power across the world, it was the spirits of the land and the animals that reacted – and as the various clans and tribes lived and breathed along with these spirits, it was only natural that the Vetrur would hear them first.

Whether or not that supposition on the part of the Vetrur is true, now, that's another story entirely.

Under Sleeping Suns: The Hour's Getting Late

So last week, I broke off of world-building-theory and got into world-building-practice - and this week continues in that vein (not solely because I wanted to finish the verse from "All Along The Watchtower," but maybe a little bit because of that). Last week, the methods and happenings that led to the state of things as they are today in terms of the Gods and their powers in the game world. This week, the importance and impact of those Gods, their clergy, and the difference between worship and belief in a Fantasy RPG World.

Let's start with that last bit first.

In the Fantasy RPG genre, unless the game world is specifically designed to be contrary to such things, the power of the various Gods is very, very real. If the game world isn't specifically set up to be a more "real-world" style game (a-la Conan or a "Modern Magic" style game), you're dealing with a completely different definition of reality than we deal with in our day-to-day lives. Not to start a debate on whether or not the various deities of Earth actually exist or not, but let's face it: In a Fantasy RPG, when someone calls upon the power of their God, it works. It works reliably, it works with visible, tangible effects, and more often than not, it works in such a way as to prevent the concept of Atheism altogether.

Which is why I make a distinction between worship and belief in this essay: It is entirely possible not to worship any of the Gods in a Fantasy RPG. There are plenty of people in Under Sleeping Suns who do not worship Kolas, or The Nine, for instance. But that doesn't mean they don't believe in them. There's a very distinct crowbar of difference, there, and it bears examining.

In a universe or reality where someone can raise up their hands and call out a prayer to their God or Gods and have that prayer answered with a burst of magical energy that drives back the undead, or lightning from the sky, or the resurrection of a fallen comrade, there is very little in the way of denial of this one solid fact: That power is real. It is right there. You really kind of have to admit that it happened, and believe in it. But even if you believe in it, that doesn't mean that you necessarily worship or pay respect to the God or Gods that it came from.

In nearly every Fantasy RPG I've played or seen, the differences between Arcane and Divine magic are very clear - Arcane Magic can create facsimiles of life (eg, Golems, Homunculi, and the like), and is very good at turning one thing into another (either by transmuting or outright destroying it). But it very rarely can actually heal wounds or return life to the dead. Divine Magic, on the other hand, tends to work in the opposite manner - restoring life and limb, assisting in the creation of things and people, and so on and so forth. Mostly, this comes from a sort of "RPG-DNA" that can trace its way back to the original Dungeons & Dragons rules, and it's worked pretty well through all of its incarnations so far.

These distinctions between Divine and Arcane magic, then, also help to establish the barrier to Atheism in the Fantasy RPG. In a world where you can observe how Magicians operate, and see the clear differences between their art and the arts of the Clergy, more fuel is added to the "Yep, the Gods are real!" fire. There is a surety and a very clear certainty, then, in a Fantasy RPG world - When someone from that world says "I don't believe that the Gods are real," that person is either lying, or is crazy. The power of the Gods is everywhere. It heals the sick, it mends broken limbs, it feeds the hungry, and more. Heck, even in Planescape, the Athar Faction, who firmly believed that the Gods weren't actually Gods, still believed that they were incredibly powerful entities who could do some truly amazing things. You may not believe that Grebnar, God Of Pies, is the one true God of Baking, but you can't deny that Grebnar's priests do a damn good job of making those pies while under the effects of Grebnar's Prayer Of Rising Dough. Mmm. Pie.

Therefore, it stands to reason that if you have a FRPG world in which the Gods are truly real and do exist, and it follows that their power is also real, that the role of the church and clergy within that FRPG world would therefore have to rise up to reflect that reality. If Kolas can kill Jengo, and in so doing cause every last one of Jengo's priests to lose their eyes to jets of divine flame, then Kolas is powerful and real and those who worship him have just had their faith bolstered a thousand fold. If a Woundhealer of Tara can reattached a soldier's severed leg and with a few hushed verses of song bring him back to his feet with nary a scar and no pain to speak of, that soldier will return to the front lines blessing the Goddess for as long as he has breath. You may not worship those Gods, but you can't deny that those Gods exist.

Taking all of that into account, then, I got to thinking about the various FRPG's that I've played, and how with a few exceptions (again, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay figures prominently in that list) the various churches and religions of the world are just sort of there. They exist, sure. But by and large, unless a player character is a priest or paladin (or insert-flavor-of-holy-warrior-here), of a particular Deity, they don't really do much. Consider the following scenario, typical to just about any FRPG:

The party enters town, and breaks up according to their types. Alar, the Fighter, goes to the local pub and "listens for rumors," which is his code for spending his money on strong drink and loose women. Beanpole, the Rogue, goes with Alar, because Alar's always good for a laugh when he gets drunk, and well, someone has to listen for rumors. Clarice, the Wizard, heads to the Library, because she wants to study up on some new spells and do some research on the ancient tablet the party found in the ruins at the bottom of the dry lake. Finally, there's Dashiel, the Cleric, who goes to the temple of his God, and prays for guidance, studies up to his new level, and gets some more healing potions.

Nowhere along the way in any of this do any of the party members get accosted by the believers of a God or Gods opposed to Dashiel's Diety. At no point does Dashiel get called to the floor by the higher ups in his church for associating with the likes of Beanpole (a known murderer!). The Church just sort of sits there and acts as a clearing house for magical cures and curse removal, really. Is this all the fault of the Game Master? Partly, inasmuch as the life's breath of any particular game session comes from the GM, but mostly, it's on the shoulders of the writers. Yes, most FRPG's will say "God X is ruler of the domains of A, B, and C, and their clergy are expected to do D, E, and F," but beyond that, they're all window dressing and theater facades. Not even in the old Forgotten Realms edition-transition modules, where the Gods walked over all of Faerun, and the PC's were directly involved with the machinations and manipulations of the various Deities, did the churches really get active and start going about doing Church-y things. By and large, if it's a temple or church in a FRPG, it will pretty much sit there and cater to the late-night-raise-dead crowd.

And really, this isn't at all reflective of how churches work in the real world. Churches meddle. They buy land up and hold it "in trust for the people." They act as soup kitchens. They offer up weddings and funerals. In many societies, before - and even sometimes after - the invention of the concept of the separation of powers (ie, Church and State), they are the primary sources of legality and justice. Churches run the every day lives of the faithful through prayer, education, medicine, and in many cases, determining who can and cannot marry freely. Now, perhaps it was because I was busily going through a number of years of religious studies in college while I was first formulating the world of Under Sleeping Suns, and maybe it was because of my formative years being spent watching the influence that each of their particular faiths had on the various branches of my family, but the general "there"-ness that the various religions of the FRPG's I'd cut my teeth on always seemed so very lacking, to me.

Enter the Church Of The Nine.

Building up the Allied Nations as a whole, I decided early on that the cultures of Angarn, Cymrik, Vetris, and the Cualish Free States would be based on the various European, Middle-Eastern, and Northern African nations that had spawned my favorite myths. Kever draws heavily on Egypt and Babylon, while Harak-Ur is built firmly upon materials sucked out of Sumeria/Akkadia, the more dismal and dark aspects of Eastern European mythology, and the like. "Modern" Loris reflects the various spiritual enlightenment phases of southern Europe and the Middle East, as well as drawing in a goodly amount of Native American (Northeastern Atlantic and Pacific Northwest, specifically) philosophy to round some things out. All of these influences rely very heavily on faith, spiritual belief, and the very central and primal pillar of any medieval culture: The Church.

One of the fun things about the COTN is that it's essentially an intruder-religion - the Eternal Kings (possibly very rightly) saw themselves as the true inheritors of the power of the Gods Of Light And Darkness after Kever fell, and by and large didn't want to give up their power to these Deities from somewhere else. Even though the Gods Of The Nine eventually took their power back (at least in the case of Graalis, Astares, and their children), the entirety of the pantheon of the COTN are more or less usurpers of the power the Eternal Kings once held. Now, the people of the Allied Nations are all well aware of this - it's in every one of their holy books. Each of the Books Of The Nine recounts quite clearly that The Nine pretty much stole the power that the Eternal Kings held, and did so in order to make the world a better place. This is doubly compounded by the fact that Loris has no Creation Myth, as previously stated. Without that sense of primacy - without that statement of "We made this world, and we can unmake it, so do what we say or else!" - The Nine cannot simply ride roughshod over their believers. So, even though they're doing right by the people of Loris, they're also very much in a sort of religio-political hot seat: If they got their power from the Eternal Kings, who's to say their power can't be taken away or given to someone else when Fire Falls From The Sky, Everything Resets, New Era Dawns?

(Ostensibly) not being fools, the Gods Of The Nine have therefore done their level best to make sure that the people love them. As this is a FRPG, and the Gods, therefore, are real, they've empowered their clergy with very clear and defined duties in terms of Making Society Work. This is done in the name of the various Gods Of The Nine, as befits their particular area of control. Moran The Keeper demands that knowledge be shared and spread. Education, once held in super-secret-reserve by the Eternal Kings for only their most trusted thralls, is therefore a mandate of the Church. All children between the ages of six and sixteen are required to spend half their day in school, at the Temple, seven of the ten months of the calendar year. Goran The Thundermaker, as God of Storms, Battle, and Farming, teaches that there is no honor in wanton destruction and demands that his clergy be of sound mind and spirit - they practice both armed and unarmed combat, but also tend to fields and farms. Often, the truest measure of a Thundermaker is not how many battles he has won, but how many fields he's tilled and turned fruitful. This is repeated throughout The Nine - each of the Houses sets about actively involving itself in some aspect of the daily lives of the people. Lubricating, if you will, the wheels of society and doing its dead level best to make people's lives better.

The Church Of The Nine, therefore, insinuates itself into every aspect of the daily lives of the Allied Nations. It educates the young, maintains the courts and judicial system (The Restbringers are judges, bailiffs, prosecutors and defenders), sees to the quality of wines (The Starhands took this over from The Luckbringers, as it happens), and oversees the health and safety of the people of the land - from the smallest hamlet all the way up to Lendar, million-strong capital of Angarn herself. It stops just short, however, of influencing the actual act of running things, however. The people of the Four Nations have long memories, and recall a time when those with Divine Power held complete political power. As The Nine rather like having agency on Loris, and as the example of what happens when a God takes over the affairs of state in the Waking World is given by way of the nation of Kolantha, this arrangement suits them just fine.

This is not to say that everyone gets along famously and there is never any conflict. Cultural and historical prejudices remain, and crop up in the places one would expect them to in our own world. The various rights and privileges of women in Vetris, for example, are very different than those in many of the Cualish Free States. The Haran and Ulehu are treated with far more respect in Angarn than they are in Cymrik, and only a few dozen miles of water separate those two nations. The COTN does what it can - but just as in the real world, many traditions and established methods of doing things run deep. What your culture does and what your religion says are often two very, very different things.