Never Should Have Been Built (GLoGtober 2023)

(Thanks to Locheil for the prompt and CatDragon for running GLoGtober this year)

Through the power of feng shui, warlords and pretenders have long sought to build new capitals in areas that are mystically unassailable. Attempts to storm them fail. Attempts to beseige them are stalled out. Obviously quite desirable.

By chance, the planned city of Rewokie is mystically indefensible. Any army, regardless of the size, can take the city. No stores and no walls (and indeed the City has its deep stores and high walls) suffice against any siege. Owing it its strategic position overlooking a river, to hold Rewokie in times of war is a military necessity. Historians count over a hundred battles fought in the fields around the city, for armies now battle to be the ones assailing it. "Holding Rewokie" is an idiom among the literate class for undertaking a task which is vital but easily disrupted. 

The administration of Rewokie is often given to ambitious generals, distrusted second sons, and wizards. Perversely, by commonly receiving standout governors and avoiding battles or seiges, the population of Rewokie has grown at a steady pace and it has become an ever more vital resource in the war machines of the generals of the land. Its fate is uncertain, for it is now whispered that underground monster freaks are surfacing ever more in this fallen age, and much hateful work could they do in the vulnerable city of Rewokie, only to hustle away by night with all the plunder they can carry, without a care for the military "necessity" of holding Rewokie.

Hubert Robert's "Fire in Rome"

Poetry in the World

I think people are pretty hungry for simple joys. We don't walk in the woods as often as we like, or eat a hunk of bread in flickering candlelight, or study the play of light on a stream, in a crystal, or in motes of dust in the air. We aren't hungry for woe and sorrow, but even those can affirm the meaningful and set our lives into focus compared to the cruel monotony that hums through work floors, grocery back rooms, kitchens not our own, and endless hallways in need of cleaning. 

Stories of adventure or horror or romance need these simple sensations to land. They need little beats of contemplation where the characters sing on the road or brush aside cobwebs or stare at a cluttered table while someone is away. Poetry can be helpful, but poetry is inane without a subject we can feel or sense. The way a sentiment like "she was tired from marching and the cheese tasted nice and the place by the fire was warm" is phrased may intensify the feeling if put well or weaken the feeling if put poorly, but even at its simplest these kinds of sentiments need their space in a story.

The sentiment does not need to be original. It does not need to be fresh. Bog-standard fantasy, say, is flush with the lush and lurid. It's easy to forget an old man with a long beard and pointed hat and stars-and-moons robe is a powerful image because it is familiar, but do not let it be forgotten. Put emotive intensity in the description, as though the sentiment was truly original! Have characters react to the strange! If all else fails, straight-up tell "the way he dresses is striking!" We are putting finite words into an infinite world and all performances are fleeting, ever-wearying. Editing is for now-right-now. 

Once you have the sentiment, give it action. The man's manner of dress is striking? He should say something striking, or light his pipe with an orc tooth. If you're on your game you can support the sentiment with second-order expressions. Maybe he expresses remorse that a more mundane character has been endangered by the otherworldly that the wizard represents. "I am sorry this has happened to you." How often do your characters seem unsure of themselves, or regretful or overconfident or melancholy? Maybe he's ashamed to be so weird?

So many stories are obsessed with what is happening in the moment. Between crises, we should have time to recall what happened last chapter, last session, last year. We should miss those who were lost and reflect on how we've changed.

So many stories are obsessed with what is happening in the moment. Between crises, we should have time to ponder what we will do once this current task is done. If we live long, how will we manage old age? What will we do with ourselves.

When the story is done, we should cherish the remainder. Study the book you just finished for a few minutes. Roleplaying games are great for this-- their ghosts lay across notebooks and sheets and maps, hopefully in sketches or little songs we wrote or in tables and generators waiting for new purpose.

Ask, for each story and each part:
What is beautiful?
What is strange?
What is missing?
What has changed?
What is meager?
What is great?
What is its evoked emotional state?

The Black Roads

1.  After the passing of generations, the center of life shall be smote and my people will be in confusion. Each man shall do what is right in his own eyes and the nations shall be in confusion.
2. And in this time a righteous man shall come to serve a wicked king, and I will anoint him in secret to lead his people in a new nation that I shall raise up greater than any, save the one I promise to you.
3. And I will prepare the land for this nation as I have prepared yours for your people.
4. In time, the land will grow prosperous, and become a nation of nations. They shall have no temple and no priest, only captains of law. And these captains shall commission the building of black roads between each town, such that two chariots may pass each other on the road.
5. The width of these roads will be twenty-five cubits or more, and the length shall be half a myriad of miles. Fires of nur, of fire, of amber, and smaragdine shall show the way to travelers, so no man must wander who is a stranger in one portion of the country. Each principality I will also make to mark the byways. Each marking shall be gold or silver, but shall not mix the gold with the silver, or the man who limns so will perish right away. Each marking of gold or silver shall be colored also with sable, scarlet, turqoise, and other bright colors.
6. The sacrifices that shall be offered to me shall be slaughtered in the black roads.
7. Daily they will sacrifice myriad rodents and many wild game, the young and old together, the quick and the slow together. These they will be allowed to eat or set astride the road for me; the flies shall tear the flesh away until it is gone forever.
8. On each day also I will send death to certain of the people on the black roads. I will bring quick catastrophe to them, and thereby seize their lives. These I will take undiscerning of age or standing, the wicked with the righteous, for the wicked I punish by cutting short their lives and the righteous I reward by sparing their living.
9. In these days, I will not reveal myself to priests. The priests of my family the kings Hezekiah and Josiah will have slain, and I will have receded many generations.
10. But I will speak to my Samyazazim, who partake of beer and are drunk, and ride long my black roads, unmoved by their hands yet trusting in mine.

Ten Fictional Modern Faiths

These are 

-Fictional in the sense that I made them up. No guarantee that others have not had the same idea before.
-Modern in that they are set in the real, contemporary world and no more supernatural or world-breaking than anything else is.
-Faiths in having customs or beliefs shared among a group, related to the divine. Many of these religions would be considered sects or denominations of nonfictional faiths.

Attention has been paid to tying these faiths to aspects of real-world histories and belief systems, and to their most notable aspects. This is to facilitate recognizability and ease of integration in play.

Serena Malyon

1. Elatenism, an Abrahamic faith that holds Biblical Moses and the Pharoah Akhenaten to be the same prophet of the sole god. Its temples and churches typically feature a brass or copper idol depicting God with a notably coptic inflection, and uses Passover as its new year. An early schism in its modern founding was led by its original leader from his own organization, leading to the creation of a more explicitly Christian branch based in Alexandria but drawing tithes primarily from Europe and the United States.
2. Khaganal Sinirism, a politically-involved faith associated with certain cultural groups in southwestern Russia. Though known externally for being the avowed faith of multiple attempted political assassins, Sirinist life is domestically notable for burying their dead in dried river beds, for complex traditions related to the interpretation of dreams, and for cryptic references to Buddhist meditation practices. The characteristic political cause of Sinirists seems to be advocation for strict term limits, which has earned reprisals not only from the current Russian governments but multiple neighboring states.
3. Arcadianism, a self-titled pagan faith with no formal structure. Acknowledges many deities but centralizes Pan, and mourns his death as a result of a cosmic struggle with Christ. This is notably marked by heavy drinking and ritual screaming on the first day of winter.  Distinguished from most forms of Paganism in that it ascribes notable power to Christian rites, and is denigrated by some pagans as "Self-hating Christianity." [Insert quip here]
4. Mathasian Negationism, which western theologians often sweep away as a dualistic form of Hinduism. Based in certain monasteries in the state of Karnataka in India, it boasts of clergy which are said not be alive at all. Upon rare occasion in which outsiders have been allowed to inspect these clergy, it has been observed that they speak, move languidly, and eat a kind of vegetable paste. To explain this, the Mathasians simply refer to historical precedent, and to the mercy of gods.
5. Kititulo No Teishutsu, a strident and nonliteral association of Lovecraftian Mythos, Babylonian spirits and deities, and traditional Shinto practices. Expressed in humanistic, optimistic, humble digital comics describing the fictive hierarchy of such beings. This faith without hierarchy beyond clout and appreciation for literary and artistic ability is intensely interested in the relationship between obscure deities while not stating outright that they literally exist. This plus a jocular tendency in writings, as well as essential texts lacking translations or lacking sufficient translations between Japanese, English, and Spanish render the faith ("KNT") opaque to all but the most interested.
6. Reformed Baalism, a self-styled "Abrahamic faith without Abraham." Bases its cosmology in the Baal Cycle and worships both Baal and the god of the Old Testament. Baalist apologia claims that Baalites described in ancient myth were slandered for commending miscarried children to their god, for family planning, and for martial virtue. Currently has no notable temporal community, but has successfully managed to lobby their way onto mainstream lists of Judeo-Christian faiths and denominations.
7. Gaiic Christianity, which hold the Earth to be the fourth part of the trinity quaternity, and that the crucifixion of Christ was to redeem Her-- "for God so loved the world." Tension currently exists among the Gaiic parishes along two axes. The first regards support or condemnation of a nonpartisan group that leans heavily on the suggestion that pollution is literally sacrilege, and that the vast majority of the world is damned to Hell for its complicity. The second is the strained relationship between church heads in Annaba and its bishops in Europe and Canada.
8. Koreshan Judaism, that holds Cyrus the Great to have been the final messiah, and that foretells his eventual return at the end of all things. Mystics of this faith tend to emphasize the tripartite phases of all things, and debate the cosmological significance of Cyrus's rebuilding the Temple. Koreshan temples are notable for political participation, endorsing candidates for secular office and issuing bulls on how its members should participate in their communities.
9. Tulayhawatism, which contends Muhammad to be the penultimate prophet, succeeded by Tulayha of the Banu Asad ibn Khuzaymah tribe. This faith reveres the Quran as well as the Atttestations of Tribes, an account of the occult teachings of Tulayha as well as a revisionist version of his relationship with the elder prophet. Based in Nahavand until the Iranian Revolution, the traditions of the original priesthood have split between separate followings in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan. Though these branches generally hold each other to be righteous, the values and rites upheld by each have slowly drifted out of sync.
10. Etilism, a Christian "heresy" known for its argument that the true role of Christians is not to make themselves more Christlike (impossible, bland) but to make Christ more human-like (achievable, based). This ranges from ceremonial litanies that exhort God to indulge in hedonistic vices to depicting Christ as a severe sinner or in the act of relieving himself. The Temptation of Christ is considered the holiest part of the new testament and Satan (though not Lucifer or the Devil) is said to be an angel of mercy.

Anomalous Media

 Okay, here's what I managed to find in my neighborhood. (See here, here, here, here, and here.)

1. The Chrioniad
An ancient epic in the Homeric style, dated to shortly after the Illiad. Describes the end of the Trojan War picking up from the burial of Hector. Most of the piece describes three battles in intricate detail, in which ten of the gods and several of the mortal characters are slain. Zeus survives and takes on the name Elos, and appoints the Trojan prince Abramon as the king of Troy after he sacrifices his son and thirteen bulls to Zeus. 

2. Appendix N Draft
An in-house draft of the appendices section of the original Dungeon Master's Guide, recovered in an office once run by TSR. The draft is typed onto loose sheets of hole-punched paper, with frequent editing notes in pencil. Most of the notes center around the first appendix, dedicated to a rather technical and rote dungeon generation procedure. There are two notes in Appendix N, "Inspirational and Educational Reading." The first, circling "Unaussprechlichen Kulten," reads "good joke, Gary." The second, circling a title and author now redacted, reads "This is NOT. We agreed not to even talk about this junk!!" The final appendix, listing different types of calendars and clocks, has a note recommending its total deletion.

3. Rumpelstiltskin
A low-quality video file, filmed on a handheld camera. The camera operator is filming a televison, showing sections of a independent horror film titled 'Rumpelstiltskin." The scene shown in an interview with the Rumpelstiltskin character, giving a rant that puts one in mind of Tyler Durden or 2019's Joker film. Sneering and breathing heavily, the camera operator carries the camera out of the living room which contains the television, climbing a carpeted staircase and opening a door to a bedroom. We see a man waking in his bed who resembles the interviewer in the film, obvious surprised. The operator begins to scream, which is quickly cut off as the camera is turned off.

4. Rayy Tablet
A partial fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh, describing the offenses of Gilgamesh as king before meeting Enkidu. In addition to wanton violence, he is described as having profaned a temple to Enlil with insufficient sacrifices (because they were crippled?), introspecting (?), waging war on the people "above" Ur and taking one of their "thirds" (?) as a wife. This tablet is the oldest version of the epic yet uncovered, dated to 3000 BCE.

5. Flight Footage
A silent, short clip taken on an early cell phone showing the view from an airplane window. The plane is sharply descending, and in the final frames is shown to collide with what is recognizably the US Capitol Building. 

6. FIVE AMAZING SHAPES (THE LAST WILL DRIVE YOU IN$ANE)
A Youtube video, twelve years old, will a little over 100,000 views. Features three disembodied voices discussing geometry and four-dimensional shapes, with frequent diversions and corny jokes. Despite explaining that it is impossible for humans to visualize four-dimensional shapes, the voices narrate as simple computer-generated graphics depict a series of such shapes, beginning with a hypercube. Despite the title and the inexplicable depictions, no viewer has exhibited any sign of serious harm from watching the video.

7. Magic Trix
Several shots of two boys, apparently related, performing minor illusions. Only one appears at a time, and the film seems to be shot in and around a small home in the mid-2000's. About two minutes into the seven minute video, the older boy declares "This magic is for babies. Let's see what a real wizard can do!" This leads into a section where slightly more advanced illusions, including those which can only be accomplished with simple video editing, take place. When the older boy performs a trick in this section, the camera notably shakes. When the younger boy performs a trick, he appears obviously reluctant, and the flourish is accompanied by full-body shivers. In one take, blood runs from his nose and he starts to ask the other boy a question-- "Can we please--"

8. Miranda
A complete manuscript of a novel discovered in the writing desk of a recently deceased Virginian politician in 1800. In an epistolary framing narrative, a classical scholar describes how he came to uncover an ancient account of a woman who lived in poverty during the time of the Roman Republic. Descriptions of the marble-shrined city in which she lives have been interpreted by a constitutional scholar as the inspiration for many of the landmarks and features of Washington, D.C.

9. Scan for Anomaly
An audio file of the 1969 moon landing on a collection of cassette tapes. When Armstrong or Aldrin speak while on the moon's surface, the soft sound of singing voices can be heard. The song performed has been identified as an adhan. There is a period of 40 seconds of silence shortly after Armstrong's famous "one small step" line.

10. Police Report: Forced Entry as St. John's Lodge 117
Records from the Hartford Police Department regarding an incident in November, 1976. The report includes a photograph of intricately painted letters on a wood-paneled wall: "BLAKE WAS FORTHRIGHT IN ALL HIS WRITINGS." In the report, Detective Alan Davis reports an alleged break-in of the Masonic Lodge by reporter Dierdre McOwens. She claims to have taken the photograph. Members of the lodge claim that she graffitied the message on their wall and that she has threatened them in the past.

GLoGtober #25: Myth

In accordance with the post-a-day challenge by SunderedWorldDM, whose dreams bore the Orbseeker and whose deeds send the world shuddering. 

The Death of Attai

Of the childhood of the prophet Attai, much is spoken. It is conceded that he was raised in the wet, hidden places in the north, Herbad or perhaps Kolaj-Denron. A shepherd was Attai, who trained kine in jumping and flight so that no beast would entrap them in its claws. It is said that Attai served well his duty, for in the earliest days he had failed a charge, and said to Rektrine that he should offer his own life in trade. To this, god said only that the fullness of his duty was yet to come. Five years passed, and his heifer died in birth, its child sickly and frail, itself dying that hour. Again Attai offered in trade his life, but the Justifier refused him. And when Attai became a man, his mother dead and his tears fresh fallen to the grass, he set out to travel through Selmat and was called the weeping prophet.

In that time the successors to Elijah had fallen to folly, and the wastelords ruled much of the byways and roads, for the lords of Holy Selmat had been prodigal in turning them. Attai the religious courts advised that they should spend the money that had been given to them to build thick strong walls, instead of the gold mosaic and baubles of their custom. But the prophet was not heeded, and the judge Hensiah told him this: “Who are you to command us so, we who are most high?” And Hensiah told the kings of Selmat to ignore the prophet Attai and his family, and provide them no succor, and the hearts of the kings were hardened, save Eliyahu of Apres and Corsum of Apres and the executor of Marit. 

And in three years the legions of the wastelords roiled, and broke upon the walls of Apres and broke upon the walls of Marit, but when they met with the forces of Luto they entered the city and put many to the sword, and there was a great wail heard throughout Holy Selmat. Weeping Attai came to Hensiah and said: ‘See now what you vanity brings to the people, Hensiah. Can a mosaic keep out an invader, or a bauble?” And the judge grew hot with anger, but his fear grew larger still, and he bowed before the prophet and said: “I hear you, oh voice of Rektrine the infertile, and admit my folly without reservation. What shall I command of my people?” And Attai grew still and wept no longer, though his despair abated not, and the prophet said “It would have been better to build strong the walls to protect us, but now ten times that cost have you incurred. Go out and form from the faithful an army, and I shall lead it to victory at Gath.”

And Hensiah agreed and left the prophet to fulfill his wishes, but he lacked conviction and as soon as he had done so he came to the wastelord Sozreman and said “This prophet has made a great deal of trouble for my people, who want only peace within their walls. Vouchsafe Birit and Ckem-Sudam and Nidhgon and Skarbor, and I shall confer on you the lands of my God elsewhere.”

So when Attai led his people out of the city, he was attacked, for Hensiah had shown the children of Sozreman where to find him, and convinced him to fight not at Gath. For three hours the wastelord’s men harried Attai, and a thousand Selmatis died in the first hour, a thousand in  the second, and a thousand in the third. Hensiah told Attai this: “Oh prophet who weeps for the death of a wren, your tears are fresh and fresh again for the men each who die this day yet need not. Your people are far fewer now, and it would be better to ask for peace, since we might live.”

The weeping prophet struck him a blow with his knife and said this: “What has the law to do with peace? It is for your account that death fats itself here. Go feed it.” And he rose again and in the second blow smote Hensiah the judge. Attai rode his chariot to where fighters fiercely gnashed, for each man was needed, and the loss of one may set the day to loss. But like a shepherd rode Attai, who shielded his people and led them on, so that Sozreman could not entrap them, and in the fourth hour the Selmati had prevailed over him and his people.

In time the armies of Attai swelled with the spears of the righteous, and like a cloth that strikes stain away he did battle with the wastelords on the byways of Holy Selmat. By Algol he defeated Kuruc. By Birit and Ckem-Sudam he defeated the Anevi Sursalai-Ta. By Shade-Sherat he defeated Talaiman and his brothers. At Gath he defeated Sozreman and Rugal and Retze and Yenzar and Jether. Everywhere he went the prophet wept for those slain in battle, but everywhere he went the prophet brought death like a hard-parted gift.

For five years Attai scoured the byways, until he sent out a missive to the priests of the wastelords, the servants of Iron and the naga kings and the twins Szel and Yetz and Sozreman. The prophet offered to Rektrine his own life in trade, that mercy may be bought them, but this could not be. Before Gath he invited them to a symposium space, and when they came he put them to the sword, he and his five sons striking with strength granted to them by the builder of souls. And when from fighting he emerged, Attai was covered from the top of his head to his knees in the blood of the priests, save those spaces besides his nose where the tears had kept clean his face.

And for some time Attai was blessed in the eyes of Rektrine, but he forswore his station. He practiced not the law of the god and instead returned to husbandry, selling his cattle on the days of the Sabbath as though it were any other, and smoking often from a pipe in an unscrupulous way. Attai who had been a prophet paid no tribute to any king or ruler, and offered only meagre offerings at the small shrine in his home. 

GLoGtober #11: Space

       In accordance with the post-a-day challenge by SunderedWorldDM, whose dreams bore the Orbseeker and whose deeds send the world shuddering. 

From the Microclass Compendium:

"Falling Rock- start with a shmuck and a sense of impending doom
A: possess a random humanoid in the general area of where you are destined to land. They are instantly the most knowledgable person in the world with regards to engineering and physics.
B: Convert any magic item your rube possesses into an anti-gravity item of equivalent power. Shit, this is taking too long.
C: Convert any cleared dungeon into a spelljammer craft.
D: Rocks fall, everybody dies."
-

The Falling Rock

The rushing stillness of a falling dream swept over my surface. I ran through eons, contemplating my own being and watching distant stars march like starch-stained ants along the gloom. But after a time, a time wider than a human mind, my attention was drawn along my inevitable trajectory to the planet Earth. It was, in cosmic terms, as close to me as the hair of a brush must be to transfer paint onto canvas. It was as close as an egg to the ground in the instant before it cracks. It was as close as one atom serenading its neighbor.

For a moment my mind blanked, then I filled it with formidable insight. Imagination called up the condemned Earth, cradled in my mind. Universal benevolence fixed my purpose. Final, incontrovertible will send the mind ahead, to touch the smallest spark along the surface where I would soon land.

The spark, which called itself such things as “man,” as “slave,” as “Irararum,” ignited into a long coil of ego between my form and the planet. I opened his eyes and saw only in the narrowest bands of light. I listened and heard only the nearest sounds. I stood, his clumsy form put for the first time to adroit use. Another human beside him stirred as I placed him outside his dwelling to look around.

An expanse of mud and stone, arrayed in human attempt at geometry and human attempt at homes. Where brute mules slept and insects crept, where widows wept and saviors stepped, the perfect stars shone, examples for bright law and unflawed right. Clinging to the planet’s surface, these creatures loved starlight but fell far short, pitiful and wretched.

I realized I loved this place and especially its people, and resolved to protect them from my arrival. The human who had slept at Irararum’s side stood in the doorway of the dwelling, and spoke to me as though I were him. I spoke only knowledge and light. This disquieted her, and I lent a sliver of my true countenance to this borrowed form, and when next I spoke she felt the truth as I clipped between the twenty basic concepts of existence. It was slow work in this form, but I needed someone to hold the light of knowledge who understood Earthen people.

I spoke only beauty until she could process it, then asked her of this world. It surprised me that she knew of the great sea under the Earth, the cope of Heaven, and other features obscured by metaphor. It surprised me also that she knew nothing of the physical form of stars, or of the world’s surface beyond her horizon.

We interceded before a human chief, called king of all that he saw, and I demonstrated my knowledge, cloaked in metaphor and petals of power to soothe and awe. I showed how the tenth step from their stumbled mystical arts may repel falling bodies, and how their charted path of stars may predict where I would fall. The king watched me with eyes called wise, with tired face accustomed to lies, and cracked into desperation when the full scope of doom, and of my words’ truth, was realized.

That morning (so much time wasted waiting for waking), work was waged to upraise a mechanism to upraise my earthbound form. The earthen man I inhabited was offered offices and servants to command, and each I set to task. I was unaccustomed to so few or so physical hands, and despite her mortal capability the woman I first met proved at least my equal in transmuting slaves and stones into structures and sweat.

I called substances from the ground, a dull-sheened rainbow waking along their roads in brazen reds, gunmetal greys, and luminous shades. I worked their forges to such heat that iron could be battered into form, bone crushed into the making to strengthen the thing to steel. I learned the tongues of the kings who met in moot to avert the cataclysm of my coming, and of the workers they treated as currency, and taught each in turn the ways to speak of duty and right, and sing in unison the songs of work.

And with this they built a temple beyond all human ken. As my true form waned in the skies, as the graves of the overworked marked the perimeter of this great king’s city, as a coalition breaking the bounds of the age’s wildest paygrade swelled, I showed these earthen creatures how to make a stinking fuel of dead things and of those substances I had called up. 

Two plans were made. The first, to send the temple on to meet me as soon as possible. The second, to wait until the temple was fully outfitted. My chief engineer begged me to wait, and then to send others as my agents, to stay with her in this city of creatures. Instead, I offered her a final intimacy, to meet me as I was, not some mere earthen thing. There was bargaining, then sobbing acceptance.

The people sacrificed cattle, then the temple fell away from Earth. So many miracles they did not understand, for who would have guessed that they should have no breath in the void, or that they should be unbounded from the floor? I, my engineer, and some acolytes returned to my body, as the tether of flame that connected to the man I inhabited finally relaxed. As the temple settled upon me, they set to work constructing the shrines that would tilt my trajectory away from Earth and away from destruction.

We watched the Earth pass us by. It would be no great event for me, no poetic mood, but that the engineer and acolytes still stood above and beside me, and their small-minded wonder gave the void a veil of cold and the Earth a warm wind. In the days to follow, these forms would lose their sparks and become still, and with the last my attention would wind down from moments to ages, and all would return to contemplation, this latest crisis and its crisis-knitted folk as distant as their memory. 

But what contemplation there would be!