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Two Demigods

Two Demigods

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I’m taking a bit of a break from working on The Curse of Steel directly. One of the things I’ve done is to tinker a bit with representing some of my characters in GURPS terms. A bit of a challenge, since these are clearly superhuman characters (they’re the descendants of gods, in a setting where that basically makes you a superhero). As a sample, here are what are shaping up to be my two lead characters, at least so far:

Kráva the Swift (400 points)

Age 20; Human; 6′ even; 160 lbs.; Strong, athletic warrior-woman, usually wearing fine-quality clothes decorated with raven feathers.

ST 22 [120]; DX 14 [80]; IQ 12 [40]; HT 14 [40].

Damage 2d/4d; BL 97 lbs.; HP 18 [-8]; Will 14 [10]; Per 12 [0]; FP 14 [0].

Basic Speed 7 [0]; Basic Move 7 [0]; Block 9 (DX); Dodge 11; Parry 11 (DX).

Social Background

TL: 2 [0]. CF: Tremára (Native) [0]. Languages: Tremára (Native) [0].

Advantages

Ally (Raven sent by Sky Father) (25% of starting points) (12 or less) [2]; Ally (Raven sent by Sky Father) (25% of starting points) (12 or less) [2]; Ally (Tarankláva) (150% of starting points) (15 or less) [30]; Appearance (Attractive) [4]; Blessed (Heroic Feats of ST) [10]; Charisma 2 [10]; Combat Reflexes [15]; Enhanced Move (Ground) (1/2) [10]; Fearlessness 2 [4]; Patron (Sky Father) (6 or less; Highly Accessible; Minimal Intervention) [15]; Status (+2) [5]; Super Jump 1 [10]; Wealth (Wealthy) [20].

Disadvantages

Bad Temper (12 or less) [-10]; Code of Honor (Tremára) [-5]; Enemy (Servants of the Dark God) (medium-sized group, some formidable or super-human) (9 or less) [-30]; Vow (Hold and defend the Thunder Blade unless its rightful owner should appear) (Minor) [-5].

Quirks: Chauvinistic; Headstrong; Proud; Vow (Shield-woman’s oath) [-4].

Skills

Animal Handling (Equines)-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Area Knowledge (Ravatheni Lands)-12 (IQ+0) [1]; Bow-15 (DX+1) [4]; Broadsword-14 (DX+0) [2]; Climbing-13 (DX-1) [1]; Current Affairs/TL2 (Ravatheni Lands)-12 (IQ+0) [1]; Hiking-13 (HT-1) [1]; Intimidation-13 (Will-1) [1]; Knife-14 (DX+0) [1]; Leadership-14 (IQ+2) [2]; Navigation/TL2 (Land)-12 (IQ+0) [2]; Politics-11 (IQ-1) [1]; Public Speaking (Oratory)-14 (IQ+2) [1]; Riding (Equines)-15 (DX+1) [4]; Running-13 (HT-1) [1]; Savoir-Faire (Tremára)-12 (IQ+0) [1]; Shield (Shield)-15 (DX+1) [2]; Spear-13 (DX-1) [1]; Stealth-13 (DX-1) [1]; Survival (Plains)-12 (Per+0) [2]; Swimming-14 (HT+0) [1]; Teamster (Equines)-14 (IQ+2) [4]; Throwing-13 (DX-1) [1]; Tracking-12 (Per+0) [2]; Wrestling-13 (DX-1) [1].

Kráva is very much a physical hero – very strong and fast, with a bit of Extended Move (Ground) and Super Jump to make her very mobile. She’s by no means stupid, but her talents mostly involve punching (or cutting) her way through problems.

A couple of notes about her Allies: I’ve drawn up her raven familiars as characters, and they both come in well under 0-point characters, so they’re fairly cheap.

I’ve also drawn up Tarankláva, her sword, as a character. As a practical matter, it works as a fine-quality broadsword with a bonus to skill rolls, but it also has certain powers of its own, which it uses to feed her information. The “curse of steel” has to do with the fact that it doesn’t feed her all the information it could in theory gather for her. On the sword’s character sheet, that’s set down as Reprogrammable and Slave Mentality, with a Divine Curse that prevents the sword from telling its bearer everything it sees.

Lóka the Clever (400 points)

Age 25; Human; 5′ 7″; 150 lbs.; Well-built man in a white vaita‘s robe.

ST 11 [10]; DX 13 [60]; IQ 15 [100]; HT 12 [20].

Damage 1d-1/1d+1; BL 24 lbs.; HP 11 [0]; Will 15 [0]; Per 15 [0]; FP 12 [0].

Basic Speed 6.25 [0]; Basic Move 6 [0]; Block 7 (DX); Dodge 9; Parry 9 (DX).

Social Background

TL: 2 [0]. CF: Tremára (Native) [0]. Languages: Lake Country (Native) [6]; Sea Kingdom (Native) [6]; Tremára (Native) [0]; Vaita Script (None/Native) [3].

Advantages

Appearance (Attractive) [4]; Blessed [10]; Cultural Adaptability [10]; Detect (Divine presence and children of the gods) (Rare) [5]; Eidetic Memory [5]; Magery 2 [25]; Modular Abilities (Cosmic Power) (Per point of abilities (+6); Trait Limited: One specific trait (Languages Only)) [30]; Musical Ability 2 [10]; Patron (Kórsata) (6 or less; Highly Accessible; Minimal Intervention) [15]; Social Regard (Respected) 1 [5]; Vaita Rank 1 [5]; Voice [10].

Disadvantages

Secret (Child of a god) (Utter Rejection) [-10]; Sense of Duty (Friends and companions) (Small Group) [-5]; Social Stigma (Second-Class Citizen) [-5]; Vow (Never admit his divine ancestry or the name of his divine parent) (Minor) [-5]; Xenophilia (12 or less) [-10].

Quirks: Congenial; Despises slave-owners and slavers; Likes to show off his cleverness; Proud [-4].

Skills

Current Affairs/TL2 (Ravatheni Lands)-15 (IQ+0) [1]; Diplomacy-15 (IQ+0) [1]; Esoteric Medicine-14 (Per-1) [2]; Fast-Talk-16 (IQ+1) [1]; History (Tremára Lands)-15 (IQ+0) [4]; Knife-13 (DX+0) [1]; Law (Tremára)-15 (IQ+0) [4]; Literature-15 (IQ+0) [4]; Musical Influence-15 (IQ+0) [2]; Musical Instrument (Harp)-16 (IQ+1) [2]; Occultism-15 (IQ+0) [2]; Performance-18 (IQ+3) [4]; Poetry-16 (IQ+1) [4]; Politics-16 (IQ+1) [1]; Public Speaking-18 (IQ+3) [3]; Religious Ritual (Tremára)-14 (IQ-1) [2]; Riding (Equines)-12 (DX-1) [1]; Savoir-Faire (Tremára)-15 (IQ+0) [1]; Singing-18 (HT+6) [4]; Staff-12 (DX-1) [1]; Swimming-12 (HT+0) [1]; Teaching-14 (IQ-1) [1]; Theology (Tremára)-14 (IQ-1) [2]; Writing-14 (IQ-1) [1].

Spells

Analyze Magic-15 [1]; Apportation-15 [1]; Counterspell-15 [1]; Create Fire-15 [1]; Cure Disease-15 [1]; Detect Magic-15 [1]; Detect Poison-15 [1]; Dispel Magic-15 [1]; Divination (Oneiromancy)-15 [1]; Enchant-15 [2]; Extinguish Fire-15 [1]; Find Weakness-15 [1]; Great Voice-15 [1]; History-15 [1]; Identify Spell-15 [1]; Ignite Fire-15 [1]; Know Illusion-15 [1]; Lend Energy-15 [1]; Lend Vitality-15 [1]; Light-15 [1]; Loyal Sword-15 [1]; Major Healing-15 [2]; Minor Healing-16 [2]; Rejoin-15 [1]; Relieve Sickness-16 [2]; Repair-15 [1]; Restore-15 [1]; Seek Air-15 [1]; Seek Earth-15 [1]; Seek Fire-15 [1]; Seek Magic-15 [1]; Seek Water-15 [1]; Seeker-15 [1]; Sense Danger-15 [1]; Sense Emotion-15 [1]; Sense Foes-15 [1]; Sense Life-15 [1]; Shape Fire-15 [1]; Simple Illusion-15 [1]; Sound-15 [1]; Thunderclap-15 [1]; Trace-15 [1]; Truthsayer-15 [1]; Voices-15 [1]; Ward-15 [1]; Weaken-15 [1].

When I was developing this story, and considering how to represent magic, I messed around with a bunch of different models. In the end, I decided to go with bog-standard GURPS, at least for now. Some characters will have superhuman powers that are innate to them, represented by very high Attribute scores and Advantages. Other characters will be able to use “charms” or “spells” that are learned, powered by personal resources – hence, standard GURPS magic. So far, that seems to be matching the story I want to tell pretty well.

One note about Lóka: in the story, it’s a plot point that he seems to be able to understand, speak, read, and write any language he encounters. That’s kind of difficult to represent in GURPS, but the Modular Abilities trait used here seems to be the best way to proceed. As it stands, Lóka knows two or three languages by natural means. He can also “miraculously” use other languages that he’s never encountered before, although it takes him a few seconds to switch to the new script or tongue (he has to “get the trick of it”). At the moment he could get native-level fluency and literacy in one language at a time, or speak two strange languages like a native and act as a translator (without being able to read either of them), and so on. Useful!

More characters to come, I think, and I may make a post or two about world-building assumptions. This setting wouldn’t make a bad GURPS world-book, actually.

Gods of the Tremára

Gods of the Tremára

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While I continue to work on a map for the first sections of The Curse of Steel, I’ve come across another bit of world-building that seems very fruitful. To wit, now that I’ve developed something of a language for Kráva’s people to speak, I’m also in a position to develop mythology for them.

I had already come up with a few theonyms, but over this past weekend, I decided to work out a complete pantheon, with names, epithets, and backgrounds for a dozen or so deities. Not only am I very happy with the result, but it’s given me a number of new ideas for the story itself.

In particular, while I’ve been doing this, I’ve also been reading the new edition of the Scion roleplaying game, currently published by Onyx Path Publishing. Scion is basically an urban fantasy of the old World of Darkness stripe, but it’s chock-full of interesting ideas as to how to handle characters of divine descent in an otherwise mundane world. Clear inspirations from things like the Percy Jackson stories, American Gods, or The Wicked + The Divine. I’m honestly kind of tempted to shift my plot-development paradigm from FATE to Scion, which seems better suited for the kind of story I’m hoping to tell. Still thinking about that.

In the meantime, though, here’s a short set of first-draft notes on the gods of the Tremára people. You’ll probably detect that this is Standard Indo-European Pantheon, variant #3-b . . . you won’t have any trouble recognizing bits and pieces of inspiration here. Just as I’m applying Indo-European-like principles to my constructed languages, the same applies to my constructed mythologies.

The Tívai Atesdan

The primary deities of the Tremára are called the Tívai Atesdan, the “Twelve Gods.” The Tremára cosmology also includes a horde of minor gods, spirits of nature or of place, and divine heroes; all these lesser beings have their local cults, but the Twelve are revered by all.

Kádir Tívar, Sky-Father, Lord of the Bright Heavens

Patriarch of the Tívai Atesdan, Kádir Tívar is the divine chieftain and King. His is the oath that binds all under the law, and his is the iron rule of hospitality that keeps the peace among humans. In the time before humanity arose, he overthrew the creatures of Chaos who came before him. Now he maintains the cosmic order with stern ferocity, knowing that any respite might lead to his own overthrow.

For the most part, Kádir Tívar has been faithful to his marriage with his divine sister, the Queen of the Earth. On rare occasions, he has been known to descend to minor goddesses or mortal women in order to father great heroes. This is never a matter of lustful desire on his part, but rather a concession to the dictates of Fate – and his wife, as the arbiter of Fate, is often in full concurrence.

Athenná the All-Mother, Queen of the Earth

Athenná is the sister and wife of Kádir Tívar, the eternal foundation of all life and all existence. She is the mistress and arbiter of Fate, which stands above all law and justice. In ancient times, she was one of the children of primordial Chaos, and she retains more of that character than most of her siblings. She rarely appears to humans in their own form, but she will sometimes manifest as a force of nature, in majesty and dread.

Athenná has never been known to wander from her marriage to Kádir Tívar. That is not to say that she doesn’t create or choose heroes to carry out her will, only that their origins tend to be more indirect and mysterious.

Múrkavrio, the Great Bull

The embodiment of masculine power and procreative force, Múrkavrio gives men the power to strive and be victorious over all the challenges of life. He also manifests the power and prosperity that come from herds of domesticated beasts, especially the cattle whose form he often takes.

Múrkavrio’s insatiable desire has made him the undisputed champion among the gods for fathering children upon other divine creatures and upon mortal women. Almost every tribe and clan among the Tremára can claim descent from the Great Bull, renewed in every generation. His wife, Tálanna the Golden, seems reconciled to this, although there have been exceptions.

Tálanna the Golden, Lady of the Ripened Grain

Tálanna is the great nurturing power of the earth, the goddess who brings seed to grow and yield sustenance for all the earth’s children. Hers is the power that gives life to the grain, brings offspring to every animal kind, and sustains humanity. She is the patron and protector of women, especially in childbirth and motherhood.

As with her sister Athenná, Tálanna has never been known to consort with minor deities or with mortals so that she can bear heroes. Her champions are chosen or created, and are almost always women, sent forth to protect their mortal sisters against the violence or injustices of the world.

Tario, Lord of Thunder, Champion of the Gods

Tario is the son of Kádir Tívar and Athenná, the warrior and champion of the gods. He strides forth against darkness and chaos, leading the divine beings in battle at the command of his kingly father. His greatest weapon is the lightning, which he calls down from the storm-clouds of war. From warriors he demands unfailing courage, but also wisdom and clear thinking amid battle.

Despite his masculine nature, Tario is not known for ventures away from his wife, the Lady of Horses. Instead, he tends to incarnate among humans from time to time. On each occasion he lives an apparently mortal life, adds to his legend, and then returns to his place among the gods after death. Unfortunately, Tario’s incarnations rarely live an easy life; he seems to be fated to suffer greatly and fight the most difficult battles, no matter which turn of the Wheel he may be on.

Tekuná, Lady of Horses

Daughter of Múrkavrio and Tálanna, the Lady of Horses came to the Chariot People in the earliest times, as a great white mare who bore a thousand offspring and gave humans the power to thrive and journey across the land. Later she taught the people about chariots, and she and her husband Tario taught them to be warriors of strength and courage.

Like her father, Tekuná is well-known for her affairs with mortals, and many heroes can claim descent from her. Her children and their descendants are often seen to have a special way with horses, and they make superb charioteers and riders.

Kaima Gerio, Lord of the Underworld

Originally the first human being, the “divine twin” was elevated to godhood after his death, and assigned to rule over the Underworld. He is grim and silent, but not malicious, and he treats all with the same firm justice. He is also the source of all the wealth that comes from within the earth, the patron of miners, coiners, and jewel-smiths.

Kaima Gerio has never fathered heroes upon mortals, so far as is known. Most often, he will instead select the shade of some great warrior or sage of the past, and grant it reincarnation in the living world to serve as one of his champions. Heroes connected with the Lord of the Dead are often uncanny creatures, knowing things no mortal should know, seeking objectives that no mortal can understand.

Skádna, Mistress of Shadows

Daughter of Kádir Tívar and Athenná, Skádna was (very unwillingly) married to Kaima Gerio when he became the god of the Underworld. She is the goddess of shadows and liminal spaces, who stands between light and darkness, life and death. She is the Comforter who conveys human spirits to the Underworld, and the Advocate who argues for mercy or for vengeance depending on their deeds.

Skádna despises her husband, always remembering that he was not originally of divine birth. She has been known to sneak out and enjoy affairs with other gods or with mortals. Her heroic offspring are more likely to be wise-men or sorcerers than great warriors. Kaima Gerio punishes Skádna when her activities reflect poorly upon his honor, but he never persecutes her mortal lovers, always knowing that they will one day be required to face him for an accounting.

Kórsata, the Lofty One, Lord of the Sacred Flame

Kórsata is a son of Kídar Távar by Kórsia, a minor goddess of the mountains. He is the twin brother to Advenáta. He is the god of fire, whether it be the fire of the hearth, the fire of the forge, or the fire of holy inspiration. He is the healer and protector of humans, the patron deity of smiths, and the god most revered by bards and vaitai. Kórsata’s ways are unfathomable, as he often seems to pursue wisdom beyond mortal ken.

Kórsata is unmarried, having never found a goddess capable of understanding and embracing the depths of his spirit. He has been known to father heroes upon mortal kind, but some of his most well-known champions have been creations: carvings or statues or even poems brought to life by his blessing.

Advenáta the Beautiful, Lady of Love and Passion

Advenáta was also born to Kídar Tívar and Kórsia, twin sister to Kórsata. She is the goddess of beauty in all its forms, and the passion that such beauty inspires in humans. She is the patron of lovers, and is likely to take vengeance when love is denied.

Advenáta has so far refused to accept a husband, preferring her freedom. Indeed, not even her father Kádir Tívar has seen fit to insist on her attachment to any god or mortal, knowing that she must be left free to move as her spirit wills. As might be expected, Advenáta is renowned for the number and variety of her romantic affairs with gods, spirits, and mortals. She has borne several mortal heroes, a surprising number of whom have become great chieftains and kings.

Marapótio, Divine Master of the Seas

The brother of Kádir Tívar and Kaima Gerio, Marapótio was little known to the ancient Chariot People, but he has become more prominent as the Tremára interact with coast-dwelling folk. He is the solitary master of the great waters, the bringer of sea-storms and the king of sea-monsters. Few humans love him, but all fear and revere him, and call upon him when traveling upon the sea.

Marapótio has fathered few heroes among the Tremára, who have dwelt far from the sea for many centuries. The bards suspect that he has been more active among dwellers in the coastlands to the west and south, although those people likely know him by other names.

Kekóna, the Trickster, Mistress of Twists and Turns

Another daughter of Múrkavrio and Tálanna, Kekóna is a trickster-deity, goddess of lies and deception. She is a patron of merchants, thieves, and all those who must travel and cross boundaries. She is also a patron of warriors, but she favors those who use cunning stratagems to win, rather than those who rely upon brute force and courage. Strangely, she is usually portrayed as not resembling the Tremára, instead being light of hair and pale of skin like some people of the cold Northlands.

Despite her freedom of spirit, Kekóna is not known for casual dalliance with other gods or with mortals. Her love affairs are infrequent but very intense. Her gender is somewhat fluid; she has been known to engage with goddesses or women, and even to manifest herself as male if that is more likely to suit a prospective partner. Her rare children tend to be tricksters, wanderers and outcasts, much like their divine parent.

. . . and a Bonus Diagram

So, almost by accident, I tried putting together a little chart to help me visualize the relationships among all these gods. Turned out pretty well, given that it only took an hour or two to assemble. Enjoy:

First Sketch Map: Talmoi Móran

First Sketch Map: Talmoi Móran

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Now that I’ve got a solid foundation for my constructed languages for The Curse of Steel, I’ve rewritten about the first 10 kilowords of the novel, and I’m pretty happy with how that much has turned out. Now, though, Kráva and her friends are about to leave their starting point and set out cross-country, and I need to have a good picture of their surroundings. So now it’s time to do some map work.

Over the past couple of evenings I’ve laid out a very rough sketch map of parts of the continent Kráva’s people call Talmoi Móran, or “the Great Lands.” This is roughly equivalent to Europe (or western Middle-Earth), stretching from about 30 to 65 degrees North latitude, and across about sixty degrees of east-west longitude.

Kráva begins her adventure in the region labeled the Tremára Lands, an area roughly the size of France, bounded by the major Black River on the east, the Blue Mountains on the west, and a series of large inland seas (the “Great Lakes”) on the south. The Tremára (“Mighty Folk”) are one branch of the so-called “Chariot People,” this universe’s equivalent of the Indo-Europeans. The Chariot People have been spreading out from their eastern homeland for a few millennia at this point, and most countries around the edges of the Great Plains at the center of the map are inhabited by their offshoots.

I don’t think I’m going to go to great lengths to fill in this map in fine detail, not yet and possibly not ever. All that’s important for now is that I get a general idea of where everything is. I also got a reality check: I used an application called G.Projector to overlay this map on a map of Earth, just to be sure the layout and scale were at all plausible. So far, so good.

I might use this sketch map to work through some of the climate zones, just to be sure I know how that will fall out. But the most likely next step is to focus on the Tremára Lands area, and possibly the coastal regions adjacent to it, which is where about three-quarters of The Curse of Steel will be set. That map, I’ll probably take some time with.

Lexical Breakthroughs

Lexical Breakthroughs

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Who knew that building a constructed language would be so much work?

Okay, well, I knew that, because I’ve been struggling with it off and on for years. As often happens with my creative process, it’s a matter of building a workflow that will reliably produce good results. On many previous attempts, I’ve run aground on one step or another and had to stop and rethink – sometimes for months, while I worked on other projects.

So, the workflow seems to have turned out to be something like this:

  1. I started by selecting the phonemes and basic word structure for words in an ur-language, reminiscent of Proto-Indo-European. I didn’t make any attempt to closely imitate the full glorious mess that is reconstructed PIE, but I built a set of rules that would lead to PIE-like words.
  2. I wrote a Perl script to generate all the legal word roots in the ur-language, including adding some weights to help me get a plausibly uneven distribution in which phonemes were most likely to appear.
  3. I dumped all of the generated roots, with their weights, into an Excel spreadsheet. That’s my master lexicon.
  4. Now, when I need a new word, I start by browsing through the spreadsheet – possibly also looking at the etymology of similar words in real IE languages, so I can pick something plausible but not identical. I pick a root and assign it a meaning. Most of the roots have verbal meanings, then you get nouns, adjectives, and so on by adding inflectional suffixes.
  5. Once I’ve generated one or more new word roots, I hand-copy those into an ur-language lexicon I’m building in a Word document. Each root is the header of a short section, and I spend a few lines laying out the potential verbs, nouns, and other items that are derived from that word.
  6. Then I copy the word form I want to use into another Word document, which is the main lexicon for my complete language. There I apply the sound-change rules I’ve developed, give the resulting word or phrase a quick reality check (is it aesthetically pleasing to me, does it duplicate an existing word, and so on), and then save the result.

As of today, this workflow seems to be polished enough that I’ve been able to sit down and rattle off a few dozen new words, phrases, or names in no more than a couple of hours. (As opposed to struggling for days to be confident in a word or two.)

The results are pleasing, at least to me, and that’s the important part. I think I may be able to call this part of the process finished and get to other story-development tasks. I should now be able to generate new names and vocabulary in the fly. And, when my story gets to the point where my protagonist is meeting people from other cultures, it shouldn’t take me months on end to figure out what they will sound like.

Some examples might illustrate how this is working. Here’s a row from my Excel spreadsheet, recording a word-root that’s been particularly productive:

1@em384Noun“earth, the earth”Likely borrowed from another language1

Here we have the word root, written in an idiosyncratic code I’m using to make sure all the phonemes require only one character each. The numeric value is the root’s weight, on a scale from 1-1000. Then the part of speech, a gloss of the meaning, any notes, and finally a note as to which “batch” the root was created in (so I can track any changes later).

This then goes into my ur-language lexicon, where the entry currently looks like this:

*h1dhem-

  • Thematic verb root “to stand”
  • Thematic noun root “resolute position”
  • Thematic noun root (with neh2– prefix) neh2h1dhem- “battle line” (literally “where one stands”)
  • Athematic noun root (Ø-stem) “the earth”
  • Athematic noun root (edhas­-stem) “human,” literally “child of the earth”
  • Athematic noun root (neh2-stem) “earth goddess”
  • Athematic noun root (r-stem) “earth” (mass noun)

How do I pick roots? I basically follow Tolkien’s method, which was to riffle through his list and find something he considered both aesthetically pleasing and suggestive of the meaning. This root *h1dhem– certainly isn’t the same one that appears in PIE with that meaning; that would have been something like *dheghom instead. In this case, I think I was inspired by a bit of Hebrew – adamah “red earth, ground.”

Anyway, you’ll see one of the final outcomes of that root in the partial lexicon I’ve laid out below. Basically I copy out the word h1dhemneh2 (root plus an affix that indicates a theonym) and apply a series of (well-defined and organized) minor tweaks. The result: athenná “earth goddess.”

So, without further ado, a first lexicon for the gexan Tremárar, the language that will be spoken by Kráva and her friends in The Curse of Steel.

Personal Names

  • akretetha “child of the bear,” from h2kretedhas
  • alikóra “white horse,” from h2eldh “white” + keh3ras “horse”
  • alitha “white one,” from h2eldhas
  • araiadan “kingly man,” from h1rey “to rule, to be kingly” + dh2en man”
  • aregdani “protector of men,” from h1regh “to protect” + dh2eny “men”
  • arevga “red one,” from h1rewghas
  • arevírai “protector of warriors,” from h1regh “to protect” + weh1ray “warriors”
  • axesa “ruler, governor,” from h1ghesas
  • derga “cave lion,” from dherghas “plains lion”
  • dóva “dark one,” from deh3was
  • drúthan “sacred tree,” from dreh3 “having sacred power” + dheh2n “tree”
  • dúvelka “dark wolf,” from deh3w “dark” + welkas “wolf”
  • kólma “unmarred one,” from kh3elmas
  • kráskora “black horse,” from kreh2s “black” + keh3ras “horse”
  • kráva “raven,” from kreh2was
  • kúndan “loyal man,” from kweh3n “to be loyal” + dh2en “man”
  • lóka “one who burns,” from leh3kas
  • múraxesa “great ruler,” from meh3r “great” + h1ghesas “ruler, governor”
  • múrvira “great man,” from meh3r “great” + weh1ras “warrior, man”
  • náran “glorious one,” from neh2ran
  • náretha “child of glory, child of the sun, from neh2redhas
  • pelikórai “lover of horses,” from ph1el “fond of, holding a preference” + keh3ray “horses”
  • resa “the best one, the excellent one,” from resh1as
  • resavíra “excellent warrior,” from resh1 “best, excellent” + weh1ras “warrior, man”
  • resaxesa “excellent ruler,” from resh1 “best, excellent” + h1ghesas “ruler, governor”
  • róvira “royal or noble warrior,” from reh3weh1ras
  • tívetha “child of a god,” from teh1wedhas

Theonyms (Names for Deities)

  • athenná “earth goddess,” from h1dhemneh2
  • gerio “god of death,” from gheryos “death god”
  • kádir tívar “sky-father, god of the bright heavens,” from keh2deh1r teh1war “father of the sky”
  • kávrio “bull god,” from keh2wryos
  • skádna “goddess of shadows,” from skeh2dhneh2 “shadow goddess”
  • tálanna “goddess of grain,” from teh2lmneh2 “land goddess”
  • tario “thunder god,” from th2eryos
  • tekuná “horse goddess,” from tekwneh2

Ethonyms (Names for Peoples)

  • ravathen “by the (sacred) grove,” from rewh2dhen
  • ravatheni “those by the sacred grove,” a tribal name, plural form of ravathen
  • sanadmára “elven folk,” from senh2dh “old, ancient” + meh2ras “host, tribe, folk”
  • sanatha “ancient one, elf,” from senh2dhas “ancient one”
  • tremára “the mighty folk,” from tren “mighty” + meh2ras “host, tribe, folk”
  • trenvíra “mighty man, member of the tremára,” from tren “mighty” + weh1ras “warrior, man”

Place Names

  • alevo kanta “Kanta river,” from h2lewos (kanta is borrowed from a local hydronym)
  • alevo krá “black river,” from h2lewos kreh2s
  • kólami angar “iron hills,” from keh3lmy h2enghr “hills of iron”
  • kórsani konan “blue mountains,” from keh3rsany kh3enn
  • mara násetar “Western Sea,” from merh2 neh2setr “sea of the west”
  • múrtalmoi “the great lands,” from meh3r “great” + teh2lmoy “lands”
  • teimar nár “glorious hill-fort,” from teymar neh2r
  • teimar velkri “hill-fort of the wolves,” from teymar welkri
  • verkanta “over (the river) Kanta”

Miscellaneous

  • gexan tremárar “language of the mighty folk,” from geghh2en “language”
  • tás ravami “I love (or desire) you,” from teh2s rewh2mi

Not bad for a couple of months’ work. Not to mention that the back of my brain has been coming up with all manner of neat ideas for the setting and the story. The trick is to organize your world-building time so it actually contributes to the end result and keeps your creative mind engaged.

Building a Lexicon

Building a Lexicon

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Currently in my constructed-language work for The Curse of Steel, I’m selecting word roots from my script-generated list of all the legal possibilities.

I’m not being particularly systematic here. I started with the roots for several names I had already settled on during early development, and from an earlier word-list that I built before I started getting my computer to help out with all this. (Along the way, I discovered that I had broken some of my own rules about legal word-root formation. Time to make minor tweaks to the word-lists!)

With that finished, I’ve been grabbing words from a variety of sources: color terms, the numerals from one to ten, and so on. I’ve even pulled down my copy of the Silmarillion and started paging through the appendices for ideas – that’s kind of a ready-made list of vocabulary prompts for any naming language! Not that I’m slavishly imitating any one source, but if my final lexicon ends up sounding vaguely Indo-European and vaguely like Sindarin, I suppose I can be accused of stealing from the best.

So far I’ve got about 80 word-roots. The list follows, taken straight from my growing spreadsheet. A couple of notes first.

You’ll notice the word roots incorporate some numerals and special characters. Those are meant to represent some phonemes that would normally be expressed with more than one character. That way, when I pull them over to be processed by another Perl script, I won’t have to fuss too much with parsing those out. If you know anything about PIE phonology, you’ll probably recognize that I’m using a similar set of three “laryngeal” consonants, that will disappear from daughter languages but give rise to a variety of vowel colorations. Other special characters represent aspirated or labialized consonants (e.g., representing the differences among phonemes we might pronounce as g-, gh-, or gw-).

Meanwhile, every word root has a “weight” attached. This is something I built into the script to generate the word roots, to enforce some assumptions about which phonemes are most common.

Ur-Language RootWeightPart of SpeechMeaningNotes
re2n567AdverbParticle for future aspect of verbs
we2489AdverbParticle to indicate negation of verbs
2sper352Adverb“away”
te2n440Conjunction“and”
rey540Noun“chieftain, noble, king”
d2en440Noun“man,” also numeral “ten”
we@420Noun“water”
ke2m392Noun“hand,” also numeral “five”
kest392Noun“head”
@e2n378Noun“tree”
2eng378Noun“iron”Probably borrowed from another language group
%en360Noun“girl, woman”
1kwes313Noun“lake, pond, pool”
me2r@302Noun“fate, doom”
$2er252Noun“home, dwelling”
ke3lm196Noun“hill, knoll, rock”
ye1480Numeral“one”
kens1403Numeral“seven”
tre1s403Numeral“three”
2tes392Numeral“two”
semt1358Numeral“six”
we2rs352Numeral“four”
let3244Numeral“eight”
pen@3189Numeral“nine”
weytN/AVerb“to know, to see (visions)”Not a legal ur-language root, probably borrowed from another language group
1es640Verb“to be” (indicating a state of being)
ken630Verb“to think, to engage in spiritual activity”
ret630Verb“to guard, to protect”
wer630Verb“to die”
ne2r567Verb“to be glorious, to be brilliant”
tren567Verb“to be stiff, to be taut, to be mighty”
mew560Verb“to partition”
re@540Verb“to hit, to strike”
kres504Verb“to mix up, to confuse”
me2r504Verb“to crowd, to form a crowd”
kel489Verb“to be cold, to be chilly”
nek2441Verb“to strip away, to expose”
pret441Verb“to exchange”
terk441Verb“to break”
t2er440Verb“to crash, to smite”
dren2396Verb“to lengthen, to be long”
gre1n388Verb“to sanctify, to make a treaty”
1@em384Verb“to stand”
$er360Verb“to turn”
me3r360Verb“to be large, to be great”
kre2s352Verb“to be black”
ke3350Verb“to bend”
2lew342Verb“to flow (like water)”
kelt342Verb“to hammer, to work with metal”
welk342Verb“to tear”
teym336Verb“to encircle, to finish (a circle)”
de3n315Verb“to give, to receive a gift, to be guest-friends”
dre3315Verb“to have sacred power”
ke3r315Verb“to run”
kre2w308Verb“to make a harsh sound, to croak”
sen2@302Verb“to be old, to be ancient”
2el@293Verb“to be white”
2ewg293Verb“to hear”
te$280Verb“to be wild, to be free”
ske2t274Verb“to hate”
te2lm274Verb“to spread”
#e2n252Verb“to go, to walk”
ke3rs252Verb“to stand tall, to tower”
wer#252Verb“to threaten”
de3w244Verb“to be dark (in color)”
k3el244Verb“to be whole, to be unmarred”
kwe3244Verb“to be loyal”
le3k244Verb“to burn, to set aflame”
we3k244Verb“to speak, to call”
kle2w240Verb“to cut, to slice”
g2els235Verb“to be green”
ske2@235Verb“to darken”
de1#224Verb“to take”
@er#216Verb“to bite”
1rew#201Verb“to be red”
te2$196Verb“to hurt, to harm”
3re$180Verb“to straighten, to direct”
$2ey168Verb“to be blue”
$eyt168Verb“to be white”
de!140Verb“to divide”

I think I’ll probably generate a few dozen more roots, then copy them into a separate spreadsheet where I’ll build actual words. Most of the roots will make perfectly good words without modification, but I’ll also apply some of the word morphology rules I’ve worked out to derive more words. I imagine I’ll have as many as 200-250 words by the time I’m done, enough to form the basis for a decent naming language. Then to build Perl scripts to apply the sound-change rules.

Once that’s done – no doubt with a certain amount of tweaking to suit my aesthetic tastes – I’ll have a system by which I can quickly create and record new words as I write the story. In three different, but clearly related, languages!

Lots of work up front, to save a lot of work and frustration later. That’s what computers are for, right?

Rough Draft for an Ur-Language

Rough Draft for an Ur-Language

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Here are some of the basic notes I’ve put together for my constructed-language work for The Curse of Steel. The idea here is that this is an ur-language, very vaguely reminiscent of Proto-Indo-European, which can act as the mother-tongue for a set of derived languages. Since these aren’t planned to be anything but a set of naming languages, I haven’t worked out a lot of deep grammar or sentence structure – the emphasis here is on word morphology, the rules for the formation of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on.

This is all very rough draft, of course, and I’m deliberately not trying to be very adventurous – none of this is supposed to suggest a highly exotic sound or feel to English-speaking readers. Still, it should give you an idea of what goes into the construction of an artificial language for genre fiction. I may post some of my growing lexica shortly, to provide more examples.

Phonology

The ur-language has the following consonant set:

  Labial Coronal Dorsal Laryngeal
Nasals *m *n    
Stops *p *t *k, *kw  
*b *d *g, *gw
*bh *dh *gh, *gwh
Fricatives   *s   *h1, *h2, *h3
Liquids   *r, *l    
Semivowels *w   *y  

Word roots in the ur-language can be either nouns or verbs. Most adjectives or adverbs are constructed by inflection of an underlying stative verb (that is, a verb form which expresses a state of being). A word root in the ur-language almost invariably has the following phonotactic structure:

  • The root is always composed of at least one consonant in the onset, the vowel *e, and at least one consonant in the coda. No root may begin or end with the vowel.
  • In a consonant cluster, the consonants are always arranged in order of sonority. Consonants appear in three classes by sonority (lower to higher sonority):
    • Obstruents, which include:
      • Plosives (*p, *b, *bh, *t, *d, *dh, *k, *g, *gh, *kw, *gw, or *gwh)
      • Sibilants (*s)
      • Laryngeals (*h1, *h2, or *h3)
    • Labial sonorants (*m or *w)
    • Non-labial sonorants (*n, *r, *l, or *y)
  • A consonant cluster may consist of up to one non-labial sonorant, up to one labial sonorant, and up to one obstruent from each class.
  • In a cluster of obstruents, the sibilant *s may only appear before a plosive, never after. A laryngeal may appear before or after any other obstruent, but not another laryngeal.
  • In the onset (before the vowel), consonants must appear in increasing sonority, while in the coda (after the vowel) they must appear in decreasing sonority. The one exception is that in the coda, a laryngeal may always appear first.
  • Legal word roots normally follow certain phonotactic rules:
    • They may not contain more than one nasal consonant (*m or *n)
    • They may not contain more than one liquid (*l or *r)
    • They may not contain more than one semivowel (*w or *y)
    • They may not contain more than one plain voiced plosive (*b, *d, *g, or *gw)
    • They may not contain more than one laryngeal fricative (*h1, *h2, or *h3)

Word Formation Rules

Verbs

The primary categories for verbs include:

  • Person: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.
  • Number: Singular, dual, and plural.
  • Aspect: Perfective, imperfective, and stative.
  • Mood: Indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and optative.
  • Tense: Present and past.

The primary conjugations are for person, number, and aspect. They tend to be very regular, applying inflectional endings to the verb root as follows.

Primary Conjugation

This conjugation is used for the present tense of the indicative mood of imperfective verbs, and for the subjunctive mood of all verbs.

  Singular Dual Plural
1st Person *-mi *-weh3s *-mos
2nd Person *-si *-tes *-te
3rd Person *-ti *-teh2s *-nti

The future tense is indicated with this conjugation, and the particle *reh2n placed just before the verb.

Secondary Conjugation

This conjugation is used for the past tense of the indicative mood of imperfective verbs, for the indicative mood of perfective verbs, and for the optative mood of all verbs.

  Singular Dual Plural
1st Person *-m *-we *-me
2nd Person *-s *-te *-t
3rd Person *-t *-teh2 *-nt

Furthermore, imperfective verbs in the past tense exhibit ablaut, in which the primary vowel of the verb root shifts from *e to *o.

Stative Conjugation

This conjugation is used for stative verbs.

  Singular Dual Plural
1st Person *-h2e *-we *-meh2
2nd Person *-th2e *-h2ey *-eh2
3rd Person *-e *-h2ey *-eh1r

Imperative Mood

This conjugation (applicable only in the second or third person) is used for the imperative mood of all verbs.

  Singular Dual Plural
1st Person N/A N/A N/A
2nd Person *-Ø *-to *-te
3rd Person *-tu *-tew *-ntu

Other Verb Formation Notes

Negation is indicated with the particle *weh2 immediately after the main verb.

Nouns

The primary categories for nouns are:

  • Class: Animate and inanimate.
  • Number: Singular and plural. Although verbs can take the specific dual number, dual nouns are simply considered plural.
  • Case:
    • Absolutive case (the argument of an intransitive verb or the object of a transitive verb)
    • Ergative case (the subject or “agent” of a transitive verb)
    • Dative case (the indirect object of a verb, the recipient or beneficiary of an action)
    • Genitive case (the possessor, composition, or point of reference for another noun)
    • Locative case (expressing the location of another noun or a verb’s action)
    • Ablative case (expressing motion or action away from another noun)
    • Instrumental case (expressing the means of an action)
    • Vocative case (marking the noun being addressed)

Noun class is not marked on the noun, but all nouns are assigned to either the animate or inanimate classes. The assignment is usually intuitive, although there are some exceptions. Examples include non-living but moving objects which might be considered the habitation place of a spirit, or non-living objects which are nevertheless often addressed as if they possess the power of speech.

Case and number markings are as follows:

SingularPlural
  Animate Inanimate Animate Inanimate
Absolutive *-Ø *-s *-eh1 *-eh1
Ergative *-m *-m *-meh1 *-meh1
Dative *-meh2 *-meh2 *-mus *-mus
Genitive *-kh2e *-kh3e *-kh2ey *-kh2ey
Locative *-ey *-ey *-su *-su
Ablative *-os *-os *-yos *-yos
Instrumental *-an *-an *-eh2 *-eh2
Vocative *-Ø *-Ø *-es *-h2

Nouns in the ergative case also exhibit ablaut, in which the primary vowel of the nominal root shifts from *e to *o.

Noun Formation from Verb Roots

Many nouns in the ur-language are formed from verb roots, usually by applying a specific suffix to the root. For example:

  • Animate creature or human that performs X: *X-as
  • Inanimate object or thing that performs X: *X-os
  • Gerund form (“X-ing”): *X-en
  • Infinitive form (“to X”): *X-on
  • The result of X: *X-am or *X-as

Common Prefixes

  • *an- “into”
  • *as- “out, out from”
  • *en- “on, upon”
  • *reh3– “good, noble”
  • *tar– “against”
  • *wer- “over”
The Curse of Steel: Characters

The Curse of Steel: Characters

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Here are some first-fruits of the work I’ve been doing with the FATE tabletop game, trying to find a new way to discipline my world-building and story-planning work.

The idea was for me to work through character design for the leads of my partial-draft novel The Curse of Steel, and use that process (as the FATE game suggests) to do some of the world-building for the setting. So far the exercise seems to have worked out well. I know a lot more about these characters than I did before, and I have a bunch of fresh ideas about the world they live in.

Kráva the Swift

A tall, athletic young woman, well-muscled, slim of figure, trained as a warrior. Carries a number of small scars, the worst being a set of bear-claw marks on her left shoulder. Tawny brown skin, black hair with violet highlights, cobalt-blue eyes. Usually wears leather combat gear, topped off with a bear-skin cloak, with one or two pieces of jewelry to show off her wealth.

Aspects

  • Headstrong Warrior Woman
  • Wielder of the Lightning Blade
  • Always Have Something to Prove
  • Everyone Deserves a Fair Chance
  • Talk to the Fist

Skills

  • Great (+4): Shoot
  • Good (+3): Athletics, Horses
  • Fair (+2): Fight, Physique, Resources
  • Average (+1): Crafts, Notice, Provoke, Will

Extras & Stunts

  • Tarankláva, the Lightning Blade: This ancient sword, made of what in another world would be called the finest Damascus steel, is the primary reason the setting is called “The Curse of Steel.”
    • To use Tarankláva to its full potential, you must have the aspect Wielder of the Lightning Blade, indicating that the sword has accepted you as its owner (and as the current instrument of its revenge). The sword also costs 1 point of refresh.
    • At all times, the sword grants +2 to Fight while you use it in battle.
    • The sword also has two aspects of its own: See into the Hearts of Men and Slayer of Corrupt Kings. As the possessor of Tarankláva, you can invoke these aspects yourself, but they can also be compelled. The sword will “tell” you about the dishonesty and sins of the people around you, even (or especially) when you would rather not know. The sword will also push you into destroying corrupt people, especially in positions of power, the higher the position the better.
  • Charioteer: +2 to overcome or create-an-advantage actions with Horses if you are driving a chariot.
  • Legendary Archer: When wielding a bow, you may use Shoot to make attacks with it up to four zones away.
  • Swift and Certain of Foot: +2 to overcome or create-an-advantage actions with Athletics if you are running across broken or built-up ground.

Refresh: 2.

Consequences

  • Physical Stress Track: 3 boxes
  • Mental Stress Track: 3 boxes
  • Standard consequence slots

Elements of Backstory

  • As a young woman, Kráva always felt that she had to prove herself to her father and their clan. On one occasion she went out hunting, alone and without backup. She encountered an angry bear, and although she managed to kill the beast, she was badly injured and had to spend weeks recovering. Her father rebuked her, but he also made sure she was given the bear’s pelt to keep.
    Aspect: Always Have Something to Prove
  • Kráva and her father were in Verkanta when Lóka ran away from his master. Degra was put in charge of finding the runaway slave, responsible for tracking him down. Kráva spoke up for Lóka, and delayed events long enough for Kúnadan to intervene.
    Aspect: Everyone Deserves a Fair Chance
  • Kráva and her father were in Verkanta again when Drotháno ruined the foreign trader’s schemes. When the trader tried to run to King Módran for help, Kráva and Drotháno were the ones who cornered him and beat him within an inch of his life, running him out of town.
    Aspect: Talk to the Fist

Drotháno the Silent

A powerfully built young man, tall and heavily muscled. Tawny brown skin, dark brown hair, crystal blue eyes. Always dressed in simple but well-kept clothing, or in well-maintained combat gear. Very quiet, almost never speaks around strangers.

Aspects

  • Loyal Warrior of the Wolf Clan
  • Uncomfortable Around Strangers
  • A Lot Smarter Than I Look
  • Woods-Wise
  • Always Listens to a Tale of Woe

Skills

  • Great (+4): Physique
  • Good (+3): Fight, Stealth
  • Fair (+2): Empathy, Horses, Will
  • Average (+1): Athletics, Crafts, Investigate, Notice

Extras & Stunts

  • Brawler: When fighting a mob of nameless characters, you deal one additional stress on a physical hit.
  • Tough as Nails: Once per session, at the cost of a fate point, you can reduce the severity of a moderate physical consequence to a mild consequence (if the mild consequence slot is free), or erase a mild physical consequence altogether.
  • I Can See Through You: +2 to overcome or defend against lies with Empathy.

Refresh: 3.

Consequences

  • Physical Stress Track: 4 boxes
  • Mental Stress Track: 3 boxes
  • Standard consequence slots

Elements of Backstory

  • A foreign trader from civilized lands came to visit Sudavai territory, and tried to swindle the Wolf-clan out of its gold and silver in exchange for worthless trinkets. Fortunately, the trader paid Drotháno no attention, thinking him simple, and he was able to uncover the plot. He and his father tricked the trader into revealing his intentions, and the man was driven away with a fine and a beating.
    Aspect: A Lot Smarter Than I Look
  • When Kráva went out hunting alone and didn’t come back right away, her father sent out warriors to search for her in the wilderness. Even though he was only a guest, Drotháno was one of the ones who volunteered to help. He tracked her, found her after she fought the bear, bandaged her wounds, and helped her get safely home.
    Aspect: Woods-Wise
  • When Lóka ran away from his master, it was Drotháno who found him naked and injured in a back alley of Verkanta. He helped the older boy hide, cleaned him up, disguised him, and helped him get to Kúnadan’s hall. Lóka has been grateful ever since.
    Aspect: Always Listens to a Tale of Woe

Lóka the Clever

Handsome man of average height and build. His olive-skinned coloring is several shades lighter than usual, betraying his mixed heritage. Has dark brown eyes and black hair. Always wearing fine clothes, often in white or in bright colors, along with the iron torc of a low-ranking vaita. Usually carries a small harp slung in its case on his back.

Aspects

  • Ambitious Scholar and Magician
  • Too Clever for My Own Good
  • I Owe Kúnadan Everything
  • Drotháno is My Blood Brother
  • Reading the Book of Fate

Skills

  • Great (+4): Lore
  • Good (+3): Magic, Rapport
  • Fair (+2): Contacts, Notice, Will
  • Average (+1): Deceive, Empathy, Investigate, Provoke

Extras & Stunts

  • Demagogue: +2 to Rapport when you are speaking in front of a mob or crowd and trying to sway them to act as you wish.
  • Linguist: +2 to Lore when you are reading, writing, speaking, or translating an unusual language.
  • Trained Physician: You can make physical recovery attempts, for yourself or others, with Lore.

Refresh: 3.

Consequences

  • Physical Stress Track: 2 boxes
  • Mental Stress Track: 3 boxes
  • Standard consequence slots

Elements of Backstory

  • Lóka was born the son of a slave in Verkanta, and would normally never have been considered for initiation as a vaita. As a young man, he ran away from home to present himself at the hall of the chief vaita, Kúnadan, hoping to demonstrate his determination to learn. His former master tracked him down there and threatened to kill him, but in front of Kúnadan he challenged the man to a contest of poetry and won. The vaita took him under his wing, trained him, and initiated him.
    Aspect: I Owe Kúnadan Everything
  • Lóka was present in Verkanta when the foreign trader tried to swindle the Wolf-clan. At first, he offered to help the trader in exchange for a cut of the profits. Later, he decided to help the Wolf-clan instead, advising Drotháno and helping him to trick the trader.
    Aspect: Drotháno is My Blood Brother
  • Kúnadan and Lóka were visiting the Lion-clan when Kráva went hunting alone and returned badly injured. Lóka was assigned to provide medicine and healing magic. He was impressed by the young woman’s courage and had a sudden strong foresight of her destiny. He persuaded Kúnadan to arrange for Kráva to be recognized as a warrior-woman of the tribe. Kúnadan began to train Lóka as a seer and prophet.
    Aspect: Reading the Book of Fate

Worldbuilding Notes

The setting for The Curse of Steel is a gritty swords-and-sorcery world, set at an early Iron Age level, reminiscent of pre-Roman Europe, Middle-earth in the Second Age, or the Hyborian Era. The initial set of characters will all be members of a barbarian culture, technically sophisticated but organized along tribal lines, on the fringes of the civilized world.

The Setting’s Big Issues

Corruption in the King’s Hall – The Sudavai tribe has a new king, and he is already showing signs of being a very bad king indeed. He favors his own family and clan at the expense of others, he breaks the law and steps all over people to grab wealth and power, and he’s starting to imitate the hypocritical manners of civilized kingdoms.

A God of Iron and Fire – Far away, several of the civilized kingdoms have come under the sway of a dark and terrible god. This god seeks to conquer and rule the world, eradicating all his ancient enemies and stamping out every vestige of freedom. Although this threat to the Sudavai people isn’t immediate, it’s already influencing events.

Faces & Places

King Módran – The new king of the Sudavai, a relatively young man who fits the tribe’s image of the “good king” (handsome, brave, a good fighter). Has the aspects Gold Sticks to My Fingers and Smooth-Talking Liar.

The Dark God’s Envoy – A mysterious figure who acts as the Dark God’s agent among the Sudavai tribe. At the beginning of the story, no one knows who this is, or even that he or she exists.

Kúnadan – The old chief vaita of the kingdom, the king’s advisor and one of the few men in his hall who hasn’t been corrupted yet.

“The Foreign Trader” – A traveling merchant from civilized countries, who sometimes tries to make a profit by swindling the tribesmen. Carries a very bitter grudge against our heroes. I don’t have a name for this individual yet, and may need to do a bit of constructed-language work to derive one.

Verkanta – The settlement (basically a small fortified town) where King Módran keeps his hall, the largest owned by the Sudavai tribe and the effective capital.

Some Timeline Notes

  • 23 years ago – Lóka is born.
  • 22 years ago – Drotháno is born.
  • 20 years ago – Kráva is born.
  • 7 years ago – Lóka runs away from his master and is taken in by Kúnadan.
  • 4 years ago – Kráva goes hunting alone and is badly injured by a bear.
  • 1 year ago – Drotháno prevents a foreign trader from swindling the Wolf-clan.

Skills

The Drive skill is replaced by a Horses skill, which covers both horseback riding and driving a chariot. All other skills are as in the default list.

There is a separate Magic skill, used by everyone in the setting who might have magical powers.

Magic

Several magical styles may appear in the course of the story, some of them quite flashy. For now, there’s a common “hedge magic” style shared by almost every human culture in one form or another. In the tribal culture where Kráva and her friends live, this low-key style is practiced by the vaitai or “wise ones,” a professional class who provide a variety of services.

Extra: Common Magic

  • Permissions: One aspect indicating that you’ve been trained as a magician.
  • Costs: Skill ranks invested in the Magic skill. This form of magic costs no points of refresh, as it’s largely a matter of flavor.
  • Characters trained in Common Magic can use their knowledge to perform supernatural effects, including the following actions:
    • Overcome: Use Magic to prepare and perform magical rituals properly, or to answer questions about arcane phenomena.
    • Create an Advantage: Use Magic to alter the environment with magic, or to place mental or physical impediments on a target. Characters can defend against this with Will.
    • Attack: Use Magic to directly harm someone with magic, either through conjuring of physical force or through mental assault. These attacks can be made up to one zone away. Targets can defend with Athletics or Will, depending on the nature of the attack, or Magic if the target also has magical training.
    • Defend: Use Magic to defend against hostile magic or other supernatural effects.

A note about vaitai: membership in the college is ranked, so that a vaita can be referred to as having a specific “degree.” First degree vaitai are the most advanced and powerful, whereas seventh degree vaitai are just starting out. To estimate the degree of a vaita, add up their ranks in the Lore, Magic, and Will skills, and subtract the total from 16. It’s not possible to be higher than first degree, and anyone who is below seventh degree is simply considered a “novice.” So for example, Lóka the Clever is a seventh-degree vaita, still apprenticed to a more experienced professional.

The Curse of Steel: Rough Timeline

The Curse of Steel: Rough Timeline

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To review the bidding: I’m working up some background notes for a novel I’ve started but gotten stuck on, with the working title of The Curse of Steel. Last time I set down some ideas for specific peoples and ethnic groups to be found in the setting – rather Tolkienesque, with quite a bit of input from the paleontological fantasy of Michael Scott Rohan. Today, here are some notes about a rough-draft timeline that can serve as a high-level framework.

  • Age of Myth (until about 9000 years before present):
    • The world spends many thousands of years in a deep glacial age. Gods hostile to human life dominate the world, led by a powerful and malevolent deity (the first Great Enemy). Benevolent gods come to the mortal world to battle the hostile deities, eventually killing them or driving them into the outer darkness.
    • During the wars, the benevolent gods ally with Elders and Smith-folk, helping them to create the first sophisticated kingdoms (but not civilizations, since they don’t involve cities) in the world. In response, the malevolent gods create the Beast-folk to serve as shock troops. Humans and the Sea-folk remain primitive, barely surviving in small refugia and taking little or no part in the wars of the gods.
    • Once the malevolent gods are finally defeated and the world begins to warm, the Elders withdraw to the divine plane to live with the benevolent gods. The Smith-folk remain behind, some of them reverting to primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles, others looking for opportunities to practice their crafts now that the wars of the gods are over.
  • About 8700 years before the present: Several groups of Smith-folk settle in a region analogous to the Fertile Crescent, striking up a mutually beneficial relationship with the human hunter-gatherers of the region. The Smith-folk teach humans primitive agriculture and Neolithic-level technologies, helping to build large cult-centers (megalithic architecture).
  • About 8200 years before the present: Rising sea levels encroach upon a low-lying region in the far northwest, undermining the connection between the continental mainland and a “Northern Isles” region that will eventually become analogous to the British Isles.
  • About 6700 years before the present:
    • Foundation of the world’s first pseudo-city, a Neolithic population center on the edges of the “Fertile Crescent” region which grows to about ten thousand inhabitants. The settlement remains organized along hunter-gatherer lines, with no social stratification, civic cult, or record-keeping.
    • A malevolent goddess, the second Great Enemy, enters the mortal world, remaining hidden, spying out the state of the world. She becomes disgusted with the “crowding and swarming” of humans, and seeks out ways to eradicate them through infectious disease.
  • About 5700 years before the present: Farming communities begin to spread slowly in all directions from the agricultural urheimat, possibly driven by the need to avoid crowding and disease. While they migrate across the Great Lands, these farmers intermarry with and displace the original hunter-gatherer peoples.
  • About 5400 years before the present: A large landslide takes place adjacent to the northern seas, causing a massive tsunami. The last remnants of the “low country” are overwhelmed, and the Northern Islands are cut off from the continental mainland.
  • About 4900 years before the present: The first great pseudo-city collapses, wracked by disease and social upheaval. The collapse accelerates the spread of Neolithic technologies and society across the Great Lands, as farmers seek to spread out and bring more land under intensive cultivation.
  • About 4200 years before the present: Neolithic peoples have reached the far northwest of the Great Lands, and the coasts of the western sea. Farming expansion pauses for about a thousand years.
  • About 3700 years before the present: With the aid of the Smith-folk, a small population of Neolithic farmers in the central Great Lands develops bronze metallurgy. The technology is jealously guarded and fails to spread.
  • About 3200 years before the present:
    • Human farming societies cross the strait to settle in the Northern Islands, also spreading into far northern regions. The Great Lands are now dominated by farming communities, although the older hunter-gatherer populations still survive in reclusive enclaves. The Smith-folk thrive in this environment, setting up small communities and bands of itinerant craftsmen, offering technical services and maintaining long-distance trade networks.
    • Just as farmers come to dominate the Great Lands, the second Great Enemy reveals herself, openly seeking to do away with humans and return to the world to its “natural” state. Her first gambit is to encourage a series of plagues in the Neolithic populations, decimating many communities. Human populations throughout the Great Lands remain depressed for centuries afterward.
    • The incipient Bronze Age society in the central Great Lands is a victim of the Great Enemy’s activity. Bronze metallurgy is lost for several centuries before being reinvented in the “Fertile Crescent” region.
    • A large contingent of the Elders departs the divine plane to pursue the malevolent goddess, resulting in several centuries of warfare in the northwestern region of the Great Lands. The Elders recruit Neolithic-level humans as adjuncts in their war, sometimes as soldiers, more often as serfs who can raise food and supplies for the war effort. Humans still benefit from the relationship, learning a great deal from the Elders and coming to speak a pidgin version of their language.
  • About 2700 years before the present: Humans in the Fertile Crescent analog develop Bronze Age metallurgy, with some help from local Smith-folk communities. First development of true civilization (intensive agriculture, record-keeping, social stratification, organized religious cult, cities). Bronze Age technologies begin to spread across the Great Lands.
  • About 2600 years before the present:
    • The war ends with another intervention of the benevolent gods, who deliver a final defeat to the second Great Enemy. Some of the Enemy’s lieutenants (minor gods and demigods) escape the defeat and hide in the mortal world for centuries to come. One comes to lurk among the nascent civilizations of the Fertile Crescent analog.
    • With the enemy defeated, most of the surviving Elders return to the divine plane, although a small remnant population remains in the Great Lands for many centuries.
    • The human societies who directly aided the Elders in their war are rewarded with the opportunity to migrate to a very hospitable minor continent amid the western sea. There, they develop their own civilization based upon all they have learned from the Elders and the benevolent gods.
  • About 2500 years before the present: In the wide plains east of the Great Lands, a human pastoral culture domesticates the horse. This development gives these humans an advantage over their neighbors, and they begin to spread more widely.
  • About 1600 years before the present: Another of the malevolent gods (the third Great Enemy) begins to actively interfere in the development of human civilizations in the “Fertile Crescent” region. This deity is more subtle than his predecessors, seeking to manipulate humans and rule them rather than eradicate them. His activities provoke no obvious response from the divine plane for many centuries.
  • About 1500 years before the present:
    • First Bronze Age societies appear in the northwestern region of the Great Lands, and in the Northern Isles.
    • The first ships from the mid-ocean civilization begin to visit the Great Lands, although they make no permanent settlements and never remain for long. Contact with the Bronze Age tribes of the region is friendly and mutually beneficial.
    • The first human empire is established in the “Fertile Crescent” region, with the third Great Enemy lurking in the shadows behind the human kings.
  • About 1200 years before the present: The horse-breeding people in the plains east of the Great Lands develop a new set of technologies, including the spoke-wheel chariot and the composite bow. These Chariot People discover they have an immense military advantage over their neighbors, and their society becomes structured to exploit that advantage. They begin a centuries-long process of moving into new regions, taking over as a warrior elite, then imposing their language and customs on the prior farming societies they have conquered.
  • Present Day:
    • The peoples of the Great Lands, especially those in the “cradle of civilization” regions, have made the transition to an Iron Age technology. Only in a few very peripheral areas are some people still lingering at a Bronze Age (or Neolithic) level.
    • The Chariot People have invaded and infiltrated as far as the Northern Isles, and have come to dominate the Great Lands. Krava’s people are among these later arrivals, resembling early Celts (Halstatt culture).
    • The third Great Enemy remains hidden, slowly building up the power of the human empires under his sway.
    • The mid-ocean civilization is the great power of the world, sailing all around the planet, trading with everyone they find. In recent centuries they have contacted the Sea-folk and have done much to spread the “little people” all over the planet. Unfortunately, they have also gotten a taste for power, and their relationships with other cultures are becoming less gentle or benevolent.

Okay, with that I’m ready to start working on a revised version of the map, focusing on the “Great Lands” regions. If get really ambitious, I may use that map to construct a variant board for a tabletop game that I can use to generate the history in a bit more fine-grained detail. With any luck, that will help me envision Krava’s world more fully, so I can get that novel unblocked. More to come.

The Curse of Steel: Some Background Notes

The Curse of Steel: Some Background Notes

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The setting for The Curse of Steel is a region whose name will translate as The Great Lands (the constructed-language word is probably something like Mortalani). This is a region roughly analogous to western Europe (or north-western Middle-earth, if I’m being honest) which has just about completed its transition to the Iron Age.

The primary inspirations here are Tolkien’s legendarium, and the fantasy of another British author: Michael Scott Rohan. From Tolkien will come the general shape of the world map, and a few pieces of back story. From Rohan will come a more Darwinian approach, in which the divine powers aren’t all so benevolent to humans, and societies are rooted in the long prehistory of a world that wasn’t created for their benefit.

The Peoples

At present I have five “races” (more accurately, hominid subspecies) in mind for this setting.

Elders

The Elders are a very ancient population, ancestral to all the others. Think of these as highly evolved and sophisticated homo erectus.

Elders tend to be shorter and more gracile than humans, but they are strong and quick for their size, and are immune to aging or disease. They are not by nature more intelligent than humans, but they have many ages of traditional wisdom to draw upon, and they have considerable natural talent with magic. Their natural lifestyle is that of intensive hunter-gatherers. When they have the opportunity, they will sometimes maintain small sedentary communities in order to practice more advanced arts and crafts.

The Elders are almost extinct in the mortal world. Most of them departed from the world long ago, to live in the divine sphere with the benevolent gods. Some return from time to time on specific errands, always apparently arriving by sea, so individual Elders and even small groups are sometimes seen.

Smith-folk

The Smith-folk are about as tall as humans, but they are stocky and extremely strong. Think of these as resembling homo neanderthalensis, although with better manual dexterity and more advanced material culture.

The Smith-folk learned advanced crafts from the Elders in ages past and are now known as the best stone-workers, wood-workers, and metal-smiths in the world. They are very clannish and insular. They tend to live in small communities within reach of agricultural society, where they can trade their craft-work for food. When that doesn’t work out, they will often revert to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle (or turn to brigandage).

Sea-folk

The Sea-folk are small hominids, about half the size of humans, not very strong but quick and nimble.  Think of them as homo floriensis who have taken to more advanced tools.

Sea-folk originally evolved on a chain of islands far away on the other side of the world, where they followed an intensive hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Centuries ago they encountered human sea-farers, and took to that life with great enthusiasm, making themselves so useful that every sea-captain sought them out. Today, they can be found in coastal communities everywhere.

Sea-folk are very gregarious, curious and imitative, good at picking up languages and mimicking local customs. They are superb sailors and fishermen, but are also known as thieves and rogues.

Humans

Humans are the default population from which my protagonist and most of her peers and rivals come. They are biologically and sociologically identical to homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans from Earth. They are the most diverse of the peoples of the world, following many lifestyles and living at a wide range of levels of technology.

In ages past, some human populations interacted with the Elders and learned a great deal from them. Transplanted to a minor continent amid the Western Sea, these were among the first to develop an advanced civilization. Today they are great sea-farers, traveling all over the world to trade with the peoples they find. In the Great Lands, they have begun to establish permanent settlements on the coasts, and their relationship with the indigenous peoples is turning greedy and exploitative.

Other humans developed civilization independently and are beginning to establish large empires of their own, but these have generally fallen under the domination of cruel and greedy gods. My protagonist is from a more “barbarian” culture, technically advanced but still at a tribal level of organization. Most human societies in the area where the story takes place are blended from ancient hunter-gathers, farmers who moved into the area in more recent millennia, and a warrior elite who arrived even more recently with their distinctive customs, language, and military technology.

Beast-folk

Beast-folk are the “youngest” of the major hominid subspecies, bred by malevolent gods in the last few thousand years. They have no close analogue in our own prehistory.

Beast-folk were bred to be carnivorous pastoralists, living on herds of horses and cattle on the broad plains east of the Great Lands. They’re also not above eating members of the other four subspecies when opportunity arises. They are larger and stronger than the other peoples, and raised from birth as warriors. They don’t make particularly good soldiers, since their logistical requirements don’t allow them to form large armies. On the other hand, they make excellent raiders and shock troopers.

Beast-folk were created to be destroyers of civilizations, and many of them remain hostile to all outsiders, feared and hated. They are somewhat variable, however; some beast-folk are less necessarily hostile, and a few have even assimilated into human societies.

Final Notes on “Races”

Yes, if you tilt your head and squint, you end up with “elves,” “dwarves,” “hobbits,” “men,” and “orcs,” but I’m hoping to play those themes in a different key, as it were.

One note: when it comes to who can interbreed with whom, humans and the Smith-folk are the ones who have been known to intermarry, while the Elders and the Sea-folk are more biologically distinctive. No one is quite sure whether the Beast-folk can interbreed with any of the others; no one really wants to make the experiment.

Villains

The stories I have in mind are likely to have a variety of villains and conflict-sources. Given that I’m aiming for a pulpy, Conanesque feel, there should be plenty of corrupt kings and evil wizards to go around. On the other hand, the big, world-shaking villains are all going to be gods.

Most spirits and gods are benevolent – or at least not interested in interfering with the mortal world. Occasionally one of the gods decides to be malevolent, emerging onto the mortal plane to pursue their own goals, actively interested in killing, tormenting, or just ruling mortals. The Elders call these malevolent beings the Great Enemies. So far in history there have been three of these:

  • The most powerful of the Great Enemies, a god of deep cold and ice. He fought to preserve the mortal world as a place of quiet, austere beauty, free of the “corruption” of sentient life. Held sway for many thousands, if not millions of years, and was only defeated by the direct engagement of more benevolent gods.
  • A goddess of disease and pestilence, who thought of herself as a champion of the natural world. She sought to protect forests and animal life around the world by using virulent plagues to eradicate sentient life. Opposed by the Elders, and eventually by a brief period of divine intervention.
  • A god of fire, iron, and warfare, who seeks not to eliminate sentient life, but to rule it “for its own good.” Currently active in the world in the present day, not apparently opposed by the Elders or by the benevolent gods.

Okay, that’s a taste of the backdrop. Next time, some notes on the initial draft timeline for the setting. Then I’m going to start working on a new version of the map, which I may also use to set up a worldbuilding-by-simulation exercise to develop the timeline in more detail. More to come over the next few days.

Thinking about Danassos

Thinking about Danassos

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More forward progress on the rough draft of Twice-Crowned. As of this morning I’ve got just over 17 kilowords down.

I’ve been going back to the beginning of the story, to set up Alexandra’s situation and the reason why she has to flee from her home city to Athens. I think the first section of the novel is going to take place all in a single day, beginning with Alexandra about to succeed to her mother’s throne, and ending with her fleeing for her life with a single companion.

I’m still evolving my novel-writing technique. Decades of being a failed novelist have shown me several approaches that don’t work, at least not for me. Now I think I’m getting somewhere with the strategy of just dumping scenes and bits of business onto the page, with the assumption that I’ll whip the results into a coherent story later. When I work from extensive outlines and world-building notes, I tend to over-think everything.

One result of this strategy is that I don’t always see potential conflicts and themes until I’m already in the middle of them. That seems to be happening here. A bit of explanation may be in order.

This story has always been driven by the idea of writing a “return of the true king” tale, while turning the usual trope on its head. My protagonist is a very young woman who would be pretty helpless in a battle. She has to think her way through situations, calling upon her mental and magical talents, instead of just charging forward with a big shiny sword.

So, how do I get a story set in Classical Hellas, in which a woman has any chance of being a ruling monarch? I mean, that did happen once in a great while – we have the example of Queen Artemisia of Karia – but it was extremely rare.

I did it by setting up an alternate history, based on some of the more sensational interpretations of Bronze Age Greece. It’s not clear whether Minoan Crete or the pre-Greek societies of mainland Hellas were ruled by women, and it’s not very likely. Still, if you go with Robert Graves or Riane Eisler, those societies were probably more gender-egalitarian than the Hellenic culture that followed them. (Admittedly, this would not be at all difficult.) So let’s arrange for a survival of pre-Greek civilization into the Classical era. As I’ve documented elsewhere, what I ended up with was a city founded at the end of the Bronze Age by Minoan refugees, at the site of what we know as Syracuse. Although this city (Danassos) eventually became more or less Hellenic in culture, it remains the most gender-egalitarian society in the Greek world, and it tends toward female rulers.

Meanwhile, Robert Graves gave me one possible model for how a pseudo-Hellenic society might manage female rulership. That’s the idea of a “year-king,” in which the ruling queen selects a different male partner each year. That way, no one man could dominate, and the queen could keep various factions among the people in line by favoring one, then another. At least it might work that way in theory. No doubt, in practice, the system would tend to break down whenever a particularly ambitious year-king came along. Mary Renault’s novel The King Must Die, which is based heavily on Gravesian speculation, does a good job of showing us how such a system might fail.

There’s even some precedent in real-world Greek political structures. In Athens, for example, there was the office of the archon basileus (the “king archon”) who was elected or appointed each year. The archon basileus didn’t have that much of a role in actually governing the city, but he (and his wife) took care of some of the religious duties that had once been carried out by the kings.

So in Danassos, at least in Alexandra’s time, there is a ruling Queen who is essentially a constitutional monarch. She is the foremost religious and legal authority in the city, she has an important role in forming foreign policy, and she presides over meetings of the democratic assembly. Each year, at the spring equinox, she selects a new year-king; no man is permitted to serve more than once. The kingship doesn’t carry a lot of authority, but it’s considered a great honor, especially if the partnership results in the birth of a new member of the dynasty. Meanwhile, the city’s other administrative and military offices are filled by some combination of royal appointment, selection by lot, and democratic election. The whole structure is probably rather baroque; most Greek city-states had pretty complex systems of government.

At the beginning of the story, Alexandra is just days away from becoming the new Queen of Danassos, with all that implies.

So far, so good. It occurred to me, though, that in the real world this kind of monarchy would have rather unsettling implications. Just how does the Queen of Danassos select a king each year? She probably has lots of political implications to think about. Does she select a man from this faction or that one? Which candidate will do the most to support her rule and defend the city from its enemies? What if the best candidate for the city is a man she finds personally repugnant? What if a given Queen just isn’t all that fond of men in the first place? Does the Queen ever get a chance to pick a candidate just because she is attracted to him, or because she loves him? And even if she does, it’s just for a year, and she has to give him up at the next spring equinox.

Are the Queens of Danassos the most powerful women in the Hellenic world, or are they the most expensive prostitutes?

I’m going to have to think about that, while I keep working on the rough draft. There’s some good conflict there, and good potential for character development for my protagonist. There are also a lot of land-mines I’ll have to watch out for.