Worldbuilding Questions and Discussion

[yhlee]

Ask your questions here!

Comments

[venndaai]

My questions:
-How many years does it take to train to be a Rahal?
-Can Rahal scry the signifiers of people who aren't Hexarchate citizens? Do people outside the Hexarchate have signifiers?
-Can one Rahal scry someone on their own (not that effectively, I'd imagine), or does there need to be at least three of them to create the exotic effect?

Thanks!

[yhlee]

- Four to six years is typical (this holds in general for the faction academies), depending on how hard your specialty is and how hard you work/how smart you are.

- Rahal scrying is an exotic effect. It will work on a non-hexarchate citizen as long as they're in high calendar space. Someone [from] outside the hexarchate will manifest a signifier if they enter high calendar space. A signifier is sort of like visual shorthand for a personality quiz--scrying will "sort" anyone into what seems the most appropriate to describe their personality.

- One Rahal can definitely scry someone, but the effect is strongest with more people (up to six).

Hope this helps!

[venndaai]

It does, thank you.

[vass]

"the explicit goal of destroying the hexarchate by going back in time and preventing its creation"

Does this mean preventing the creation of the hexarchate specifically (as distinct from the heptarchate), or the heptarchate too?

I guess what I'm really asking is, if my character was born during the heptarchate, are they preventing a dark future, or are they preventing the society they live in from coming about?

[yhlee]

Great question. I think realistically I could see disagreements among the rebels about this. The heptarchate is not a great society either, but it's better in some regards than what follows. I saw the premise as more "preventing a dark future," perhaps with a side of "let's seed some reform from the beginning so the h*archate doesn't end up so awful," but I wouldn't rule out people with a philosophy of "let it all burn."

Does that help?

[vass]

Yeah, it does, so long as my application can be from a perspective of "this is what they think is happening at this point".

[yhlee]

That's fine, yes--you can always use the 500 words of "tell me anything" to clarify any divergences between "this is what they think" and "this is what's probably actually going on" if you feel that's helpful.

[smokedetective]

I was wondering about Andan signifiers. I think some of them were Kniferose Thorns Wild, Kniferose Pierced, Kniferose Burning Sweetly, but what do they represent and how does that play into the social/hierarchical structure of the Andan faction?

[yhlee]

I didn't determine what those specific signifiers meant because it wasn't going to come into play during the books. You could pretty much assign your own meanings (or, if you prefer, I could make something up on the spot), or devise your own. The Andan generally value social graces, high culture, beauty, wealth, and charm, and have xenophilic tendencies in general, so their signifiers will tend to reflect that. (That being said, "cold-blooded autocratic manipulative person" could definitely also be an Andan type as well.)

[pengwern]

Hi! Thank you for opening up this hexarchate sandbox for us to roll around in. I have an entirely frivolous question that probably won't connect to my application: can ghosts be anchored to anything but a human? Like an urn, a mothgrid computer, or one of Zehun's small kittens? Asking for the sake of Mikodez's green onion.

[yhlee]

Howdy!

You could try, but the less close to human it is, the more chance you have of driving the ghost crazy along with the anchor. And, uh, historically speaking, the people who have been made into ghosts weren't great on the sanity front to begin with. :p

[pengwern]

Thank you, that's very cool to know. So Kujen couldn't plant him into a cindermoth's systems, or release a Jedao kitten into the Citadel of Eyes as an assassin no one would ever see coming?

[venndaai]

Does scrying always involve the kind of mind inception that happened to Brezan in RS, or can a Rahal look at someone and get a general read off of them?

[mercuryhatter]

Out of curiosity, does Istradez have a canon signifier? I don't remember it ever being relevant, but all the signifier talk made me wonder.

[yhlee]

No canon signifier, no--you're welcome to devise one, or you can ask me to come up with one if you'd rather, whichever you're more comfortable with. (He could plausibly have either a ninefox or kniferose signifier, I suspect.)

[yhlee]

Canon-wise: Cindermoth's systems would probably iffy--a mothgrid (computer) is not sentient. Planting him into the moth might work temporarily; moths are basically sentient cyborged enslaved aliens who can space-travel innately. (This comes up more in Revenant Gun.) Kitten would be hard mainly because, much as I love cats, cats don't have very big brains.

That being said, if you wanted to run a Jedao with a non-traditional anchor like one of the above, we could certainly make it happen for the purposes of the game. :)

[mercuryhatter]

Sounds reasonable. I will think about it so I have one in case it becomes relevant!

[yhlee]

A Rahal can look at someone and get a general read off of them, preferably from in person and reasonably close up (same room, let's say). The trippy mind-trip thing that happened to Brezan would take a full hex digging around someone's brain for the deep stuff. Does that help?

[lleullawgyffes]

A few more scrying questions:

- is the range of signifiers that manifest when scrying dependent on the scryer, the scryee, or the calendar in general? which is really to say: if someone from the heptarchate-era is scrying in the hexarchate-era, would Liozh signifiers ever show up?

- will a faction member always manifest only signifiers specific to their faction when being scryed? if not, how common is it for people to display a variety of signifiers? (would Cheris have some Nirai signifiers, e.g., reflecting her interest in math?)

- are all signifiers faction-affiliated? relatedly: is the Rose Chalice that's mentioned when Kujen's poking around in Jedao's revenant-brain an Andan signifier, or is it faction-neutral (or not a signifier at all but part of some presumably-related system of personality classification)? (I ask mostly because I'm trying to figure out where to put it on my list of signifiers we've encountered so far.)

[venndaai]

Great, thanks. And yay, this is going to be fun. :)

[smokedetective]

A few Andan questions:

-How does Andan enthrallment work? I'm assuming it's based on the high calendar, and I think it has to do with social status, but is it percieved status or status somehow tied to the calendar? For example, could an Andan enthrall someone higher than them if they tricked that person into thinking they were above them in status?

-How far can body mods go? For example, could someone cover themselves entirely in fur feathers or add functional wings?

[yhlee]

- Range of signifiers depends on the scryee and the version of the high calendar in effect. You wouldn't see Liozh signifiers during the hexarchate era, even if the practitioner had been trained during the heptarchate. Think of the range of possible signifiers as a deck of cards that originally had seven suits in the heptarchate, and then in the hexarchate they removed the Liozh suit so you can't draw those cards anymore.

- Faction members usually but not always manifest faction-specific signifiers. I have a fragment of a short story on my hard drive somewhere involving Shuos Zehun working with a Shuos assassin who has a massive chip on their shoulder because they have an ashhawk signifier and people keep making fun of them about it. (Kind of dangerous around an assassin if you ask me, but, Shuos.)

Some people have what are called variable signifiers reflecting different aspects of their personality (Shuos Mikodez is one of these), and a percentage of those people can change their signifier at will (Shuos Jedao is one of these). Cheris was pretty consistent signifier-wise in Ninefox Gambit, but honestly given the amount of ?!?! in her head after the end of that book, she could plausibly be running around with a LOT of different signifiers.

- All signifiers are faction-affiliated. The Rose Chalice is an Andan signifier, and it generally means amiableness/docility with a side of "I'm a bit of a doormat" (which explains why Kujen was mucking around with it).

Hope this helps!

(BTW, Mabinogion fan? :D)

[yhlee]

- It's high calendar, yes. Think of it as social bullying hypnotism on steroids--so it's perceived status, and you could definitely use enthrallment on someone normally of higher status if you used trickery. Have fun! :)

- Fur or feathers, sure. Functional wings might require additional exotic effects just because of aerodynamics, but, I mean, the servitors levitate so I'm sure something could be arranged if you wanted it. Really the limit is not so much body mod tech but fashion and good taste--the Kel, Rahal, and Vidona in the hexarchate are pretty conservative about this stuff, while the Andan don't mind pushing the limits and the Shuos tend to be pretty open-minded about it too.

[lleullawgyffes]

thanks!! that's really helpful. :-D

by analogy with "Scrywolf Uncircled" I'm thinking Virmad's old signifier will have been something like "Scrywolf Circling", which I'm intending to be just a really generic Rahal signifier like Ashhawk Brightly Burning for the Kel (if you've got something like that in mind already, I'm happy to go with that instead).

(and tbh I don't actually remember why I started using Lleu as an online handle, but apparently I was doing it as early as September 2010, well before I read the Mabinogion. but, broadly, my field is Celtic studies (although mostly modern and mostly Goidelic), so it's not un-fitting.)

[yhlee]

I didn't have anything invented for Rahal signifiers along those lines, so Scrywolf Circling is perfectly fine. :)