Preliminary Turn 3 Design Phase
Proposal: Crossing The Red LinesDifficulty: NormalResult: 6+6=12,
Unexpected BoonOrichalcum is a deep crimson alloy related to bronze, with an alchemical catalyst of whale blood and bone mixed in alongside a bit of Ichor during the smelting process. This soft metal proved to be extremely malleable and ductile, with simple cold hammering more than able to shape ingots and bare hands able to manipulate thin sheets with ease.
The first evidence of the creation of Orichalcum can be found in the lofty towers of the Bandit-Lords then known as the Wovenmen. Mimatqui, a great mind living in one of the Ziggawatts, was forced to work for the Wovenmen once his creativity and aptitude for inventiveness became obvious walking past his little personal workshop. While “forced” to slave away at the top of a tower, smoke constantly billowing from the balcony forges and chimneys, Mimatqui was quite pleased to be allowed to do his work as part of this Remoran relationship. He
enjoyed thinking and tinkering, and even if his musings were used to oppress in the moment, he hoped that one day he’d put in place the means for
everyone to experience his creations.
While initially seen as little more than a decorative metal, an outburst from a particularly impatient Wovenman arced cetricity past Mimatqui and blew apart a shelf of trinkets. Some orichalcum was struck, and both Mimatqui and the Wovenman could feel a slight change in the air. It took but a moment for both of them to see Mimatqui’s lodestone collection suspended loosely in the air above the orichalcum bar as if sitting atop an invisible ocean. Experiments into magnetism and the properties of orichalcum ensued immediately after a light beating. Mimatqui kept most of his experiments secret, an easy task when he was largely kept unobserved and could doctor his notes however he wished, because his work on cetric fields would clearly be perceived as a threat to Wovenman dominance
and the mystical power and spiritual stranglehold the Priesthood maintained over everyone beneath them.
Orichalcum’s cetric potential proved to be far beyond that of even the most intense Wovenman tattoos, carrying a charge faster and more effectively than their flesh-and-blood bodies. No elaborate rituals were required to attract lightning to it - Mimatqui crafted flying kites and tied Orichalcum pins to the strings keeping them tethered to his balcony, and the results were more impressive than an entire body performing a storm calling ritual. No cetric capabilities were needed to directly power it - Orichalcum with an end submerged in Ichor passively pulled cetricity from the power supply with a similar effect to the Wovenman’s strike.
Mimatqui, the brainy thing of good brain that he was, wasn’t truly isolated in his tower. He had a very limited network of outside connections he communicated with via bird and encoded messages, and used this network to perform experiments he was unable to test from his location - specifically, how did the Lightning Whales respond to Orichalcum?
The results were, frankly, as much of a societal upset as everything else Orichalcum threatened just by existing. Orichalcum the size of the pins used for the kite experiment could be thrown into the water, and if a Lightning Whale was nearby it would rush toward the pin and swallow it as if the metal was the only thing in the universe the creature desired. Every beast died within moments. Nonviolently. Nonexplosively. And completely usable.
But it was Mimatqui’s Red Lines that brought everything together.
Orichalcum foil was wrapped around a core of stone and laid along the ground. When provided with a cetric charge, the foil produced a field for the length of the line relative to the strength of the charge capable of suspending a significant amount of weight in ferrous material. Mimaqtuicarts took advantage of this with a grooved iron rod running along the bottom of a typical cart. Forming the line and the stabilizing rod in a similar shape and positioning the rod over the line acts to “lock” the cart into position, reducing the chances of derailing or turning over whether stationary or in motion. The first lines were installed to ease the transport of self-sacrificed goods to the Wovenmen, set on leveled ground graded to gently slope down from the nearby Ziggawatt to their tower. Ichor Stations dotted the lines, providing power through massive storage vats of Ichor and rest for the weary. Each line ended in a section barely separated from the rest running on lower power and, eventually, an end that was entirely unpowered so that carts could be brought to rest on the ground. Orichalcum still coated each rail, as it was much easier to glide the Mimaqtuicart across the red metal than any other widely available material.
While the carts could travel largely independently, an unchecked cart would continue accelerating downhill until the journey ended in disaster. Most early carts were yoked to beasts of burden or kept on a leash with a human attached to the other end in order to provide controlled travel to prevent that.
As the Red Lines began to spread throughout the North, connecting towers, Ziggawatts, cities, villages, mines, ports…and just about anywhere else, goods found themselves no longer the exclusive riders of the rails. Information began to spread, too. Mimaquti’s network, the self-described lantern in the darkness known as The Illuminators, took his findings from his extensive studies and research into cetricity’s relationship with the natural world and began teaching in secret. Describing the positive and negative tides of cetricity and cetric currents in ways every peasant could understand, knowledge once locked away for the wealthy or “divine” was spreading faster than the blood beneath a sacrifice. Unrest in the masses directed toward two of the three (Two and a half? WhaleSlayers are a pipeline to priesthood but technically separate) elite pillars of society led to a few early acts of rebellion that amounted to little, but a public display of Orichalcum’s effect on Lightning Whales and the threat of obsolescence of WhaleSlayers tore society in the Cabal down to its very foundations. Every single position of power within the region’s history had its legitimacy absolutely shattered by one man’s research, and by the time the impact of his discoveries were realized, it was already way too late.
It is with luck then that most people saw reason - these peoples were still responsible for what wealth and prosperity the Confederation and Cabal had experienced, and still had a place in the
culture of the people, even if their monopolies on spiritual and material leadership were shredded. Known as either The People’s Revolution or The Red Revolution, masses gathered in groups too large to simply disperse without a massacre, and while no revolution goes without some blood spilt, the fractured ideals of the Priesthood and Cabal ensured they could not come together to effectively suppress the uprising. Society shut down as every party entrenched themselves, preparing for the shoe to drop. But none did. Instead, talks were engaged by the people inviting all parties to negotiations in order to finally ensure prosperity for all, and these meetings resulted in the foundational document of the Twelve Bays Confederacy: The Twelve Guarantees.
1-No individual or group shall hold absolute power.
2-Representatives of all cities shall assemble to pass laws in the Forum, the sanctity of which shall not be violated.
3-The priesthood, the people, and the protectors shall each always have a voice in government.
4-The people shall sustain the priesthood and the protectors.
5-The priesthood shall provide spiritual guidance to the people and the protectors.
6-The protectors shall ensure the safety of the people and the priesthood.
7-No human shall be sacrificed without their consent.
8-The arrest or execution of wrongdoers shall be approved by a court, the proceedings of which shall be open to the public.
9-Whale hunting shall be regulated by the priesthood, but shall not be denied without cause.
10-The taxation of whale harvests shall not exceed three-fifths.
11-If a whale hunt causes damage to the city, the slayer shall reimburse the injured parties.
12-Weirs shall not obstruct navigable rivers or canals.
The Illuminators, their task of freeing the people complete, turned their attention wholly to maintaining the Red Lines. Lines of Mimatquicarts were connected to one another as individual “Chaincarts” to form “Chains” [GM Note: I was trying to do something with cetric and train, and stumbled into that, please don’t kill me] that could haul goods in greater bulk than an individual cart. While that should be obvious since each cart increases available volume, the big difference came from the cetrically-infused Illuminators that rode atop the front cart of each Chain. A few jars of Ichor were more than enough for these Chain Conductors [THERE IT IS] to keep themselves consistently providing extra “juice” (a slang term for Ichor) to the rails between waystations in order to increase the mass a field can suspend.
As the Red Lines expanded and quality of life across the board increased, the population exploded and expanded, necessitating the expansion of Ziggawatts to fit their needs, resulting in extensions of the Red Lines, improving quality of life…
For the first time in, perhaps, ever, the people of the Twelve Bays Confederacy saw the light at the end of the tunnel and stepped into it. [I am making sure you realize that was another two references to trains (:]
Thanks to the Renaissance brought on by Mimatqui;
Ziggawatts, being the structures around which everything is centered in a massive and connected empire are
[Cheap] along with their by-products.
Lightning Whales are
[Cheap].
Storm Caller Priesthood now pulls from the entire population and are
[Cheap].
Cargo Chains are the arteries through which the blood of the empire runs, and are
[Cheap].
It is now the Revision Phase, and will continue to address the same prompt. As with the last turn, your design is not your past set in stone - you can utilize your Revision to advance something within the results/armory, but if there is anything specific about the given backstory in this Design that the team would like to address or modify, that is also allowed. The revision will be rolled as normal.
Lightning Whales: Massive physiologically unique beasts that can be found migrating through waters off of the northern coasts. They build static through their teeth as they filter-feed, using the constant discharge to stun their wide range of prey. Excess buildup is discharged when they surface. When unable to process their buildup normally, such as when they are beached, the body builds up a potent amount of energy beneath the insulative skin. If allowed to continue without a "forced discharge", the buildup ruins the chances of any usable parts being harvested. The bones are large and strong enough to provide some shelter, the meat nutritious and ample enough to feed entire villages for weeks at a time, and the blubber a means of maintaining that ever-evasive but equally necessary fire. Easily harvested using Orichalcum as a bait/poison. [Cheap]
-Whaleblood Tattoos: Tattoos made with whale blood. Very electrically conductive, and capable of channeling energy through the body without harming it. [Cheap]
--Storm Dancers: WhaleSlayers who have survived enough to acquire an excessive amount of tattooing and volunteer to redirect the power of the storms and skies away from their people. Practically immune to everything cetrical but the most intense lightning. [Expensive]
Storm Caller Priesthood: The religious structure built off of the Storm Dancers which controls the aspects of the cultural faith ingrained in society. Priests are drawn from the population at large and are capable of cetric feats. Cheap
Wovenmen: People covered in whaleblood tattoos and filled with alchemical implants that provide unnatural speed, energy, reflexes, and climbing capabilities. They idolize self-sacrifice and will often explode themselves in a great cetrical blast triggered by pounding the Whale’s-Eye or Kill-Swatch over the heart in order to complete their goals. They now exist largely quietly at the fringes of society, watching silently. Low survival rate of implantation due to infection exacerbated by the no survival rate of their self-sacrifice leads to a limited population deployed in [National Effort] squads.
Ziggawatts: Large complex structures used for just about every aspect of life in the Bay Twelve Confederation. Used primarily for religious rituals and the creation of Charged Blubber Jars and Ichor. The Great Ziggawatt of Ixan is evidence of a cultural focus in Monsoon Point. [Cheap]
Charged Blubber Jars: Clay jars full of Lightning Whale blubber that has been charged via Sky Caller rituals. Explosive and unstable. Cost tied directly to Ziggawatt expense. [Cheap]
-Ichor: Blubber Jars stabilized with whaleblood. Discharge happens slowly relative to Charged Blubber Jars, resulting in safer handling and more control with a less impressive discharge. Cost tied directly to Ziggawatt expense. [Cheap]
Orichalcum: A shiny red metal with high ductility and malleability, and capable of conducting cetricity and emitting a close but powerful magnetic field. Made using an alchemical whale blood and bone mix while creating bronze. Has no directly associated cost.
Skyfeeders: Ballista-like slings used exclusively in the ritual practice of Bloodyeeting launching sacrificial remains into the clouds. One is available atop each Ziggawatt. [Cheap]
Ichor Clubs: Wooden weapons coated with Ichor that discharge on impact, potentially incapacitating victims. [Cheap]
Cargo Chains: Sets of carts used to haul vast amounts of goods across the empire using the Red Line orichalcum-covered rail lines. Run by Conductors. [Cheap]
The key defines the borders of the map first, then the river, and then describes each region North to South and East to West, like reading a book.
The Ice Wall (Eastern Barrier): While borders can be quite fluid in nature, the easternmost extreme of the land is harshly cutoff by a monolithic wall of pure ice, 3000 meters tall. The surface of the wall contains somehow fewer features than the barren cliff face: an everstretching plane of blinding white. No plant or animal dares to brave the blisteringly frigid, cutting winds driving ice and snow constant off the wall and toward the continent below.
The Desert of ‘Amit (Western Barrier): The desert of 'Amit shrouds the west in heaps of dazzling white sand. The evening winds stir up sharp, stinging sandstorms which scatter the light of the setting sun and blast the young Cholades Mountain Range separating it from the rest of the continent. Through the heat haze, you can sometimes glimpse the peaks of the Anti-Cholades mountain range, grasping at the far horizon and further reinforcing the rain shadow cast over the desert.
The Interbarrial River Network: The Interbarrial River Network is birthed from two points: the geysers and healthy water table in the Wild Savannah and the runoff and melt flowing off of The Ice Wall. These networks of streams join together to form large, slow moving rivers that steadily meander toward the center of the continent. A veritable (relatively shallow) inland sea forms where the rivers meet in the Vale of Waters and proceeds to divert both toward the north and south. Tributaries and distributaries line the entire calm, slow-flowing river, providing the only real navigational issue along the equally calm riverbanks. The arterial river flowing north and south empties into the Northern and Southern Oceans. The Great Lake manages to regulate flow during the wetter northern seasons, providing a steady and reliable flood pattern across the continent and keeping the extreme wet or dry seasons from impacting the reliability of the River Network throughout the region.
THIS IS YOU Monsoon Point (North Capital/Bay12): This area point is bounded by its impressive coast containing multiple natural harbours. Monsoon Point is so named because winds that come off of the coast, off of 'Amit north of the Cholades, and off of the Icewall contact to create a spectacularly broad storm network which ensures Monsoon Point is constantly lashed with rain. An extremely rainy season dominates nine months out of the year, followed by three months of the year that can't accurately be called a dry season as much as a "less rainy season". The landscape in Monsoon Point itself is surprisingly dramatic as a result - a hilly region has been carved out into a land of beautiful red cliffs, with intense and verdant greenery blooming across the slopes - the sole exception being the incredibly wide Interbarrial River Network and the gentle, flat lands that follow it.
Choladaic Rainforest (West Front, North): This region is absolutely dominated by a tropical rainforest. While most definitely less waterlogged than the areas to the northeast and east, it is still a rainforest - you can still expect to get soaked. The tropical rainforest rolls across gentle hills, fed by the Monsoon Point rainstorms which gather here and bowl against the Cholades. While the rain is certainly an obstacle, the unsettling nearly endless twilight beneath the canopy should not be underestimated.
Evergreen Riverway (Center Front, North): The hills in the surrounding regions flatten immensely within the Riverway. The Evergreen Riverway is a temperate pine rainforest - unbelievably lush, unbelievably green, fed both by brunt of the rainstorms coming down from Monsoon Point and the wide, fast-flowing arterial continental river flowing up from The Vale of Water, central Evergreen Reach is... well, it's wet as hell. The riverine environment leads to plenty of mud, fallen logs, ponds, small lakes, and streams, but other than that it's actually quite a pleasant place to be in, if humid.
Frosthollows (East Front, North): Temperatures drop dramatically in this uneven, rough, but beautiful alpine forest terrain. Bitter snowstorms hamper that beauty, driven west by the powerful and biting wind blasting off of The Ice Wall. The deep valleys in this region tend to catch these winds, creating absolutely unbearable conditions within the crags and ravines that crop up in the area. These ravines open up into the foothills and lowlands that dot the area, pummeling them with frigid temperatures rivaled only by the surface of The Ice Wall itself. These Frosthollows, open areas where even the pines refuse to grow, are treacherous, but often the safest and most direct way geographically to navigate the region.
Wild Savannah (West Front, Center): Resting against the shadow of the Cholades and ‘Amit, the land is a savannah of tall wildgrasses and scattered acacia copses. The climate is warm here, but not prone to drought due to a high water table fed by geothermal heat. When one spots a little hillock on this savanna, it is a geyser as often as it is a termite mound. The biodiversity in this region is staggering: giraffes and dwarf elephants in the patches of thin forest, great wildcats and wildebeest patrolling the grasslands. A river cuts this land too, fed by the water table and rare torrential downpours, flowing west to east. The geological activity here has left behind kimberlite pipes, the source of elusive diamonds and other precious gemstones, as well as a fair few rare earth metals.
Vale of Waters (Center Front, Center): The Vale of Waters is where the fresh waters sourced from the east and west join to run north and south. A great lake sits here, relatively shallow but broad. Its waters are flush with freshwater fish and waterfowl. The terrain beyond the lakeshore of brown sand and clay beds is some of the most supremely fertile earth in all the world, a temperate country of low hills and beautifully green grass. The summers are warm but mild to crops, the winters thinly blanket the land in snow for a month or so before melting. Little of the wildlife is dangerous; foxes, burrowing rodents from shrews to beavers, hares and the like.
Glacial Taiga (East Front, Center): The freshest remnants of The Ice Wall’s glacial activity can be identified here; gravel beds, moraines and the like. This land is a taiga of warmly-colored shrubs and sedge grasses intermixed with the occasional copse of spruce and birch, grazed by herds of caribou that alternately can be found migrating to the Evergreen Riverway. In summer, multicolored wildflowers blossom from the earth, areas of which are warm enough to tolerate agriculture. The morning sun lights the crags of the Ice Wall like a bonfire, and sends a glut of meltwater to swell the banks of a river heading west. Beneath the permafrost are vast beds of anthracite coal and petroleum.
Great Dry Sea (West Front, South): Once an ancient inland ocean, the Great Dry Sea is a massive salt flat that exists in a depression stretching from the edges of the Painted Land outward toward the 'Amit desert, where the ground begins to elevate once more and transfers from salt into sand. While outwardly unremarkable, the Great Dry Sea holds a unique characteristic of a deceptively active groundwater environment, forming and dissipating subterranean rivers at will. This results in turning the Great Dry Sea into an invisible minefield where one false step can send a man plummeting into a thick brine pool if he's lucky, or a many dozen foot drop to his death if not. The reprieve for these hazards is the rises in the flats that ages ago were once islands surrounded by water but now are encased in salt, dotted across the Dry Sea like freckles.
Sandoras Thornsea (Center Front, South): This entrance to the Painted Lands is host to a myriad of cactus families and hardy flora that take advantage of the presence of running water - thousands of species ranging in size from a child's fist to taller than a man, interspersed among a splattering of cork oaks and stunted juniper trees. The cacti mainly stick to the banks of the river and the distributaries that break off from it, creating thick bands of cactus that form the main hazard in crossing this region.
Motoro Conelands (East Front, South): Volcanic energy in this region is just powerful enough to breach the surface before running out of energy and forming the squat towers of basalt known as “splatter cones”. Ranging from only one meter in height to over twenty, these miniature volcanoes pocket the land in the thousands. Many of them are still active, needing only a slight disturbance to ooze molten rock from the ground. Despite the danger, the Conelands have long been a source of intense mining efforts - splatter cones contain high concentrations of metals across the entire range of metals available beneath the surface. In the areas populated by inactive or dormant vents, there is a large coverage of greenery that feeds off the rich volcanic soil and the Interbarrial River Network.
Painted Lands (South Capital, BPL): The riverway flowing south from the Vale reaches its southern terminus in the Painted Lands. What began as a clear flow of babbling water has been transformed into an even wider, slower thing laden with sediment. Millions of years of river action have carved a canyon through the country's soft rock strata, sharp and jagged at first but growing as broad as the horizon by the time it reaches the sea. Wandering distributaries branch off of the river, leaving winding shallow bands of fertile soil behind when they inevitably wander off again or dry up between flooding seasons. The land takes its name from the bands of rock exposed by the river to form a panoply of color: white limestone, black shale, and sandstones in pink, red, yellow, and every color in between.
The fertilized highlands beyond the water-carved walls (a distinction less marked as one proceeds southward) are relatively arid, with hot summers and cool winters. Groundwater is exposed to the highlands by limestone sinkholes, or cenotes. Papyrus reeds and olive trees grow in abundance and alligators sun by the riverbanks with regularity as one travels further south. The coastal bay experiences a cooler climate, with sea breeze coming off the ocean to regulate temperatures year-round and provide gentle winter rains.
The sedimentary rock of the Painted Land bears countless karst caves, connected by underground rivers and home to strange species of eyeless fish and cave-adapted lizards.
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