Greater Game - User contributions [en-ca]

The Adversaries

2021-02-21T17:57:22Z

Trafalgar: Created page with "The Adversaries are a linguistic species. The Adversaries have many languages and call themselves many things, none of which mean "Adversary." "Adversary" is a English transla..."

The Adversaries are a linguistic species. The Adversaries have many languages and call themselves many things, none of which mean "Adversary." "Adversary" is a English translation of a theme common to exonyms referring to them.

They are of a size to be able to control a sustainable campfire, so comparable to a human. They communicate with speech and make and use tools. They are very clever. They have culture - both their cultures and languages vary widely. They tend to live in families of related individuals, and to favour kin. They are usually observed to be omnivorous.

All Adversaries have a drive to work to see themselves and present themselves as good, and a majority try and be good by their own lights. These tendencies serve to make them highly effective and coordinated social animals, which makes them very dangerous in groups. They can work very well together.

However, they have developed a unique evolutionary adaptation to allow them to square the behaviours that drive trust and cooperation in a social setting with the ability to be breathtakingly self-serving and savagely cruel, especially to members of out groups, and to ravage the natural world with casual indifference.

The Adversaries are divided into a dizzying array of intersecting social groups, the most basic being the family or the village. These groups are held together their weak grasp on reality and tendency to believe in a shared, made-up reality, instead. Fealty to these counterfactual beliefs, frequently expressed through rituals and sacrifices and as well more subtly in destructive or obstruent behaviours that make sense only in light of these beliefs serve as their chief unifying glue as well as part of the fabric that divides in groups and out groups

The tendency to live an alternative reality of their own making would be maladaptive, you would think, and it actually is to a real extent, but the ability to square real loyalty and social cohesion with objectively sociopathic behaviours gives them a unique advantage, especially in the short term, which is about the only term they really care about.

Manipulating these belief systems can be used by individuals to both drive united action and promote division, based on their goals.

The Adversaries show a lot of variation, and there are two types of individuals who crop up at random in every community who are of note. There are those with an unusually firm grip on reality who are basically socially disabled, but are also very key to the Adversaries' ability to materially advance beyond their current dreamworlds. That sounds good, but they serve to make the Adversaries more dangerous over time, despite themselves having a precarious survival rate. Then there are the legitimate sociopaths who lack the instinct to try and be good by their own lights, who are completely free to cynically manipulate. Such individuals usually naturally gravitate to positions of power in their societies.

Adversaries live in morbid fear of attack by other groups of Adversaries, and live by the principle that a good offence is a good defense. Intercommunal conflict is endemic absolutely anywhere you find a big enough Adversary population to form more than one community.

The Adversaries are not found everywhere on this world - thank heavens. But they have a significant enough presence to be known to many other species. Although they are not always perceived as terrible and don't always act in a terrible way, they are often loathed and feared, or at least perceived as a source of trouble. At minimum they are major pests.

The Adversaries have a lot of stories to explain their origins, and other aspects of their world. A popular theme is the idea that they came to this world from elsewhere, although there are also many stories about being made by the gods in this world. The truth of their origins has not been established.

Creatures

2021-02-21T17:57:13Z

Trafalgar:

* [[Rikogyujin]]
* [[Kuran'ashi]]
* [[Spectral Moose]]
* [[Phil]]
* [[The Adversaries]]

Spectral Moose

2021-02-21T17:53:26Z

Trafalgar: Created page with "Throughout the temperate forests and wetlands of the largest continental mass can be found the Spectral Moose, called many things in the languages of sentient beings who live..."

Throughout the temperate forests and wetlands of the largest continental mass can be found the Spectral Moose, called many things in the languages of sentient beings who live in its range, but feared by all.

The Spectral Moose in many ways closely resembles the moose of Earth and biologically are in fact a closely related species, a fact that would immediately stand out to a visitor from Earth but which is completely lost on the people of our world, who only appreciate that the Spectral Moose is a uniquely alien creature from their perspective.

A bull moose stands about 2.5 m tall at the shoulder and weighs anywhere from 600-1000 kg. It has jet black fur, glowing red forward-facing eyes, and razor-sharp hooves and antlers, as well as a mixed omnivorous dentition featuring signature 2 cm long fangs. The antlers can have a spread of over 2 m. The female is somewhat smaller in stature, weighing 450-800 kg and lacking the characteristic antlers of the male. However, they fully share the males' vicious and bloodthirsty disposition and sharp cunning.

The Spectral Moose's glowing red eyes allow it to see into the infrared, greatly assisting its nocturnal lifestyle. The eyes also channel the moose's psychokinetic powers, which it uses to dominate the weaker minds of its prey. The prey of the moose can in fact include plants, which sounds like herbivory, but the word "prey" is used advisedly. The moose also has a kind of "future vision," allowing it to have visions of its future and that of entities around it when it chooses to "look" (it doesn't just automatically know everything, meaning it is possible to sneak up on a Spectral Moose, but just barely).

Spectral Moose are relatively solitary creatures who normally only congregate during mating season. They are sentient beings and wickedly intelligent, although they don't use language. Many moose hunters have a superstitious belief that the moose can understand the speech of other species and take care not to be overheard on the hunt, instead relying on hand signals.

The Spectral Moose are hunted by other species despite the extreme danger of doing so because the parts of the moose have a number of unique uses. The hemoglobin in the blood preferentially concentrates aetherial iron, meaning that the blood is particularly useful for aetheric applications, especially that of older individuals. When the thrown into the fire and allowed to crack, like the classic divinatory technique, the bones grant actual visions of the future. The meat is delicious, and the antlers look very handsome mounted on a wall, and are said to grant invulnerability to the home from enemy attacks.

Spectral Moose have souls, and hunting parties always bring along an exorcist, because the moose's last line of defense is that its ghost is exceptionally vindictive, and will remain bound to the world by its thirst for revenge until it has destroyed the life of its killer(s). As strongly magical beings in life, a Moose Spectre has an unusually large ability to continue to affect the world, continuing to have its ability to see the future and dominate weaker minds, and gaining a larger than usual telekinetic ability as well.

The challenge for the exorcist is to drive the spectre into a rift against its will. The Spectral Moose can perceive rifts, and unlike other animals tend to avoid them just to counter this move, since haunting their killers to death is an important part of their evolutionary defences.

All in all, if you should be so fortunate as to see this majestic forest denizen in person, run away as fast as you can and pray the moose has fed recently.

Creatures

2021-02-21T17:53:17Z

Trafalgar:

* [[Rikogyujin]]
* [[Kuran'ashi]]
* [[Spectral Moose]]
* [[Phil]]
* [[The Adversdaries]]

Creatures

2021-02-21T17:51:50Z

Trafalgar:

* [[Rikogyujin]]
* [[Kuran'ashi]]
* [[Spectral moose]]
* [[Phil]]
* [[The Adversdaries]]

Creatures

2021-02-21T17:51:16Z

Trafalgar:

* [[Rikogyujin]]
* [[Kuran'ashi]]
* [[Spectral Moose]]
* [[Phil]]
* [[The Adversdaries]]

Creatures

2021-02-21T17:51:04Z

Trafalgar:

* [[Rikogyujin]]
* [[Kuran'ashi]]
* [[Spectral moose]]
* [[Phil]]
* [[The Adversdaries]]

The Forerunners

2021-02-21T17:50:07Z

Trafalgar: Created page with "Twenty million years ago, a highly technologically advanced global civilisation was was found over the entire planet. It arose, thrived and died in a geological eyeblink. It s..."

Twenty million years ago, a highly technologically advanced global civilisation was was found over the entire planet. It arose, thrived and died in a geological eyeblink. It seems to have been dominated by a single intelligent species, but the move that established the Forerunners took no position as to whether their descendants are still found in some form or are extinct. These people are just called the Forerunners for the purpose of the move.

A few very old and very mad ghosts that no wizard, priest or shaman has been able to successfully communicate with and which seem to be closely tied to Forerunner sites may be associated with the Forerunners - or not.

Some thinkers have speculated that what would be left of humanity for future intelligent beings to find if we were to suddenly disappear would be virtually undetectable after a mere million years, let alone twenty. That is somewhat true, in this case, as well. But these beings left a deep impression on the planet, and it is possible for the world's modern denizens to deduce meaningful things about this important fact of the world's history. They may or may not have done so to some degree.

The Forerunners had an internal mineralised skeleton. They buried their dead, often in containers that were very good at sealing out the elements, and were so numerous at one time that they left plentiful fossils all over the planet in that 20 million year old stratum. Fossils of the Forerunners have even been inadvertently found through processes like weathering of cliffs, such that modern peoples the world over have stories to explain them.

The Forerunners built enormous structures, including out of materials that are not currently abundant on the planet. Some traces of these structures can be found preserved even twenty million years later. The exact circumstances needed to preserve Forerunner structures and technology in some form were rare, but the Forerunners were so ubiquitous that these traces are nevertheless not incredibly hard to find, especially if you're looking for them.

The Forerunners left a few, rare surviving inscriptions in several languages, although one particular language can be found practically anywhere on the planet and others seem to be more localised. The scripts themselves are markedly varied.

High aetheric activity is often associated with Forerunner sites. They appear to have pracised magic and highly advanced aetherics.

Impacts the Forerunners left on the world for those who know how to look:

The time of their appearance is associated with a rapid spike in carbon dioxide levels and an attendant spike in global temperatures.

A massive change in the distribution of plant and animal species is associated with the time they appear in the fossil record. Thousands of species abruptly disappear, and other species that were previously geographically isolated suddenly appear planet-wide in a geological eyeblink. As well, many species appear to radically change precisely when the Forerunners walked the planet, and some species first appear in the fossil record as if out of nowhere at this time. These sudden appearances continue to occur, albeit at a lesser frequency, in the time after the Forerunners disappeared.

An important Forerunner legacy is their massive landfills filled with their trash that they left behind, some of which have made it through geological time as literally fossilised garbage, yielding a wealth of information about the Forerunners.

There is also a thin layer of radioactive isotopes that appears in rock strata planetwide closely associated with the Forerunner period.

Because of this civilisation's adeptness with high technology and magic, it cannot be discounted that even after these forsaken eons, a few Forerunner sites, artifacts and inscriptions may still be very powerful and dangerous.

Archeology, Paleontology and Prehistory

2021-02-21T17:45:55Z

Trafalgar: Created page with "This section described aspects of the historic past of our world which may have impacts on the present world we see today. * The Forerunners - An ancient, global civilisa..."

This section described aspects of the historic past of our world which may have impacts on the present world we see today.

* [[The Forerunners]] - An ancient, global civilisation that fell millions of years ago but leaves detectable traces, especially int he natural history and distributions of other species.

Main Page

2021-02-21T17:44:07Z

Trafalgar:

'''In-Universe:'''
* [[Notions]]
* [[Phenomena]]
* [[Terminology]]
* [[Creatures]]
* [[Natural History]]
* [[Supernatural History]]
* [[Archeology, Paleontology and Prehistory]]

'''Out-of-Universe:'''
* [[Themes]]
* [[Moves]]
* [[Clarifications]]

Nature of Death

2021-02-21T17:39:41Z

Trafalgar:

Different species and societies believe a lot of things about what happens when the sentient creatures of this world die, but this is the real deal. The truth of this matter is knowable by those who command the power of magic, and most societies have gleaned at least some of it, and so you will see some commonalities around funerary customs because of it.

Living beings have souls. Beings we would recognise as intelligent ''definitely'' have souls, and lot of beings we might not see as intelligent have souls, too, actually.

Terminology for this move is be English, with culture-specific terms as something for later moves. "Soul" refers to that spiritual essence of a being that persists after death. It is capable of thinking, feeling, and wanting things independent of a living body, and it has some limited ability to communicate and impact the world independent of a living body, especially when interacting with certain magical beings or if it had magical power itself in life.
When a being with a soul dies, the soul becomes a "ghost." The ghost remains in this world. Remaining in this world causes it pain. It longs at a deep level to leave. It can only leave through special places which it can perceive like glowing cracks in the world. These are "rifts." The nature of the rift and what if anything lies beyond it is outside has not been specified. The ghost doesn't know, it just knows it longs to pass through. It sees the rift as somehow beautiful and holy, and living beings that can perceive rifts also feel a sense of sanctity around them. Many have deduced something of their relationship to the dead.

The dead may long to pass over, and they feel pain by remaining in the world, but if they have powerful attachments to the world for some reason that they struggle to let go of, they can linger for quite a while. Nothing is forcing them to leave. Therefore, this world is haunted, especially by the recently dead.

The rifts have fixed locations which form places that even the unsensed can feel as sacred or powerful somehow. It is common for religions to place their holy places there. It is also not uncommon for this to become a form of religious extortion, because a religion can control all the places in the area where the dead can cross over and control the access of the dead to those places. A temple can be enchanted to prevent a ghost from entering without some part of their corpse, and a temple funeral can be key to peacefully passing over - it can also imprison a ghost in the temple until it passes over.

Knowledge and control of the rifts let a society both serve and manage the dead, and the living. A person and their family could be punished by killing them and not permitting the rituals that give their ghost access to the sacred places of their people to cross over. The ghost could try leaving the territory controlled by the religion to find a free rift, but they probably believed in life that they had to cross over in a temple to be saved. If the society is enlightened enough to leave some rifts for animal souls to cross over, then the criminals could use them, too, but they might be too attached to their living beliefs to accept that humiliation...

Nature of Death

2021-02-21T17:34:09Z

Trafalgar:

Different species and societies believe a lot of things about what happens when the sentient creatures of this world die, but this is the real deal. The truth of this matter is knowable by those who command the power of magic, and most societies have gleaned at least some of it, and so you will see some commonalities around funerary customs because of it.

Living beings have souls. Beings we would recognise as intelligent ''definitely'' have souls, and lot of beings we might not see as intelligent have souls, too, actually, and this move doesn't draw a crisp line, it only says the line is out there and it's pretty inclusive.

Terminology for this move will be English, with culture-specific terms as something for later moves. "Soul" refers to that spiritual essence of a being that persists after death. It is capable of thinking, feeling, and wanting things independent of a living body, and it has some limited ability to communicate and impact the world independent of a living body, especially when interacting with certain magical beings or if it had magical power itself in life.
I am concerned about what happens to the souls of the dead immediately after they die. They become what I will call a ghost. The ghost remains in this world. Remaining in this world causes it pain. It longs at a deep level to leave. It can only leave through special places which it can perceive like glowing cracks in the world. I'll call them "rifts." The nature of the rift and what if anything lies beyond it is outside the scope of this move. The ghost doesn't know, it just knows it longs to pass through. It sees the rift as somehow beautiful and holy, and living beings that can perceive rifts also feel a sense of sanctity around them. Many have deduced something of their relationship to the dead.

The dead may long to pass over, and they feel pain by remaining in the world, but if they have powerful attachments to the world for some reason that they struggle to let go of, they can linger for quite a while. Nothing is forcing them to leave. Therefore, this world is haunted, especially by the recently dead.

The rifts have fixed locations which form places that even the unsensed can feel as sacred or powerful somehow. It is common for religions to place their holy places there. It is also not uncommon for this to become a form of religious extortion, because a religion can control all the places in the area where the dead can cross over and control the access of the dead to those places. A temple can be enchanted to prevent a ghost from entering without some part of their corpse, and a temple funeral can be key to peacefully passing over - it can also imprison a ghost in the temple until it passes over.
Knowledge and control of the rifts let a society both serve and manage the dead, and the living. A person and their family could be punished by killing them and not permitting the rituals that give their ghost access to the sacred places of their people to cross over. The ghost could try leaving the territory controlled by the religion to find a free rift, but they probably believed in life that they had to cross over in a temple to be saved. If the society is enlightened enough to leave some rifts for animal souls to cross over, then the criminals could use them, too, but they might be too attached to their living beliefs to accept that humiliation...

Nature of Death

2021-02-21T17:33:40Z

Trafalgar: Created page with "Different species and societies believe a lot of things about what happens when the sentient creatures of this world die, but this is the real deal. The truth of this matter i..."

Different species and societies believe a lot of things about what happens when the sentient creatures of this world die, but this is the real deal. The truth of this matter is knowable by those who command the power of magic, and most societies have gleaned at least some of it, and so you will see some commonalities around funerary customs because of it.

Living beings have souls. Beings we would recognise as intelligent *definitely* have souls, and lot of beings we might not see as intelligent have souls, too, actually, and this move doesn't draw a crisp line, it only says the line is out there and it's pretty inclusive.

Terminology for this move will be English, with culture-specific terms as something for later moves. "Soul" refers to that spiritual essence of a being that persists after death. It is capable of thinking, feeling, and wanting things independent of a living body, and it has some limited ability to communicate and impact the world independent of a living body, especially when interacting with certain magical beings or if it had magical power itself in life.
I am concerned about what happens to the souls of the dead immediately after they die. They become what I will call a ghost. The ghost remains in this world. Remaining in this world causes it pain. It longs at a deep level to leave. It can only leave through special places which it can perceive like glowing cracks in the world. I'll call them "rifts." The nature of the rift and what if anything lies beyond it is outside the scope of this move. The ghost doesn't know, it just knows it longs to pass through. It sees the rift as somehow beautiful and holy, and living beings that can perceive rifts also feel a sense of sanctity around them. Many have deduced something of their relationship to the dead.

The dead may long to pass over, and they feel pain by remaining in the world, but if they have powerful attachments to the world for some reason that they struggle to let go of, they can linger for quite a while. Nothing is forcing them to leave. Therefore, this world is haunted, especially by the recently dead.

The rifts have fixed locations which form places that even the unsensed can feel as sacred or powerful somehow. It is common for religions to place their holy places there. It is also not uncommon for this to become a form of religious extortion, because a religion can control all the places in the area where the dead can cross over and control the access of the dead to those places. A temple can be enchanted to prevent a ghost from entering without some part of their corpse, and a temple funeral can be key to peacefully passing over - it can also imprison a ghost in the temple until it passes over.
Knowledge and control of the rifts let a society both serve and manage the dead, and the living. A person and their family could be punished by killing them and not permitting the rituals that give their ghost access to the sacred places of their people to cross over. The ghost could try leaving the territory controlled by the religion to find a free rift, but they probably believed in life that they had to cross over in a temple to be saved. If the society is enlightened enough to leave some rifts for animal souls to cross over, then the criminals could use them, too, but they might be too attached to their living beliefs to accept that humiliation...

Supernatural History

2021-02-21T17:33:06Z

Trafalgar: Created page with "A listing of topics on the supernatural history of the world. * Nature of Death"

A listing of topics on the supernatural history of the world.

* [[Nature of Death]]

Main Page

2021-02-21T17:29:57Z

Trafalgar:

'''In-Universe:'''
* [[Notions]]
* [[Phenomena]]
* [[Terminology]]
* [[Creatures]]
* [[Natural History]]
* [[Supernatural History]]

'''Out-of-Universe:'''
* [[Themes]]
* [[Moves]]
* [[Clarifications]]