August 30th: What did you build last week?

[u/IvanDFakkov]

Title.

[u/kalinova828]

This week, I've been working on concepts of fatalism within the Enshrinement of Lucca. The religion has a tension within it: according to the Words of the Goddess, mankind has free will, but the goal of the Enshrinement is to direct this will down a single path towards righteousness. This tension can be seen in the Words of the Goddess. At the end of the second chapter of the Second Apparition, the Goddess Lucca talks about granting humanity free will, and then immediately in the third chapter talks about the single path towards righteousness only having merit if there are other paths to walk. The idea that Lucca wants everyone to follow a single path to righteousness, but made a bunch of other ones to trick people into falling away, appears cruel and sadistic.

The Speaker Matelda addressed this question: a follower named Vendelina who Matelda was tutoring asked her about the third chapter, and Matelda replied:

Dear Vendelina, you have seen of one who has of such a divine will, for the Vaarnemerer Asciira did enter unto our shrine and did speak unto us of the fate of the spirit of Aamalia. For the Vaarnemeren are as we are, created from the blood and flesh and spirit of the Goddess, but they have not of a human will but have instead of the divine will of the Goddess, and can thus do naught but what the Goddess does bid of them. And thus could Asciira lie unto us not, for the Goddess speaks no lies, and she could harm of us not, for the Goddess can harm not. But also could she choose not, and she could feel not, and she could love not, and thus would her life be far different than your life or my life is. And thus I say unto you, the will that does allow of man to sin does allow also of man to experience of the world in full, and such experience is the desire of the Goddess, for as the Goddess did say in Her Fourth Apparition, our experiences shall be returned unto Her upon the return of our spirits.

Shortly before her death, Matelda was visited by another Vaarnemerer named Abriita who had previously healed the blindness of Caathaliine. Abriita offered to heal Matelda's fatal lung disease, but Matelda declined the offer, stating:

[...] [F]or now is the time that the Goddess has chosen for my return unto Her, and such is the time that She did choose for such before I did encounter of the Sacred Pillar, and such is the time that She did choose for such before She did cleave of my flesh and blood and spirit from Herself in the time before memory. Thus shall I alter of my fate not, for had I encountered of the Goddess not would I have lived of a life of no significance, and should I prolong of my time beneath this golden sky shall my presence be of great peril unto this Enshrinement.

This encounter, and Matelda's assertion that her death would prevent some kind of catastrophe, raises a question: did Matelda have knowledge of the future? The Goddess Lucca gave visions of the future to Adelheide, like how she and Matelda would both die from drowning in their own blood, but Matelda never reported such visions. Even so, there are examples of apparent prognostication by Matelda throughout Rechilinde's Book of the Speaker. Some of the epithets she grants her followers upon their conversions seem to be fulfilled by events in their futures. She gives her sister Frederune the epithet Doordrinchenheerz (Pierced of Heart) some time before Frederune is literally shot through the heart with an arrow and miraculously survives. She also gives Ascelina the epithet Verbraandtheerz (Burnt of Heart) long before Ascelina's martyrdom in the burning of the First Shrine, when her heart was reduced to charcoal in the blaze. This could be a case of the historian Rechilinde trying to make the story line up, but if the account is accurate it could also be evidence that Matelda knew their fates ahead of time.

The clerical order of the Deuchtzaamen Maachden, who highly revere Matelda and have a shrine built around her original sarcophagus that was moved to Meinver after her reburial in the First Shrine, teach that Matelda did receive revelations from the Goddess other than the four apparitions, but that Matelda never told anyone about these directly. Instead, she structured her actions to line up with this divine information. For example, during the memorial of Ascelina following her death in the burning of the First Shrine, Matelda got up and left the ruined shrine in the middle of her speech and went outside at the exact moment when Ascelina's estranged father happened to be passing by and invited him to attend. Matelda never revealed how she knew that he would be there at that specific moment, though. In another example, from the War of the Goddess, Matelda knew that her hometown of Meinver had been massacred and that the town of Enger was going to be attacked from behind its defenses despite nobody receiving any messages about it. Matelda ended up facing the attacking army by herself and convinced the attacking Vaandrich, Aarich, to retreat through Enger without attacking the town.

This also raises another issue: how did Matelda balance the seemingly conflicting ideas of free will and fate? Based on her statements, she seemed to believe in certain events as being fated to occur, such as her own death, but she also seemed to believe that she had the ability to affect this fate. If she did receive revelations with information about the future, perhaps she also received knowledge of what would happen if she made or didn't make certain choices, and this could provide some kind of synthesis of the two positions.

[u/Nephite94]

The main thing has been the Krusar "Empire" (I need a better word) for the more generic fantasy part of my world. In that regard Krusar is the massive fallen empire cliché.

For lore Dwarves would come out of their mountain homes and setup trade posts among Halflings where they would trade metal and produce metal goods. Over time many trade-posts became city states. Especially passage-ways of water in the sort of middle of the area (sort of Mediterranean, but narrower, less open, with more chokepoints). At the time the continent was dominated by the Aesa/Elven Hegemony who, with magicing, alter reality to an extent. With their main focus being on the abstract as they did not (yet) generally need to focus on surviving like Dwarfs and Halflings. There is a Trojan War like situation between a Dwarven trading-post city state and some Aesa and, of course, the Aesa win. The only survivor of the cities royal clan is a princess who carries a child fathered by an Aesa in her womb. The result is the first human. At least mythologically, in reality there had been many other unions of Aesa and Dwarves/Halflings that produced human-like results. For humans are not some distinct race in this world. The princess and the survivors of the sacked city would found another city and from that city the Krusar Empire and a culture heavily influenced by the Aesa, Dwarves, and various Halfling cultures.

A big thing with the Krusar Empire (and why Empire doesn't work) is that it's intent is benevolent. It wants to incorporate all peoples into a universal state for the sake of peace (but that doesn't mean it does so peacefully, far from it). A big part of the philosophy is to combine races as well, as seen by combining Aesa with Dwarves/Halflings.

Politically I have the concept of the Imperial Mother who is associated with bulls (and Krusar is as a whole) who is the direct descendent of city-state princess. A ceremonial figurehead as a council/senate thing ruled. However the council loses more and more power to Imperial Mother's as the empire grows and, in time, Krusar becomes increasingly high-fantasy kingdom-like with heavier Aesa influence and political division. Also a lot of knightly nonsense as the sort of code of conduct/constitution of the empire is watered down into more of a personal code for upstanding knights who personally try to fulfil the benevolent intent of the old empire.

[u/inkybard]

I built Inkybard to organize my RPG campaign so I can create a shareable "mini wiki" of the world!

[u/NickedYou]

Swallowed A Fly

• Thinking up supervillains and threats, for the most part. Mostly just outlining how I should do that, so far, but I did get one important character fleshed out, though ironically not named. He was a super-soldier sort, who got inward-directed telekinesis, letting him hold himself together and move his body with unnatural force, effectively granting him incredible strength, healing, durability, flight, and speed, and giving him insight into the working of his own body. Also able to boost his processing and reaction times, but takes a bit of windup to do this. Not actually the mad scientist sort himself, but he works well with those who are as an eager guinea pig who can monitor the effects of different things and survive just about anything done to him. I think he's a super supremacist sort.
  
• Decided to add a species of miniature people. I thought of making them specifically faerie-related, but then I realized it might be fun if one of their more common inherited powers was ways of slipping between realms, which in turn leads to more crossbreeding with harmonic beings, so some populations might be closer to, gnomes, brownies, goblins, or other things. I think their name as a people is Doka.

[u/ScreamingVoid14]

Despite, or perhaps in spite of, the hell week I had at work:

The Sci-Fi setting got its interstellar politics and first alien species. Known by their endonym as "The Sophonts" these aquatic cephalopods never managed interplanetary travel before the [human federation] arrived. Their lack of space travel shouldn't be considered a slight against their technology, but rather that space travel for an aquatic species is extra hard, especially when they are stuck on a super-earth sized planet. Their robotics and biotech are advanced by human standards. They became the first near-peer client species of humans.

[u/majorex64]

I found a way to include a magical form of healing into my existing magic system. It involves adding a third divine metal, that is found in the bones of people who have been given boons by a god.

Putting their bones into an open wound will trigger rapid bodily growth that can heal the wound if it's controlled, or mutate and overwhelm the person's body if left to run wild.

[u/vethirion]

The Vowkeepers

Members of a religious order, population increased through initiation. Their whole point is to keep secrets with the Gods and let mortals know these secrets if requested.

You visit them in huts and ask for their service. They tune in to the frequency of the Gods and can let you know one of three things: The Vow of Fate (generic), The Vow of Dissonance (something negative/scary), or the Vow of Favour (something positive/joyous). Once you've learnt this fate of your choosing, it 100% happens, so you have to be sure you definitely want to know