matt_doyle (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matt_doyle) wrote2012-06-10 11:56 pm
matt_doyle) wrote2012-06-10 11:56 pm
Entry tags:
Madcap Archaeology: faction information.
Some notes:
Lodestone Magi – in a world where distance and direction between two fixed points can be variables, the Lodestone Magi are an amazing financial power. Every member of this secretive and territorial mages. guild has a series of enchanted lodestones that can point them in the direction of every other member of the guild. Masters never leave their home cities, and train apprentices; whereas journeymen guide caravans from city to city, homing in on the stationary master at their destination using their lodestones. While they cannot protect caravans from exposure to Flux, the storms are just rare enough that a caravan moving in a straight line can feel it has a good chance of reaching its destination.
Adsincani – the Adsincani are a nomadic people who have no shelter against the Flux but their talent for divination and luck magic. Adsincani bands sometimes roam for months or even years without finding a city, but many people consider safety from Flux valuable enough to outweigh that, and travel or ship goods with them. In addition, the seven Adsincani clans (each divided into seven tarafs, which are in turn divided into seven declensions -- the individual bands, between two dozen and twelve dozen members) have a reputation for particular skill in a certain area, and market that skill whereever they go. Many Adsincani are jacks-of-all-trades, however, because outsiders have been known to get their clans mixed up. The specilaties are as follows:
AUREX divination magic,
ANEMOI luck and curse working,
CHARSARI animal training,
KALLEIO oral history,
LAUTARI music and performance,
BASIDARES herbalism and botany,
BRICOLURA tinkering and sculpture and mechanical repair,
The Graze is a mobile industrial collective with a hereditary ruling family. A series of massive rolling lumbermills feeding into assembly lines, the Graze mows through forest and jungle, clearcutting and trusting in Flux (which they can outrun, usually) to replenish their supply. The only mass-producers of ANYTHING, the Graze are known for being phenomenally wealthy. Citizenship is restricted to people who have the traits of herbivorous mammals who live in social groups.
Pteranadon Riders, or Wingbacks; are a highly disorganized, chaotic, and isolationist group of people who spend most of their time airborn, easily able to avoid Flux, find far-flung valuables, carry rapid messages, and etc -- however, generally speaking they do not CARE enough to make themselves a real power. They are devoted to the joy of flight above all else. The closest real world analogue would probably actually be a biker gang.
Primarchists are a religious sect which believes the primarchs -- a vanished civilization who built the only stable structures immune to flux -- were divine beings. Most primarch compounds that have been located have been forcibly occupied and controlled by Primarchists, and while they offer shelter to all in times of Flux, the rest of the time they only permit fellow worshippers on their sacred ground. The majority of permanent settlements in the world are built around Primarch compounds, using the Flux detritus which gets caught there as building material, so Primarchists have power bases EVERYWHERE, and no-one wants to offend them, for fear of being left out in a storm.
Primarch martial and magical traditions focus on connecting more closely to their animalistic side.
Anchorites are those who live in Anchorages and Cloisters -- mountaintop or underground structures built where Flux storms are unlikely to reach. They are by no means a unified faction, as each Cloister has its own laws and traditions, but they tend to be meditative and isolationist; regarded by the rest of the world as strange or even mad, daring to build permanent settlements away from the safety of primarch compounds. There are persistent rumors that Anchorites and Cloister-dwellers have the ability to survive Flux storms unscathed, but this has never been proved.
Sailors are widely considered mad, since a sea with changing coast and seafloor is prone to tremendously volatiles waves and whirlpools. But there ARE several city-ships in the oceans weho use conjured thunderstorms and tsunamis to push them ahead of any flux storms.
Crazy.
Lodestone Magi – in a world where distance and direction between two fixed points can be variables, the Lodestone Magi are an amazing financial power. Every member of this secretive and territorial mages. guild has a series of enchanted lodestones that can point them in the direction of every other member of the guild. Masters never leave their home cities, and train apprentices; whereas journeymen guide caravans from city to city, homing in on the stationary master at their destination using their lodestones. While they cannot protect caravans from exposure to Flux, the storms are just rare enough that a caravan moving in a straight line can feel it has a good chance of reaching its destination.
Adsincani – the Adsincani are a nomadic people who have no shelter against the Flux but their talent for divination and luck magic. Adsincani bands sometimes roam for months or even years without finding a city, but many people consider safety from Flux valuable enough to outweigh that, and travel or ship goods with them. In addition, the seven Adsincani clans (each divided into seven tarafs, which are in turn divided into seven declensions -- the individual bands, between two dozen and twelve dozen members) have a reputation for particular skill in a certain area, and market that skill whereever they go. Many Adsincani are jacks-of-all-trades, however, because outsiders have been known to get their clans mixed up. The specilaties are as follows:
AUREX divination magic,
ANEMOI luck and curse working,
CHARSARI animal training,
KALLEIO oral history,
LAUTARI music and performance,
BASIDARES herbalism and botany,
BRICOLURA tinkering and sculpture and mechanical repair,
The Graze is a mobile industrial collective with a hereditary ruling family. A series of massive rolling lumbermills feeding into assembly lines, the Graze mows through forest and jungle, clearcutting and trusting in Flux (which they can outrun, usually) to replenish their supply. The only mass-producers of ANYTHING, the Graze are known for being phenomenally wealthy. Citizenship is restricted to people who have the traits of herbivorous mammals who live in social groups.
Pteranadon Riders, or Wingbacks; are a highly disorganized, chaotic, and isolationist group of people who spend most of their time airborn, easily able to avoid Flux, find far-flung valuables, carry rapid messages, and etc -- however, generally speaking they do not CARE enough to make themselves a real power. They are devoted to the joy of flight above all else. The closest real world analogue would probably actually be a biker gang.
Primarchists are a religious sect which believes the primarchs -- a vanished civilization who built the only stable structures immune to flux -- were divine beings. Most primarch compounds that have been located have been forcibly occupied and controlled by Primarchists, and while they offer shelter to all in times of Flux, the rest of the time they only permit fellow worshippers on their sacred ground. The majority of permanent settlements in the world are built around Primarch compounds, using the Flux detritus which gets caught there as building material, so Primarchists have power bases EVERYWHERE, and no-one wants to offend them, for fear of being left out in a storm.
Primarch martial and magical traditions focus on connecting more closely to their animalistic side.
Anchorites are those who live in Anchorages and Cloisters -- mountaintop or underground structures built where Flux storms are unlikely to reach. They are by no means a unified faction, as each Cloister has its own laws and traditions, but they tend to be meditative and isolationist; regarded by the rest of the world as strange or even mad, daring to build permanent settlements away from the safety of primarch compounds. There are persistent rumors that Anchorites and Cloister-dwellers have the ability to survive Flux storms unscathed, but this has never been proved.
Sailors are widely considered mad, since a sea with changing coast and seafloor is prone to tremendously volatiles waves and whirlpools. But there ARE several city-ships in the oceans weho use conjured thunderstorms and tsunamis to push them ahead of any flux storms.
Crazy.