yhlee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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hexarchate_rpg2017-06-28 12:13 pm
yhlee) wrote in hexarchate_rpg2017-06-28 12:13 pm
Entry tags:
Worldbuilding Questions and Discussion
Ask your questions here!
How do variable signifiers work? Do they reflect the part of personality that's closest to the surface at the moment, and is it possible to trigger a change in signifier by purposefully putting yourself in a situation or state of mind that reflects that aspect of you?
I've been considering having Ashari have a variable signifier. I don't want them to be able to change it at will, exactly, but I feel like if it's something they do have, they're at least aware enough of it to figure out how to use it to their advantage.
I've been considering having Ashari have a variable signifier. I don't want them to be able to change it at will, exactly, but I feel like if it's something they do have, they're at least aware enough of it to figure out how to use it to their advantage.
Yes, that's a pretty good way to sum up variable signifiers, and they can be trained in to a certain extent if the personality is flexible enough. In fact, Shuos and Andan are the most likely either to have them to begin with or to be able to train them in, so it would make a lot of sense for Ashari to have one. If you decide to go with one, please drop a comment to your original character application just so the information is all in one place and easy for everyone to refer to. :)
Before I post their signifiers on the character application, I just wanted to run these by you to see if they made sense.
I'm thinking Ashari can switch, with some effort, between three Andan signifiers (that venndaai helped me come up with): Rose Burning Sweetly, Kniferose Unblooming, and Kniferose Unsheathed.
Rose Burning Sweetly would stand for someone who cares greatly for aesthetics and organization and whose bark was worse than their bite (even though the bark is pretty bad).
Kniferose Unblooming would represent insecurity and getting lost in the details to the point of stagnation.
Kniferose Unsheathed represent someone sharp, who follows through, is always ready to strike, and is just slightly unstable.
All three play into Ashari's personality and their own self perception.
I'm thinking Ashari can switch, with some effort, between three Andan signifiers (that venndaai helped me come up with): Rose Burning Sweetly, Kniferose Unblooming, and Kniferose Unsheathed.
Rose Burning Sweetly would stand for someone who cares greatly for aesthetics and organization and whose bark was worse than their bite (even though the bark is pretty bad).
Kniferose Unblooming would represent insecurity and getting lost in the details to the point of stagnation.
Kniferose Unsheathed represent someone sharp, who follows through, is always ready to strike, and is just slightly unstable.
All three play into Ashari's personality and their own self perception.
Edited 2017-07-05 08:11 (UTC)
Since people have been asking about skills in Move 1, I wondered whether Kel training involved some basic engineering and piloting.
I have two rpg related questions, and two that I was just wondering about and don't need to be answered at all -
1) How common are signifier shifts, and what type of life event/change might prompt them?
2) How deeply garish are the official uniforms for Shuos assassins (bright red :|||)?
and
3) What kind of shift occurred to the Shuos during the wake of Hellspin Fortress?
4) What persuaded Zehun to make that call about Mikodez? (Mikodez in game is not going to know, but I've been trying to figure out what about Brezan reminded Zehun of Mikodez/why they decided to mess with him during Purple Paranoia, or if it's just the sight of a novice Kel coming up with this kind of solution.)
1) How common are signifier shifts, and what type of life event/change might prompt them?
2) How deeply garish are the official uniforms for Shuos assassins (bright red :|||)?
and
3) What kind of shift occurred to the Shuos during the wake of Hellspin Fortress?
4) What persuaded Zehun to make that call about Mikodez? (Mikodez in game is not going to know, but I've been trying to figure out what about Brezan reminded Zehun of Mikodez/why they decided to mess with him during Purple Paranoia, or if it's just the sight of a novice Kel coming up with this kind of solution.)
Question on what exactly a calendrical sword, you know, is: what I envisioned reading Ninefox Gambit is something like a lightsaber with glowy numbers instead of a solid beam of light, which extends and contracts to hit additional opponents as one fights with it. Is this more-or-less accurate, or am I barking up the wrong tree?
1) Signifier shifts happen occasionally through early adulthood (around mid-twenties). Bio/psych people feel free to correct me but basically the brain is still maturing through that time, at least according to the Adolescent Development course I had to take for teacher ed forever ago. They're not terribly common after that, especially radical shifts, although not unknown either. For example, if you saw a personality shift due to trauma or dementia, that could be a thing, but the later hexarchate also has better medicine available, so...
2) Official Shuos uniforms are blood red, more or less military in style, with gold trim. In the field, when actually at work, Shuos assassins are generally avoid being caught in actual uniforms at all costs and wear sensible things to fit in.
3) The only reasons the Shuos didn't take an even more massive prestige hit (and the one they took was pretty big regardless) were: a) Heptarch Khiaz essentially kicked Jedao out and gave him to the Kel as fish food (hawk food?) pretty much at the first opportunity, which was considered a pretty big deal, and b) Khiaz, while one of the more despicable people in the heptarchate, was a really top-notch propagandist and she PR'd her heart out.
4) I'm going to defer answering this question on the grounds that it is a possible story for the hexarchate collection. (It might or might not happen. I make no promises.)
2) Official Shuos uniforms are blood red, more or less military in style, with gold trim. In the field, when actually at work, Shuos assassins are generally avoid being caught in actual uniforms at all costs and wear sensible things to fit in.
3) The only reasons the Shuos didn't take an even more massive prestige hit (and the one they took was pretty big regardless) were: a) Heptarch Khiaz essentially kicked Jedao out and gave him to the Kel as fish food (hawk food?) pretty much at the first opportunity, which was considered a pretty big deal, and b) Khiaz, while one of the more despicable people in the heptarchate, was a really top-notch propagandist and she PR'd her heart out.
4) I'm going to defer answering this question on the grounds that it is a possible story for the hexarchate collection. (It might or might not happen. I make no promises.)
Thank you for answering! 3) That explains the slightly fixed way people always talk about Jedao (including himself) and 4) !!!!! it would be really cool to see any of them on page again, but I can already imagine Brezan's profound annoyance at dealing with more foxes.
Are T-shirts with slogans a thing in the hexarchate?
(This frivolous question is brought to you by Alaric's fashion choices, and the fact that if Sasha were a twenty-first century American she would want to dress entirely in free conference T-shirts & jeans, but be thwarted by the fact that free conference T-shirts never come in her size.)
(This frivolous question is brought to you by Alaric's fashion choices, and the fact that if Sasha were a twenty-first century American she would want to dress entirely in free conference T-shirts & jeans, but be thwarted by the fact that free conference T-shirts never come in her size.)
Starting a thread over here to avoid clutter. Feel free to contradict me on things (or just inform me that Sasha's understanding is incomplete).
Houses
The Naxar have Houses. I'm thinking they are like privately held corporations with hereditary membership. So for example Sasha has 5/8 of a share in Fountain House, which specializes in shipping and logistics, averaging her father's half-share and her mother's 3/4-share. (Sasha's mother votes Sasha's share, as a proxy.) In Sasha's day you could also buy into a House, if you had the equivalent of a couple of million dollars lying around and weren't Kirrish.
A certain portion of Sasha's childhood social difficulties were caused by the fact that a partial share in Fountain House was worth a lot more money than a full share in Mulberry House, which controlled the local mines.
Language
The Naxorian language has at least four grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, animate neuter, inanimate neuter) and no definite or indefinite articles. The 'x' is really more like a chi (High Language speakers never get this right).
Atrocities
I've been assuming the way the mines worked was fundamentally horrifying, but it took a while for me to figure out why that should be so, assuming a largely mechanized system. One possibility is that Kirrish people were trapped within the mining machines. When the heptarchate liberated the Kirrish, it presumably retained knowledge of the relevant technology for its own ends (like moth harnesses??)
The heptarchate's conquest may also have involved Naxorian mecha turning on their officers.
Houses
The Naxar have Houses. I'm thinking they are like privately held corporations with hereditary membership. So for example Sasha has 5/8 of a share in Fountain House, which specializes in shipping and logistics, averaging her father's half-share and her mother's 3/4-share. (Sasha's mother votes Sasha's share, as a proxy.) In Sasha's day you could also buy into a House, if you had the equivalent of a couple of million dollars lying around and weren't Kirrish.
A certain portion of Sasha's childhood social difficulties were caused by the fact that a partial share in Fountain House was worth a lot more money than a full share in Mulberry House, which controlled the local mines.
Language
The Naxorian language has at least four grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, animate neuter, inanimate neuter) and no definite or indefinite articles. The 'x' is really more like a chi (High Language speakers never get this right).
Atrocities
I've been assuming the way the mines worked was fundamentally horrifying, but it took a while for me to figure out why that should be so, assuming a largely mechanized system. One possibility is that Kirrish people were trapped within the mining machines. When the heptarchate liberated the Kirrish, it presumably retained knowledge of the relevant technology for its own ends (like moth harnesses??)
The heptarchate's conquest may also have involved Naxorian mecha turning on their officers.
The Houses are like family businesses-- but huge conglomerate family businesses. Think Koch Industries or the Mars candy corporation or the Mafia.
In Sasha's day, the three branches of government were the military/executive, the judiciary/religious scholars, and the legislature/Council of Houses. The military were crushed by the heptarchate in the War of Liberation and the judiciary were replaced by the Vidona & Rahal, but the Houses survived in some form.
If you're legally of age (23) and own a full House share, you receive a certain amount of money every year from your House. If you're actively working for the House you get extra, and if you're at executive level you get even more.
If you have a fractional share you get only that fraction of the House funding (and that's true for the extras as well, so a full-share executive makes twice as much as a half-share executive would in the same position).
If you have anything more than a half share you can vote in House elections for the Board of Directors and to choose the House's representatives to the Council of Houses. Again, fractions of a share mean fractions of a vote.
In Sasha's day, the three branches of government were the military/executive, the judiciary/religious scholars, and the legislature/Council of Houses. The military were crushed by the heptarchate in the War of Liberation and the judiciary were replaced by the Vidona & Rahal, but the Houses survived in some form.
If you're legally of age (23) and own a full House share, you receive a certain amount of money every year from your House. If you're actively working for the House you get extra, and if you're at executive level you get even more.
If you have a fractional share you get only that fraction of the House funding (and that's true for the extras as well, so a full-share executive makes twice as much as a half-share executive would in the same position).
If you have anything more than a half share you can vote in House elections for the Board of Directors and to choose the House's representatives to the Council of Houses. Again, fractions of a share mean fractions of a vote.
[Let's say there are fragmentary and ambiguous references to things that might be the rifts that suggest, in Mikodez's time/line, that there was a great inter-faction war necessary to close them. He wouldn't have had the security clearance for a lot of detail, though.]
I don't know if I should have assumed that all the faction animals are mythical. Uh. Or Mikodez was lying to Alaric/the air? But if they only achieved mothdrives three hundred years /after/ the hexarchate's founding, that suggests the Nirai emblem isn't a reference to the starship propelling moths.
(...Although Kujen could have revamped the logos.)
Also, after thinking about numerical slang some more, that's probably verboten by Mikodez's time, and possibly even by year 361. I don't really know how to conceptualize a society where numbers are freighted with every kind of restriction.
(...Although Kujen could have revamped the logos.)
Also, after thinking about numerical slang some more, that's probably verboten by Mikodez's time, and possibly even by year 361. I don't really know how to conceptualize a society where numbers are freighted with every kind of restriction.
The Nirai faction emblem used to be something else before the mothdrive's invention/discovery. I'd have to dig in the manuscript of Revenant Gun for it but it was like a ringed planet or something. I'll get back to you in a bit?
Also, the numerological aspect is ridiculous. Think about companies and release dates--everything has to be scheduled around the high calendar, which is often not great from a business/economic standpoint.
Also, the numerological aspect is ridiculous. Think about companies and release dates--everything has to be scheduled around the high calendar, which is often not great from a business/economic standpoint.
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