Warsong | Page 1 | 04 Setting and Story Development | Guild Forums

lily564a

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Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 12:44 am

Having a hard time getting this going so I'm going ot start with a paste of a conversation that covers things pretty well

(1:52:20 AM) Lily: the very most basic idea is that there's this somewhat-endless desert that's been at war with itself for so long that war is everything, and by all records has been everything for longer than anybody can tell
(1:52:50 AM) Lily: a wasteland of lost technologies and lost reasons
(1:53:10 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) Huh. Interesting
(1:55:46 AM) Lily: if you zoom out a lot there's all this about the reincarnation of humanity and the assembling of broken things and ideas to create new things
(1:57:32 AM) Lily: for instance one of the big factions, the church of Engonia, is built off clips and snippets of the last civilization, assembled as best as they could figure out, then mutated by power and greed to create this great hostile state that beyond the highest tiers wants to take over the world but doesn't know why, or what they'd do if they did
(1:57:44 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) Where can I find this?
(1:58:06 AM) Lily: in mah brains
(1:58:25 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) Oh my. RP idea?
(1:58:35 AM) Lily: I keep trying to start a thread about it, but it's not a story, it's a world, and writing about a world is difficult to get started on
(1:59:08 AM) Lily: it could be an RP, but more properly Warsong is a world that an RP could happen in
(1:59:19 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) That's very true. Perhaps you could think of a story in the world to get you started?
(1:59:23 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) I'd hit it.
(1:59:41 AM) Lily: I am, and that's what's mostly been stuck in my mind
(1:59:58 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) How's that going?
(2:00:51 AM) Lily: I'm trying to recover what I had originally intended the plot to be, though there wasn't much of it to begin with, I've got a lot of things I want to happen and a few scenes, relationships, etc
(2:05:54 AM) Lily: one of the other hostile factions I'm dealing with is the D-oh damn my keyboard is messing up again- Dragon Queen, a hoard of intelligent machine beasts that serve a powerful cybernetic entity who is consumed by hate and anger over the events of a long ended conflict
(2:07:37 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) Oooooh
(2:07:47 AM) Lily: the story I'm working on largely centers around a waste's-edge tribe that comes under the dragon's claw
(2:09:47 AM) Lily: by shear luck they happen to have at hand recovered technology sufficient to fend off the first wave of dragons, which leads the main characters into a quest that may lead to the world's recovery
(2:10:47 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) Sounds good to me
(2:14:15 AM) Lily: the question about a projectile propelled by a sonic pulse was related, one of the characters is a waster...

So the world largely exists within a bubble where inexplicably technology works, outside the bubble it doesn't and nobody really knows why. Outside the bubble are the wastes, seemingly endless sands, home to more nothing than could be imagined. Certain cultural events lead to people being cast out into te wastes as a sort of death penalty, surprisingly some survive, though they rarely return to civilization.
(2:14:47 AM) [Cinders]: (nativeforeigner) Hm
(2:16:44 AM) Lily: so this waster was a young member of a tribe that was wholly and brutally defeated, and the victors cast the women and children out rather than integrate them as their own as is the custom. So she comes back having lived most of her life out there, having seen things nobody could imagine, and armed with throwback technology, the key to any waster's survival
(2:24:01 AM) Lily: I should also mention the two neutral factions, traders, and the jirobachi. Traders obviously facilitate the movement of goods, which is necessary for everyone's survival; The Jirobachi are the engineers, they know to some degree how things work and are able to fix them, be it a war machine or a water condensor. They do so in trade for found things and protection in their search for more things to learn from. But as one would expect, nearly everything in the sands is broken or incomplete, so they have to take what they have and go from there. One common weapon in warsong is a sort of sonic pistol, at full power and up close it can dissentigrate bone, at lower power they have more of a stunning effect; most aren't capable of full power but they also don't use ammunition so it's a fine sidearm. This girl who I probably had a name for at one point comes back with a prestine sonic pistol, fully functional and complete with it's never before seen projectile magazine in tact, and it's a whole different beast.
(2:29:54 AM) Lily: going back to the dragons, they are to compare like an M1 Abramms to a revolutionary war army. Most groups can't and don't hope to scratch their armor, just survive long enough to get out of range of the dragon's roar. In one of the early scenes this top of the line sonic pistol shatters a dragon's shoulder plate, pokes out it's eye, and bends an iron crane behind it; though later in a scene a Golden Pillar mechthingthatIhaveanameforsomewhere blows it down to it's smoldering skeleton
(2:30:33 AM) Lily: BTW, Knights of the Golden Pillar, that's a thing
(2:35:07 AM) Lily: one of the key aspects of the world is this massive range of technology from people fighting with sticks to modern style combustion rifles, to EM based hover platforms to large format mechanoid war platforms and weapons that function by rending the fabric of the universe
(2:40:11 AM) Lily: another is how the lack of a cultural history puts people into these smaller, loose groups
(2:47:14 AM) Lily: it also makes it even more difficult to create a cultural history, Golden Pillar in particular was an offshoot of the Church of Engonia that defected when they stumbled on a cache of old technology that made them powerful enough to resist the hate and greed they correctly saw was twisting what had started as a religius founded on mutual defense an support; They fell only a few hundred 'years' back but are now all but unknown outside high tier Engonians and the Jirobachi
(2:48:53 AM) Lily: religion*

to do list:
Explain food
Explain climate
Finish GP
Elaborate technology bubble
Modern history

Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 9:33 pm

Warsong is a difficult thing to get started on because nearly everything starts so far in the past that where it started doesn't really matter, and the current of things tends to be so intertwined that in telling one story you have to start five others.

So one of the most recent seeds of the world is the the Church of Engonia. Through the last few thousand years Engonia has been conceived and reconceived, built up and destroyed, then rebuilt again. The first iteration was not a church, simply a community, a group of tribes who independently interpreted recovered literature to a belief system similar to modern Christianity, which featured a strong belief in the power of community. The tribes joined together in mutual defense. And for a long time, that was it, they were a group of tribes who, amazingly, weren't at war with each other; at the time it was a new idea. Over time more tribes sought the relative safety of 'Engonia', at the time a very rude term roughly equating to "With out honor" though dialects and languages have drifted so far since that it's now basically gibberish.

As the members of the defense pact spent less time fighting and more time feeding themselves, building up their defenses, and learning the gleaned knowledge that started it all began to evolve and develop into the first rendition of the religion, complete with text, not yet holy. Per the usual way of things, disagreements began to split the group and at the first sign of it outside tribes jumped at the chance to break the growing empire. Eh... turns out, this was a bad idea. Also it worked.

lily564a

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lily564a

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Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 11:12 pm

Under internal and external stress the pact broke, most of the tribes fell, many at the hands of their previous allies. The conflict grew more hateful and brutal than it had ever been before. It wasn't about resources and land anymore, people had been betrayed and lost their families, but they had not lost their might. The end of the first church created a bitterness in it's survivors that would define Engonia in all it's incarnations. What hadn't been expected was the stockpile of technology that Engonia had collected during it's time of peace. Once they had regained their composure the remnant forces struck back with horrifying indescriminacy, what tribes weren't slaughtered were enslaved and indoctrinated. This sort of thing occurred with reducing frequency until the regime that birthed the Golden Pillar.

Half a millenia ago the church stepped up it's game looking for old technology, birthed an entire sect dedicated to figuring it all out, and armies sent out on crusade. It was during this period that the current Church gained most of it's land.

The crusades were a big thing but they were far more effective as a show of force to let even more distant tribes know that Engonia was the boss. Most of the collecting was done with relatively 'small' squads of well armed and trained investigators, usually thirty to eighty soldiers given a blank check's worth of equipment and sent out.

must sleep now

Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2012 8:34 am

This is a great start on a wonderfully rich world. Keep it up and I will help you in any way I can to get an RP out of this. I can already see several possibilities (that crusading era and when the Golden Pillar split off could be fun to play with as well as the later stuff).

If you get me a good description of the world's layout I can get Mel to draw you a map.

Ivaylo_Sai

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lily564a

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Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2012 12:31 am

As stated, technology, specifically weaponry available and used in the deserts spans from stone age clubs and spears to devices that can warp the shape of reality, but by far the most common level of weaponry is combustion based projectile weapons much akin to firearms used across the real world today. They are popular because they were popular. The guns and ammunition can commonly be found abandoned in the sands, old battlefields, old warzones, lost in transit. If you search for a day, you will probably find a gun and at least one magazine of bullets that it will fire. More powerful, that is to say, more advanced weaponry tends to be passed down through tribal heritage.

Outside of weaponry things tend to be a hodgepodge assembled from what's found, generally to more advanced effects. Although electric and internal combustion wheeled vehicles exist, the most common platform is a kind of electromagnetic hover platform called a Skiff; these are highly prized and much effort is put into maintaining them because they actually float above the sand, removing issues with traction and land stability that wheels and tracks suffer. Skiffs come in all shapes and sizes, the most common is about the size of a bus, and some are buses, large enough to move a lot of people and equipment without being overly slow. There is effectively no maximum to how large a Skiff can be built, but there does come a point where it cannot move itself through the hover mechanism alone, these massive haulers have to be pulled, usually by large traction vehicles, or have propulsion systems installed. A few such "Paddlewheel Skiffs" run as ferries between peaceful citystates but usually more smaller skiffs, being simpler, faster, and more manuverable are the preferred option.

Very small skiffs are also common, made about two man-heights long and only a few feet wide, the length gives the hover mechanism a lot of torque vs the mass, and a long angle to yaw with, making them very fast and highly maneuverable. Effectively hover-motorcycles, only better. By design such skiffs are always light weight with light armor and minimal weaponry. They're often used as couriers and scouts. Large organized groups often build small skiffs with a flare launching system on the back that allows the rider to input a message and fire it as variable-parachute-height flares, in a number of colors so they can send vital messages even faster. Couriers are considered by 'civilized tribes' to be untouchables, exempt from all hostilities and mostly free to cross territories, with a little scrutiny. This is largely because Couriers tend to have a very lose connection to their tribe, and act more like the Jirobachi and merchant's guild, as an outside group that services everyone; though they don't have much of an organization as an outside group, Couriers tend to have tighter connections to each other than their homes.

Posted: Mon Aug 06, 2012 1:32 am

While the Jirobachi are more an institute of learning, selling their skill to support their research than anything, they were founded in a psuedo-religious tradition that saw the lost technologies buried in the sands as a way to connect to something greater; that the desert was some form of purgatory, and technology was the key to proving one's worth and being allowed out. Much of these traditions have been diluted into obscurity as the institution collected more scholars, many with their own beliefs. Today they are one of the founding pillars of the city-state of Esabren; one of the largest in the __area that it's in__ and claims to be the birth place of the Merchant's Guild (among several places that do); they also have libraries and work centers in nearly every city state outside of the Engonian territories, and every tribe that can afford to hires them to repair their equipment. In turn the Jirobachi are welcome almost everywhere and periodically call on their customers to defend their members as they travel into inhospitable lands to find things.

There are three kinds of Jirobachi, the ones who stay back at the library researching things, reading, messing with what the others bring back; the ones who aren't super smart, spend all their time fixing generic machines, and sometimes get stationed with a tribe for on site support; and then there's the indiana jones ones who figure out where the cool stuff should be then go out there and get it. The later ones tend to be some of the top experts in their field and also get tasked with fixing the more unique stuff because nobody else knows how. Typically such individuals eventually retire to ambassador like positions to handle relations between the institute and the tribes.

lily564a

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lily564a

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Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 2:55 am

The basis of life in the sands are water condensers, ranging in size from units that can hang from one's belt and produce almost enough water per day to keep a person alive to huge facilities that produce enough water to justify building aquaducts. While they are as ubiquitous as guns they are not quite so easily found. They can be found amid the sands, especially in recent battle grounds, but are most often harvested from the ruins of ancient complexes. It's generally believed that these devices somehow condense water out of the air, hence the name water condensers and slang "Wicks", but as anybody with the slightest training in science can determine offhandedly, there is not nearly enough water in the air to be condensed into what the smallest of water condensers produce.

The Jirobachi have done extensive studies on the subject and have come to believe that they're not in fact intended to produce water at all, but each unit is a small, relatively weak, self contained reactor of some sort. As a byproduct of however the reactors work they cause hydrogen atoms to come into existence where they bind with the plentiful oxygen to form water, catalyzed by special metallic fins and a low electrical current that permeates the entire device, but isn't strong enough to be of any use. They've been unable to access the true output of these reactors, but they have been able to prevent the binding with oxygen and glean methane gas from them.

Wicks take no fuel and nobody's ever had one run out. They do occasionally break, usually guns are involved, they are rarely fixed and never manufactured. Typically anything more than a small band of people forms around the possession and protection of a large condenser, and such groups often limit their own reproduction to stay within the means provided by it. Water is not scarce, but it is a resource easily lost and no natural water features exist in the desert, though many are rumored.

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2012 11:21 pm

When considered as a whole it could be said that the desert is featureless, endless sands in all directions with only the slightest weather patterns and near constant yellow tinted cloudcover, sometimes obscured by smoke. On closer inspection though, the dunes organize into regular chains that smooth out into vast planes of flat sand broken by rocky outcroppings. The sand seems to flow as an extremely slow ocean, radiating from some areas and towards others; these radiating areas give birth to the largest of dunes which drift outward, eventually collapsing. Assisted by winds, the largest of dunes can build up and disappear within years, but move over decades.

Surviving records seem to indicate that the rocky regions and hard plateaus also drift over generations, dragging with them the more interesting elements of the landscape. Buried in oceans of sand, bursting from the rock, ancient structures hide away the true mysteries of the desert. Decrepit outposts, abandoned research facilities, warehouses stocked with who knows what, all floating in and out of existence at the whim of the sands. It's not uncommon for entire civilizations to spring up around the bounty they grant, or disappear in their wake. While most of the machines and technology used in the desert is recycled endlessly, with added advances of the Jirobachi, these seeds of the past provide new ideas and materials that keeps things from stagnating entirely. A burst of food, new material stocks, and the motherlode: powerful new technologies serve to disrupt the status quo for a time, until technologies spread, food is consumed, and materials are integrated into the cycle of war. They are also a lead source of legend.

Judging by what's left behind, it's easy to assume civilizations that have been lost to the desert once had technology far beyond what is currently available, or could even be understood in the slightest. Much of this technology, colloquially known as Spirits still operates in and around their age old homes, many of which are dangerous. It's not uncommon for 'seekers' to never return.

I'm more and more losing this train of thought, may rewrite later.

lily564a

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