♂ ILLUMINATED BOOK, kotaline's Phasmas

[Der Pestdoktor]

ＬＡＴＥＮＣＹ ❦ ＰＯＴＥＮＣＹ
❂❂❂ ❂❂❂❂❂❂❂
ＶＥＮＴＵＳ (WIND) ❦ ＴＥＲＲＡ (EARTH)
❂ ❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂
ＡＱＵＡ (WATER) ❦ ＩＧＮＩＳ (FIRE)
❂❂❂❂❂ ❂❂❂❂❂
ＬＵＸ (LIGHT) ❦ ＵＭＢＲＡ (SHADOW)
❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂ ❂

This journal is for kotaline and her Plague, Hopkin-- please do not post here without her permission!

 

[kotaline]

the chapter index

i. ex libris.....................................•
ii. the chapter index.....................•
iii. narrative rules.........................•
iv. the storyteller...........................•
v. the book boy.............................•
vi. the illuminated book................•
vii. the people he meets...............•
viii. the adventures he has...........•
ix. the thoughts he thinks.............•
x. the sights he's seen..................•
xi. the changes he's made............•
xii. the things he carries................•
xiii. the faith he has.......................•
xiv. the world he lives in................•
xv. credits......................................•

 

[kotaline]

narrative rules

• post in this journal if and only if you/your plague knows hopkin.

• as long as you know hopkin, you don't need permission, but use brackets for ooc comments.

 

[kotaline]

the storyteller

XXXName: Wickwright Finch
XXXAge: 54
XXXFaction: Scientists
XXXRegion: Hails from Imisus, travels but recently tends to stick around Imisus and surrounding areas.

XXXAppearance: Tall, thin, and balding, with a sharp nose, clear blue eyes, and a thin but easy smile. Spidery, deft hands, and simple clothing with straps on his sleeves to hitch them up and out of the way when he's working on his book.

XXXOccupation: Religious mendicant- Wickwright is part of the Jawbone Society, a small religious sect apart from the House. As a Jawbone Man, Wickwright works on his contribution to the Society's Collection in Imisus, his illuminated book. For this he travels across Panymium observing cultures and collecting stories. He also does odd jobs to support himself when he needs money or supplies, and Wickwright gets by with what he does, though his life is definitely a spartan one.

XXXPersonality: Wickwright is not an indolent man. He grew up listening to stories of the original nomadic Jawbone Men from his father, and that instilled a restlessness in him that first channeled itself through an endless series of questions posed to anyone who knew him as a boy. He always wanted to know more about other places, and more about the Society who had sparked his interest in other places to begin with. Once he began to write down the stories so he'd remember, he noticed similarities and differences between certain stories, and became meticulous about how he recorded them. Soon, he was a perfectionist about everything he wrote, including how he presented his own thoughts, and writing became a hobby to parallel his curiosity, something his father supported wholeheartedly. Wickwright's perfectionism is, and always has been, reserved for his work, but his restlessness extends to every part of his life. Once he turned eighteen, he left home for good to have a nomadic lifestyle like the original Jawbone Men he collected stories about, and he travels, fidgets, and interrogates all over Panymium.

Because of all the questions he asked and things he wanted to know as a boy, Wickwright became good with people by necessity. Though the Jawbone Men were up for answering his questions uncomplainingly, when they weren't around, that left the others around him, who were far more likely to get irritated. Over the years, Wickwright has become a confident speaker used to treading carefully and coaxing people into conversation. He's fairly good at getting people to talk and good at finding out what they're interested in, and he makes it his business to be interested in what they have to say no matter what it may be. However, Wickwright is most interested in his books and the Society, and if you get him talking about that, it trumps anything else you might have to say and he gets a bit carried away discussing it. Wickwright is incredibly passionate about things he likes, and when he tells someone about them he sort of forgets about the conversation in his attempts to describe to them just how interesting these things really are.

Naturally, Wickwright's been rebuked, shot down, and discouraged by people he's tried to get to know, and though at first it discouraged him, now he has the optimism to just bounce back from a hit like that. Wickwright is usually of the opinion that everything will work out, and if it doesn't he'll make it work out. This has often kept him sane in his travels when he's run into bumps in the road both literal and figurative, but is grating to people who are trying to rebuke him as he just keeps coming back. Mixed with his sense of perseverance and his perfectionism, this makes it difficult to steer Wickwright from something once he's decided to do it, for better or worse, and makes it even harder to get Wickwright to leave you alone once he's decided to know you. He may not badger people all day about what he wants, he knows better by now, but he'll wear them down slowly. He's become fairly deft at people-politics after all the years traveling Panymium, and not only does he usually know what angle to work a person at, if he gets that angle wrong, he's never too discouraged to try again. However, if he reaches a point where it's unwise to try again, he's likely to get himself into trouble. Wickwright knows how to make a nuisance of himself, and even after years of trying to refine his social skills to the point where that doesn't happen, his persistence still ensures that when it does happen, it can get ugly.

XXXHistory: Wickwright grew up near the Society's Collection in Imisus. He lived with his father, as his parents were married but living separately. (Finch men haven't been really good with women since an incident between a Finch and a female Society member from the Bunting family, they tend to be skittish.) His father was a scribe who made his living off of taking down letters, refining words into script, copying legal documents, and transcribing speeches. His father was the first Finch to also study illumination, first for his contribution, then also as a way of making his services stand out and earning money. Wickwright learned illumination and writing through his father, as well as a number of stories concerning his family and the Society's history. His family archive was at home, and he pored over it, reading about the exploits of Jawbone Men named Finch of whom he was the latest successor. From there, he asked the actual Jawbone Men who would visit his father as a rest point on their way to the Society Collection for Jawbone Society stories, which he wrote down for later. He was especially interested in the stories about the early Society members since those had the least solid documentation, and the same story could be radically different when told by a different member. When there were no Jawbone men to question, Wickwright would often ask townspeople and his father's customers about things, or just listen to what they were dictating to his father. By the time he was 13, he had quite a number of stories, and when they officially inducted him into the Society as his father's successor at that age, he had already decided that he, too, was going to make a book as his contribution. Unlike his father's, which was a book of every version of the Society's origin myth, Wickwright was looking to broaden his horizons and write about stories from all over Panymium, starting with the ones he had collected from the Jawbone Men and the people in his town. He wanted to find the connections between stories and see how different people told the same stories. When he became eighteen, he left his home to go find more stories and lead a nomadic lifestyle similar to the original Jawbone Men whose stories were the first he began to record. He led this lifestyle for thirty years, except for a year's stay in Imisus after his father died when he was thirty to wrap up his father's affairs, bring his contribution to the Collection, and mourn. Wickwright has never really known his mother well, but she died when he was 42, and he concluded her affairs, but made much shorter works of it. The only thing to really change for Wickwright's agenda since has been his book developing the Plague, which has made him both distracted and agitated. Since his book was the whole focus point of his life till now, he's finding it difficult to bounce back from this with his usual optimism, and the fact that the Society might not accept it is making him a tinge desperate. Ever since he was a boy, he knew what he was going to do and pretty much how he was going to do it, and now that that's been turned on its head, he's seizing onto any solution he can and shutting other problems out to focus on the overarching problem of getting his contribution accepted.  

[kotaline]

the book boy

XXXName: Hopkin

XXXAppearance: About a hand's height, or three apples tall for reference, Hopkin is a largish excito, and incredibly small by almost any other standard. He has a brittle bronzey skin which he protects by wrapping the extremities in bandages. He has a large, fragile spine as well, which the stiff red cloth around his neck and chest supports. Hopkin likes warm clothes, as he becomes less flexible when he's cold, and even when he's warm, he tends to move fairly carefully and stiffly.

XXXAbilities: Hopkin's skin is bright enough so that he appears to be lit in sunlight even in the darkness. It's not so much a bright glow as an inner light, and it doesn't really cast its light elsewhere, it just makes Hopkin visible. Hopkin can also give you a nasty papercut if he feels threatened enough, but that's his only really offensive ability.

XXXPersonality: Hopkin is a curious little thing. He emerged from his book knowing about the world as Wickwright saw it, and ever since he's been dying to see more. He listens to whatever anyone has to say to him and tries to see everything he can, although he's constantly surprised and disappointed that the world doesn't look like he imagined it would from the illustrations he sees in his head. Hopkin has a very strong visual aesthetic, and thinks in flat illuminated images. When he dreams, he dreams of the people and places Wickwright drew on the pages he came from, and the way he dreams is in his very specific visual style. There's a different but parallel world inside Hopkin's head, the Panymium that Wickwright documented, and the more Hopkin discovers for his own, the more that world in his head grows.

Like Wickwright laying out a page, Hopkin has to lay out the information he learns in a very specific way as he commits it to memory. He was born knowing the contents of Wickwright's book by heart, but he has to really work to retain new information. Thus, he has a number of mnemonic devices he uses, the best one predictably being to imagine the information being written down in his head. Once he memorizes something though, it stays memorized no matter what, so Hopkin has an encyclopedic grasp of what he has learned.

Despite his curiosity, Hopkin tends to be somewhat cowardly. Wickwright puts heavy emphasis on his safety and what would happen were he to be destroyed, so Hopkin tends to use others as human shields if necessary, and in times of danger, will always sacrifice his friends before himself, assuming that they, too, will recognize that he has more intrinsic value than them. This isn't to say that he's aloof, he has a lot of trouble being alone. On the rare occasions that Wickwright isn't around for him, he tends to get anxious and frightened and just attach himself to whomever is in the vicinity so that there's someone around to help find him, as Hopkin doesn't have a great deal of agency. He puts a lot of stock in Wickwright's advice and parrots his ideals to others rather than thinking of advice of his own. Being without his Grimm makes him fret, as Wickwright is his author and the only means by which Hopkin feels he can fulfill his purpose as a book, to educate. He constantly makes queries of Wickwright, whether perceptive or dense, especially on matters of linguistics, as his mind isn't calibrated to understand sarcasm or subtlety. He tends to take things at face value and is insistent that the face value of a thing always reflect the truth of it whenever possible. Thus, when someone makes an error in his opinion, he will never hesitate to correct them or educate them, even if he comes off as being rude. It makes it very difficult to conceal him, as he tends to reply to something he knows the answer to even when he's supposed to be quiet or hidden.

Hopkin is somewhat elitist, and tends to value people depending on their qualifications. He doesn't find women to make as much sense as men, and finds that it's easier to give heed to scholars than "homines leves," as Jawbone Men call lay society. He's also biased towards people who are more aesthetically pleasing towards him. He tends to be very agreeable about what pretty people say and do, and is always willing to defer to someone who he wants to be near's will and do them favours to keep them near him and happy with him. Gift giving is a major tactic of his, showering them with bright feathers and bits of glass which he tends to hoard. Another tactic is compliments, and if neither of these work, he tends to panic. He's also terribly critical of the appearance of others when he finds them lacking, and does his best to improve upon their appearance by putting colourful things on their person and the like. He considers his own appearance to be considerably flawed, mostly because it isn't the shape he should properly have as a book, and the fact that he's in the body of a Plague gives him terrible anxiety and self esteem issues regarding his own value, which he constantly has to bolster by reasserting his value as a source of knowledge.

Hopkin will always tell the truth, but he's not terribly canny about such things. He tends to take whatever people tell him at face value and it's easy to trick and upset him with roundabout language. His idea of what's true and what isn't is manipulable and unless you tell him a fact that directly contradicts something he already knows, odds are he'll buy into it and repeat the false information to anyone who asks as confidently as if it were undeniably true. Aside from knowing facts, Hopkin has strong opinions about things, all of which he's picked up from Wickwright. Not once will his opinion on a matter contradict Wickwright's, and when called to defend his views, he'll often just recycle Wickwright's arguments, or, failing that, quote and paraphrase from other people, plagiarizing them fairly heavily. In order to gain this material to repeat, Hopkin constantly asks for clarification and explanations about everything, believing that as a book it's his job to collect and disseminate the truth, even if he's not longer in book form. Though normally he interrogates Wickwright when he's unclear on a subject, anyone he's talking to will often have to stop and answer to him at some point, and depending on the quality of their answers, he can grow quickly frustrated with them. He has very little verbal imagination, so metaphors and such are difficult for him, requiring precision when speaking to him, which is a trait he reciprocates in his replies. However, he partially makes up for it with his visual imagination. The visuals are where Hopkin's mind is most uniquely his own, though he has no actual artistic talent to express this.

Music: [the unreadable book]  

[kotaline]

the illuminated book

PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF HOPKIN'S BOOK:
A solid, leather bound book that wasn't completely finished by the time it was plagued, it was still pretty long despite that. Weighing in at about 900 pages, the book was rambling, but the pages were precisely laid out and drawn. The pages weren't vellum, but rather a more ordinary parchment, and the book wasn't illuminated in the traditional sense of using gold, but rather in the modern sense of being richly illustrated text. The text used in the book was Gothic to save page space, and the pages certainly never had full illustrations, but rather, embellished letters, framed miniatures, and possibly even the occasional illustrated border. The page decorations varied depending on the content and the surrounding conditions the page was completed in. A page finished in the house of a fellow Jawbone Society member could be quite ornate, a page finished in less friendly environments could be sparse and spartan. In this vein, the colours on the page also varied depending on the paints and ingredients available and the colour variations that Wickwright was able to coax from the surrounding materials.

GENERAL OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS:

The book traces Wickwright's life and travels, as well as the prevalent mood of the places he visits. The beginning is ground in Imisus, as well as Jawbone Society stories, since until his father died, that was where he lived, and the Society members often came to visit while they traveled to the collection. The middle collects the stories and customs from the places he visited on his nomadic journey. The most recent pages focus on the Plague, especially after Diefendorf was hanged, and the stories that aren't Plague related are of a darker tone generally.

TYPICAL POETIC STRUCTURE IN HOPKIN'S BOOK:

A poem is usually meant to tell a narrative within the narrative or conversation, and both begins and ends with the same word. That word is then emphasized on a line below the poem. Each speaker is assigned four lines per turn in a conversation poem. If the speaker requires more than four, the first word in the new turn is capitalized to indicate they are taking another turn, but no indenture is made to otherwise mark it. eg:

[And in such a way, the men Finch and Bunting of the Jawbone Society were saved by a third man who appeared, as if out of thin air to rescue them. Having both rescued the pair and made of them an audacious request, the men retired to confer between themselves, Bunting speaking thusly:

[B ] BROOK not this passage, Finch, for this man may have saved us
But is of the hot blood, and in his eyes there is a hungry shadow,
That of the sort which obscures the truth in the name of self-love.
That which Jawbone Men may possess but may not be blinded by,
AND YET, this man is already part blind. His strength is a virtue,
So too is his courage strong, and by these alone we might accept him.
But I see his face and know this only;
He is no Jawbone Man, and thus we deny him.

[F] I hear what you say, Brother, but understand it not.
How does one tell from a glance in the eyes,
Whether a man is true or false? The request is audacious,
But so was the deed, and if not for the deed, we two would be slain.
WE Jawbone men live to learn the world new,
always look longer and with different eyes.
Is it for you, Bunting, to say he is far from us,
When you have only just glanced at his face?
FOR ME, the man risking his life to save us
Is well worthy of traveling to the collection.
From there, if it please you, we all may decide
Whether this man is truly corrupted.

[B ] I defer to seniority, as your judgement is sound
And well in keeping with the laws of our Jawbone Men.
But heed me now, Finch, if my eyes do not fail me,
We will one day rue this passage you brook!

BROOK.]

For a straight up narrative poem, there would be no speaker breaks, and it would be told in the writer's own voice. The example shown here is a snippet from a larger story concerning the early politics of the Jawbone Society- the Finch in it is one of Wickwright's ancestors. This poetic structure is common throughout Jawbone literature, and the only radical shifts from this basic formula are in the writings of those members studying poems and word structure intentionally. Hopkin's book shifts poetic form several times, but only as brief studies of the poetry of other people. Generally, when the poems aren't illustrating a cultural point, they're written in the format above.

SIGNIFICANCE TO COLLECTION: The significance of the book to the collection would have been to serve as a cultural record and a wider view of Panymium, a way to compare different cultures at a different period of time from the last Finch who accomplished this kind of documentation. The illumination in the book is also new, as Wickwright's father was the first Finch to make use of illumination.  

[kotaline]

the people he meets

dorian arelgren
A confusing character with pretty hair and clothes. Too nonsensical. Cultist.

lettie arelgren
Charming and missed.


dragomir meschke
Killed a man but is somehow not a killer. I do not quite understand Dragomir Meschke, but he is kind to me. I think he needs to stop pretending to be Wickwright's son. Cultist.

chayele meschke
She is lovely and delicate and frustratingly slow at reading. Plus she doesn't speak! How can one get by without words?


coyotl coyotl
A reliable friend and deliverer of messages.

koi
A fish that is most pleasing to the eye, but difficult to refer to, as it has not been given a name.


alae greaves
A woman to whom Wickwright was kind, but a Cultist. Of little interest, but pleasingly flat.

absinthe
A drink with a hint of putesco. Slightly more interesting than Alae.


beatrix amaranthe
A nonsensical woman. I dislike her and am unsettled by her.


toshua green
A boy who listens to me. Toshua Green is pleasant company.

pumpkin
A dazzling orange vegetable, but filled with plague.


maeve lachance
An asymmetrical woman who does the jobs of men.


scarlet espostin
She cannot aim well.


lady sage estratus
...

sir sloane
...


blaithe kyon
...


theodore lucas
...

ophelia lucas
...


moby d**k
He thinks I am pretty. A terribly strange man.


chauhn clemmings
...

clurie clemmings (?)
...


ezekiel north
A backwards man with a Plague.  

[kotaline]

the adventures he has

THE LEADUP TO O'NEILL'S CONSULTATION

three and sympathy | hopkin's first outing

a helping hand | a repentant murderer revealed

vendors and preachers | a woman of senseless beauty makes little sense.

good food and good company | charity for the flat and poor.

checking up on the joneses | drunks of scant acquaintance become friends with fellow plagues.

CREDENCE: march 2011

a moment of calm | a strange threat provides a kick into the restless month of march.

shepherd the sick | a narrow escape begins a foolhardy pilgrimage.

a terrible, terrible tide | obscuvians descend but a familiar leader spares the dying caravan.

no incognito | advice is given to a stray crow.

changes, changes, changes | a friend is consulted for consolation.

onwards! | a second wind blows the foolhardy pilgrimage to a close.

SEEKING THE JAWBONE MEN

taking out the trash | a pumpkin is saved.

an internal enemy | a friend is sick at heart.

roadkill | a bump in the road.

---- | counsel is sought.

shooting the breeze | a mishap narrowly avoided.

eyes of the council | a mission is completed.

a friendly face | ...

stray sailors | a strange man is saved.

the unreadable book | ...

a hungry heart | ...

where the three ends meet | familiar paths are crossed.

the fathers | authority figures collide.  

[kotaline]

the thoughts he thinks.

prologue

XXXthe boy and the bone

XXXa held-breath day


i. wickwright and hopkin

XXXhelp

XXXnames

XXXflat world

XXXwide world

XXXrestless

XXXa finch song

XXXthe end of the world

XXXwickwright finch fecit

XXXgoodnights

XXXon a finch's wing

XXX

XXX

XXXon a crow's wing

XXXthe prideful knight

XXXthe start

XXXthe kick pt. II

XXXa reluctant messenger

XXXrot

XXXnow panic

XXXdeathbed

XXXdancing

XXXyour thin frame

XXXa stronger, weaker self

XXXgadu

XXXdeath of rats

XXXpaid in full

XXXties that bind

XXXhomines leves

XXXhomines leves pt. II

XXXthe grotesque

XXXthe woman

XXXbirds of a feather

XXXantagonist

XXXvalue  

[kotaline]

the sights he's seen

icon icon icon  

[kotaline]

the changes he's made


[excito]

[anhelo]

 

[kotaline]

the things he carries

an empty page.  

[kotaline]

the faith he has

THE JAWBONE SOCIETY:

A small religious sect in Panymium that worships a god of truth in the form of a Jawbone. Members tend to be isolated and scattered around Panymium, but all are connected to each other by partirarchal lines tracing back to the founders of the society. Members are generally obsessive personalities, and recently have been less devout as recruitment through bloodlines waters down the religious fervency of the Society. Due to the rise of Obscuvos and the Plague sweeping through Panymium, this already small sect is shedding members from death or defection at an alarming rate.


ORIGIN MYTH:

The origin myth of the Jawbone Society is a story about their god of Truth, a jawbone in Panymium that would answer any question posited to it truthfully. Its most basic version states that pilgrims came from all over the world to ask this jawbone questions, and every questioner would walk away satisfied until one day a boy noticed something alarming. He had been to visit the Jawbone often and eventually he started hearing the jawbone giving different answers to the same questions. Fearing that the god was false, he approached it and asked of it how the same question could have different true replies. In response, the jawbone commanded the boy to lift it to his eyes. The boy did so, and at once saw the true world. Through the bone, he saw that everything on earth had multiple truths, and to every question there were hundreds of answers. The clarity of the true world amazed him, and once he put down the jawbone, he asked how he might see this true world unaided. The jawbone replied that the boy would have to study everything that ever existed, and once he had seen each thing for all the truths it possessed, then he would live in the true world.


RELIGIOUS BELIEFS:

The goal of the Jawbone Society is to build a paradisaical True World, each member discovering the truths to one aspect of the world during his lifetime and then contributing it to the Collection until everything in the world has been seen for its truth and the members, or their ancestors as the case may be, will live in the True World through their joint efforts. The Society is kind of passive in the sense that most of the members are working at a paradise that isn't for themselves, but is for future members, which is one of the reasons why the patriarchal heredity system was organized. Though originally some members nominated other people, most found that the only candidates they wanted to live in the true world were their own kin. The Jawbone Men are raised to view the world carefully and consciously, and though most are raised from birth to do so, when the successor to a member isn't clear, he might never receive formal training until after initiation, making things messy and difficult for everyone involved.

In practice, Society religion goes hand in hand with the members' daily lives. So long as you spend your life working on a contribution that gains acceptance into the Society, your social class, career, and location don't matter. Your influence in Panymium and so forth may affect your influence in the Society, but what really matters in the Society is lineage, and that's only if you want power within the group. The Society's structure has changed, and in the beginning the practice of the religion used to be more serious and time consuming. The original members all traveled across Panymium according to the stories, often in groups of two or more, observing the world for truth. Their contributions took up most of their lives and the Society was their culture moreso than the Panymese countries they traveled in. Due to social, economic, and cultural changes in Panymium since the founding, the Society's religious obligations have become less and less demanding. The faith has also shifted from focus on creating a paradise that is true to a more philosophical concentration.


HISTORY:

The Jawbone society was founded many generations ago, but there is no exact date that any member has yet been able to pinpoint with accuracy. Deciphering the records from the early Society is well-nigh impossible, forcing the Jawbone Men to rely on a fallible system of oral tradition and textual copying to keep track of the Society's history during that time. The Finches have perhaps the most complete record, but even theirs is biased and has gaps in places, making it a process to figure out what's true and what's family myth. Further muddling the archives is that members are almost always referred to by their last name only, making it difficult to discern which generation a story comes from. What the members all generally agree on is that long ago, the Society was formed by a group of like-minded scholars who then traveled around Panymium relearning how to see the world and spreading their knowledge wherever they went. There are a few names that stand out particularly, O'Neill, Clarke, and Kingsley, and to a lesser extent, Bunting and Finch. Their exploits were the most heavily documented, and in the case of Clarke and Finch, it was because both were scribe-families vying for the same unofficial position as Society historian. For O'Neill and Kingsley, it was that they were of a higher social rank than the other members, and had wider connections. O'Neill and Kingsley are the only men to appear in stories outside of the Society by name, and each of them most likely coerced either Clarke or Finch to write a while on them. Both men seem to have been in a struggle for wider control over the society, although no one ever seemed particularly keen to call either a leader unless, like in the case of Clarke and Finch, there was a benefit to being on the winning side. As for Bunting, it seems that he was simply the member closest to Finch. Clarke writes fairly equally on all the other members, but whenever Finch writes of himself, Bunting is usually somewhere in the narrative, clearly playing second fiddle, but there nonetheless. Thus, Finch's accounts are usually more skewed than Clarke's, making him arguably the worse historian of the two, but he is the one whose line lasted longer in the Society.

These social strata would shift, but not drastically. More important than the politics of the sect was the religion itself, and the members all travelled across Panymium anyway. However, heirs seemed to almost unfailingly follow the pattern set for them by their predecessor, so closely that for six generations any story about a Finch usually involved a Bunting as well. The split between the two families came with generation seven, when there was no male successor for the Bunting line. We see Finch and Bunting attempt to follow in their predecessors' footsteps, but from Finch's records it seems fairly clear that he fell in love with Bunting, and they separated from each others' company, likely for the sake of not muddling their families' lineages in the Society. After that, the male heirs of Finch and Bunting continued to keep their distance from each other until finally the Finches moved to Imisus and stayed there, successfully eradicating any remaining close ties between the families. The story has become an embarrassment in the Finch and Bunting family lines, and thus these two families are some of the most outspoken against having female members when the situation arises.

Despite personal shifts such as Finch and Bunting's, and the occasional rising or falling of a family's section of the Collection in size ranking, everything was fairly stable until 1240, when Kingsley tried to officially take over the Society. The society finally cracked along the unspoken alliance lines it had quietly sorted itself into, and feuding between the Society members lasted for twenty tumultuous years. It finally ended with both Kingsley and his son's death, which was heavily covered in the annals, but whether it was a murder or accidental is obscure due to the amounts of embellishment it received from both sides of the quarreling Society. All Society members reunited, but after the division they found it difficult to be in each others' company. Any illusion they had left of being a perfectly unbiased truth seeking society was marred by the feud. They were now aware of just how imperfect they really were.

Thus, a movement began for the Society to return to its nomadic roots (by now the Society's roots had been heavily edited and idealized). At this point, the Collection was still mobile and would be for another generation or so, so to avoid conflict and recuperate, we see the Jawbone Men disperse to work on their own contributions in peace. After a while, the isolation became tradition rather than just a brief respite from each other, and the Jawbone Society's meetings became rare things, usually between no more than five members unless a member had to present their final contribution to the Collection. This is the current state of the Jawbone Society, and now that the Plague and panic has struck the Society, this lack of communication between members is far from ideal.


POLICY:

concerning new members:

Typically, a new member must be a male relation of the member he's replacing. Any male relation will do, but each member may only have one replacement, to ensure no family can take over through numbers. The most members any family has ever had in the Society at the same time is three, and that's rare. If there is no male successor, a female is chosen, but reluctantly. Females in the Society are generally said to distract the other members, and there's also a certain degree of sexism involved in evaluating their abilities. Unless a female member does something that puts her above and beyond normal Society members, she usually ends up watering down the influence of her family's name in the Society. After she retires, she must give her spot to a male heir, and if she's married and has a different name, she and all her descendants will still be called by the original Jawbone surname of their family whether they ever actually regain that surname or not. There have been very few female Society members.

Early on in Jawbone Society history, new members were also recruited from those who did noteworthy deeds and then requested entrance into the society, however that custom has died out as the Society has become more secular and more about who you're related to rather than the fervency of your faith.

concerning a member's final contribution:

A member's final contribution must be something they're spent their whole life since their induction working on. It must have a relevancy to the truth that they must be able to present to the other members at their retirement. It must be entirely of the Society member's own making, the exception being that the materials may come from an outside source. Different families tend to specialize in different kinds of contributions. The Finch family, for instance, have been submitting written observations, stories, and treatises as their contributions to the collection since the first member. If a member fails to make a contribution or their contribution is insufficient, their name is struck from the record, and the family line is no longer extant in the membership of the society.

Though other laws have fallen by the wayside or become lax, contribution laws are still strongly enforced.

concerning the untimely demise of a member:

If a member dies unexpectedly, their contribution is accepted unfinished. If the contribution is lost at their death, the society does not strike them from the records, but there will always be a gap in their family's part of the collection where their work should have been- something enough to drive most members half-mad at the thought of it.

concerning member interaction:

All members must provide other members with assistance when asked, unless the assistance is something that they don't have the ability to give. If they are ill-used by another member, they may petition for a meeting to evaluate their treatment, and if found guilty, the other member will not receive more assistance from any Jawbone Man for half a year. No member can willfully lie to another member concerning a serious matter. The punishment for confirmed deception is another half a year without assistance from any Jawbone Man and eventual expulsion for four repeated offences.

These laws have lost their heft over the generations, and the lying one especially is rarely enforced.

concerning leadership:

No Jawbone Man may declare himself the leader of the Society, and no Jawbone Man may make attempts to dominate the Society. All decisions and actions taken by the Society must be open to discussion, and all members must have an equal voice.

Despite this rule, there's been considerable intrigue on behalf of different family members even from the beginning of the Society. Power is a tricky thing in the Society, and these days there's a very definite pecking order. The Finch family are one of the families with greatest sway in the Society, but are also one of the most heavily opposed families due to the fact that the Finches tend to have very liberal ideas in comparison with the rest of the Society. However, they're one of the oldest families, and also one of the most vocal. Finch men are usually politically adept, and well respected, even by those who don't agree with their policies. Because their ideas often lead to changes and have sometimes led to upset within the Society though, there's a saying within the less Finch-favourable in the group that goes: "Trouble comes on a finch's wing." Finch men have a history of being some of the primary movers and shakers in the group, which has had consequences before. However, in times of crisis, Finches are one of the families the rest look to for guidance, which is unfortunate for Wickwright, as he's currently driven to distraction over his contribution and is unable to think clearly enough about the situation to be much help.


THE COLLECTION:
The Collection is where each member's contribution to the building of the True World is stored. Originally, the collection was mobile, spending an equal amount of time near each member and reflecting the often-nomadic lifestyles that Jawbone Men adopted. Now the collection is too large to move, and has been in Imisus for about five generations. It won't be moved again unless there's some urgent crisis that requires it to be or unless there's a sudden spike in members/member interconnectivity. As the Society stands, even if they wanted to move the Collection, the task is simply too daunting. Since more members are adopting relatively sedentary lifestyles, the fact that the Collection is in Imisus when many of them aren't is becoming a source of frustration. Some Jawbone Men did live in Imisus before the collection was moved there more permanently, but most Jawbone Men in Imisus are like the Finch family, and moved there with the collection, then stayed. The Finch family is actually from Mishkan, but that was so many years ago that Wickwright and his relatives are practically native to Imisus.

Contributions in the Collection are not organized by type, but by family. Fortunately, most family contributions run in themes, so it's practically type-sorted. The largest sections are from the oldest families, and by now, the size of your family's section is a pretty good guide to your standing in the Society. This is one of the parts of the social stratification of the Jawbone Society with the most room for upward mobility- if another family has enough people die early, it's possible that yours could outpace them, especially since so many of the sections differ by such a slim margin. Due to a few untimely demises, the Finch family section is the fourth largest, right above the Bunting family and right below the O'Neills, firmly placing them in the ranks of the founders of the society.


CURRENT STATUS:

The Jawbone Society as it stands now is torn apart by the Plague. Many members are dying, and others are converting to Obscuvos in hopes that the Obscuvians have a plan. Unfortunately for the Society, the shift to Obscuvos is a fairly easy one for frightened members, as the Obscuvians' message of devouring the world and spitting out Truths is fairly similar, albeit more aggressive, to the Jawbone Society's own goal of living in the True World. Meanwhile, the lack of cohesion and communication between members has made it difficult for the Society to make any action to preserve themselves. Once again the Society is looking to its roots, and in doing so, it's looking to its remaining leaders. O'Neill, Bunting, and one of the more current leaders, Paxton, are all working to establish some sort of order in the Society again, but Finch has been preoccupied with his own concerns, as his contribution has, of course, become plagued. As the Finch family have generally been the most widely-connected between members, Wickwright especially with all his traveling, this is a real blow to the Society. Not only is Wickwright focusing his energies in the wrong direction by searching for a cure to the Plague instead of putting his efforts to opening the lines of communication between members, where he'd be most useful, he's actively causing dissension in the Society. By introducing Hopkin and claiming him to be his contribution to the Collection, he's opened an entire debate on the nature of contributions and has created fear and infighting within the membership by introducing a Plague into the very heart of the insular Society.  

[kotaline]

the world he lives in

Hopkin organizes his thoughts in a very specific way when he dreams. Since the contents of Wickwright's books are stored in his head, he has a very lucid and straightforward dream-world already set out for him. The only really random factors are the things that he's seen and done during the day. In his dream world, he can interact with the characters from Wickwright's stories as Wickwright wrote them and mess about with the thoughts in his head in a very tangible way. The dream world is full of flat images, like an illuminated manuscript, and all the colours are bright and vivid. However, Hopkin is really not much braver in his own dream world than in the real world, so though he travels in it, he has trouble taking advantage of it and talking to the figures he sees. He's still a listener, and Wickwright isn't with him in the dream world, making it hard for him to pluck up his courage and really explore it. Some of the characters are friendly and talk to Hopkin anyway, but others are standoffish or outright hostile. Hopkin knows all the stories they're from, so he can hazard guesses as to which are okay to approach, but he can't be sure. All of the characters in his dream world seem to recognize Hopkin as their source book though, so one thing he's never in danger of in the dream world is being killed, unless he meets a truly unbalanced character. Even then the other characters will most likely try to prevent it, making Hopkin's dream world safer for him than the real world by any standard.  

[kotaline]

credits

the plague doctor and related concepts therein belong to zanaroo, as does hopkin's official art.
characters not played by me belong to their respective players.
commissions and gifts belong to their respective artists.
hopkin, wickwright, the jawbone society, and npcs pertinent to that society belong to me.