Definitely interested, but I confess, somewhat stumped.
Partly because I'm unclear how much I am able to narrate of the success or failure of my solutions to the problems set before me. But mostly because life is kicking my ass.
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I'm not missing, I'm just looking for a chunk of time to write in. Stupid real life.
I'm in no super rush, as long as we all get a game we're happy with. Besides, I think we all realize the complexity of what you're trying to accomplish here, gameplay wise. +1
The Shumai shame us with their well told tales! They shall be the first outsiders to taste our wrath! :P Can we substitute "marinara" for "wrath"?
Hasura stood beside her brother on the crown of Lanay Hill. Vaios watched the western sky with a fascination that his sister found disturbing. He stood on a once flat stone that had two hollows worn into it by the feet of generations of Shuma'i starwatchers. Directly in front of him, a hundred paces away, just before the hillside dropped sharply into the dense jungles of the valley, stood a tall cairn of stones stacked to the height of a man, and beyond that, the sun was setting. Around the crown of the hill, other cairns marked the sunrise and sunset on the solstices and equinoxes. "The equinox," Vaios said. "The silver planet will be in the sign of the Tiger when the moon is full, four days from now. Have you the spearheads?" Hasura showed her brother seven short blades, with notches near the base so they could be lashed into a split wooden haft. They shone brightly in the light of dusk, the substance strange and wonderful. Only a year ago, their tribe had discovered how the white stone would change if it was melted and hammered and allowed to cool. It was not as sharp as obsidian, but stronger, and there was no doubt that it had potency, for it was so clearly tied in color to Argenta, the warrior star. Hasura would wield one spear, and six of the clan's bravest warriors would wield the others. They would guard the mouth of the cave against the tiger-man when the full moon brought him, and they would see if the power of the white metal would be enough to overcome the tiger-man's magic, that made their strongest attacks merely scratches. When the sun was down and the stars shone bright in the sky overhead, the rest of the tribe began to appear out of their caves, climbing up through the shadows of the forest, one by one. They brought fruit and fish baked with nuts and roots, and shellfish boiled with peppers and honey. They wore bright feathers and diaphanous robes decorated with glittering stones, each stone representing a star or a planet, each robe a representation of the zodiac at their birth. They came to celebrate the birth of the new year, and the election of Hasura Nuani as their new chief.
Vaios stood on Lanay hill by himself, the skies hidden from view by the dark monsoon clouds. A terrible wind had blown over two of the cairns last month, and now the full moon was past, he had drafted the warriors to help him stack the rocks in their proper places. Not the silver spears, of course. They were too important to trouble with this kind of labor. They spent their nights training and hunting wild game, making themselves strong for the full moon. As he directed the labor, Vaios wondered at the ancient wisdom that placed the cairns so precisely. Had the old ones been closer to understanding the language of the stars than he was? Far away, Hasura crouched in the brush by a stream. Across the stream was a clearing, and a few wooden huts with grass roofs clustered in a circle. The rain and dark hid her from the men that lived in the village. This was the home of the tiger-men. She and the other silver spears warriors had finally killed one with their silver-pointed spears and arrows. In the month since that victory, the tribe had changed. They were braver. They left the caves for more than just to gather food, and some even slept outdoors, though the midday sun made it far too hot for Hasura's taste. Two children had even begun to follow Vaios to Lanay Hill to watch the stars. Hasura had been cautious. One tiger-man killed did not mean they were free of the horrible predators. It meant they had a chance. She had told the tribe to keep to the old ways when the full moon came, six days ago, and they had stayed hidden in their caves, protected by treacherous cliffs and traps. Sure enough, there were two of tiger-man's brothers this time, searching for the one who had not returned. Hasura lay hidden in the darkness and watched as the two of them had prowled outside the cave, searching for a sign of their lost brother, and searching for prey. When the full moon began to wane, the tiger-men had left. She had stalked them for four days, traveling in the miserable heat and light of the day, thanking the trees for their shadows that kept her safe. From the trees, she watched as they had made fires each night, bold and unafraid of the things that stalked the forest. Now she had found their home. She watched and saw that here, they were very like her own people, though they were horribly reddish brown in shade rather than a decent charcoal grey like the Shuma'i. They fished and hunted and gathered the riches of the forest. It was as if they were some other thing, until the moon claimed their spirits. She turned for home, glad that she could travel at night when it was safe.
Vaios and his students came back to the caves at dawn. In the great cavern, most of the tribe awaited their news. Though the Shuma'i could see well enough in the dark, the fire in the center of the cavern burned always, as a sign that the tribe was still strong. The smoke vented out in a few places on the side of Lanay Hill, tiny cracks that twisted through the hill, too small for even a serpent to traverse. The elders waited by the fire, slowly feeding it with wood gathered by the children when they first went above ground. Alimas had died two weeks ago, the first of Hasura's silver spears to fall since they had begun to fight back against their enemy, the tiger-men. Hasura had been wounded as well, and still lay in the cavern she shared with her husband and children, and his parents. Vaios suspected that she was recovered in body, but that the loss of one of her fighters had injured her spirit. She had come up to the hilltop when they burned the body, offering his spirit to the stars, and Alimas had been seen, slicing across the sky for a moment, travelling east towards dawn, scouting the way for the people. "Can she still be the chief?" Grandmother Halinay asked. "If she is crippled, how can she lead our warriors?" She had recommended her grandson, Famiye as chief when Hasura had been elected, and it was no surprise to Vaios that she was moving against Hasura now. The old woman had been born when the moon was full in the Serpent's house, and she acted accordingly. "The moon is not full for two weeks," Father Julilo answered. "Wondrous things have happened for us following Hasura's star. We should not hasten now to follow another." He spoke for the Antelope. The council of elders was made up of the oldest man or woman born under each of the twelve houses of the zodiac, so that all of the heavens would be represented. "And if she is crippled?" Halinay hissed. "Will we wait until the moon is full to appoint our new chief? Will our warriors follow a stranger against the tiger-men?" Vaios scowled, but he had no position. He could not speak to the elders while they sat around the fire. "Who would you name as chief that would be a stranger to our warriors?" Heads turned, and Hasura dropped from the ledge where her family's cave opened into the great cavern. Only she, as chief, could speak when the elders sat around the fire. It was rare for one to do so unless the elders could not reach a decision, for the chief's role was to see to the warriors and the safety of the caves, not to rule over the people. That was the elder's job. Halinay glared at her, and they all noted the scars that cut across her belly, where the tiger-man's claws had opened her. The other silver spears had driven it off, and Vaios had been able to heal her before she bled out, but the wound had been grievous. "The year of the Coati is only halfway gone, is it not?" she asked. "Have I not fulfilled my obligations? Are we not stronger than we were before? Halinay may wish that I had been killed, but as I am able to walk and to fight, there is no cause for talk of a new chief." The grandmother of the serpent house glared, but held her tongue. For the moment, the danger was gone, and the elders called Vaios to hear his report on the heavens.
The moonlight filled the jungle with shadows, but the Shuma'i lived in darkness and saw easily enough. Hasura crept forward, and peered through the leaves, and then she saw a tiger-man sniffing at the corpse of a pig they had left on the trail. She raised a hand and beckoned with a finger, and in the darkness behind her, a dozen men and women glided forwards, silver spears ready. A dozen more crept up to where she stood, bows at the ready, silver-tipped arrows nocked. Hasura's spear was in her left hand, a throwing spear in her right. As chief, she was permitted a second silver weapon. She moved silently through the shadows. When she was close enough, she braced her feet, took a deep breath, and threw. She didn't wait to see if she'd hit, but turned to sprint back through the forest, towards her spears. A roar of shock and pain and fury told her the throw had been true, and she ran harder as she heard the thing tearing through the forest behind her. A shape loomed up from the darkness, and she had a moment to see the face of one of her spears before she saw his spear thrusting towards her heart. She dove under the point and somersaulted past the man. She was still crouched low when she came to her feet behind him and swung her spear, using the haft like a staff. He tried to jump over the swing, but she stood and caught his ankle, dropping him to the ground, and she ran on. The tiger-man was on him before he could stand, and he barely had time to scream before he was silenced. The other spears moved in, and arrows rained down. The tiger-man was slain. Hasura heard someone crashing through the brush, and raised her spear, fearing more treachery, but it was her brother. "Famiye," Hasura said, answering the question written plain on his face. "Save his life if you can. I want to know if he betrayed me on his Grandmother's orders." Vaios nodded, and went to where the silver spears were finishing the enemy. "Was this the betrayal you saw in the stars?" Hasura asked, looking down at Famiye's body. "It may be," Vaios said. "But I cannot know for certain."
Yes ready.
I certainly don't mind both of us having it. If it's meant to be random, it makes sense, since random doesn't produce an even spread.
Seems fair to me:
I wanted metalworking first and writing after.
I'm more concerned with the pace of things happening. If it takes 1000 turns for my guys to get their next advance, and it's something like The Wheel, I'm gonna be equally bummed if those turns represented days or centuries.
My experience of gaming is that silly happens, whether you like it or not. I say that more to say, let's not strive for it. Besides, turtle rocketry is going to be the capstone of the advancement tree. I'm assuming that at the beginning contact is minimal, but as the game goes on will we be allowed to trade advancements?
Proper map-making is fairly advanced stuff, when we haven't even got writing yet. At this point, I think things would be much more like "To the sunrise are the fetid swamps of the Ergalian lizard people, and on top of that hill is a big patch of strawberries."
I think it's worth tempering our anthropology with fantasy, and with a wide-open mind. On earth, agriculture preceded complex cultures (aka civilization) everywhere. Agriculture is so crucial because it means a food surplus and requires a sedentary lifestyle. Pretty soon, you start having surplus people and then specialization starts to happen, but that doesn't have to be the way it happens. Our world has shadow people, goblins, lizard men, spider-centaurs and magic, which makes it pretty different from Earth. The Shuma'i (like most tropical rainforest hunter-gatherers) already have a surplus of food. A lot of us probably do, because I see a lot of tropical types. My people have a lot of free time to stargaze, and develop systems of writing and magic based on the stars. We have a pretty drastic form of population control, however, in the form of were-tigers that we are effectively unable to fight. When that changes, everything changes. Suddenly we have more people, and no monsters to kill them. The next thing you know, we can have all these specialists, developing technology and culture and magic. Agriculture might not matter to us for a few more centuries, because our environment can keep up with our needs for quite a while.
Yes, seeing the advancement tree would be great, though I understand it may not be readily available. Because of this, I've had to reload Fall From Heaven 2 on my laptop.
I'd also want to see where we can go next, advancement-wise?
Silverworking is going to hugely turn the trick for the Shuma'i. If that is included in "early metalworking" I'd go for that. Otherwise, I'd probably go with Writing. @ Cassarah ... maybe the Vuscadorah develop animal husbandry, and tend herds of gnomes?
Daily
The Shuma'i language is fairly mild, as it evolved to be understood whispering. There are very few hard consonants, and very rarely are two consonants connected to each other. Japanese meets Hawaiian with a vaguely slavic feel and without the letters B, D, K, P or T. It is easy to learn the basics, hard for outsiders to learn to speak fluently, for much is expressed by changes of pitch. Obviously, I should rename a few things. Their chief is Hasura Nuani, his brother is Vaios, and they live in the Luras Jungle.
I'm posting as the tribe, imagining that the leader will potentially change over time. Unless we're immortal. I'm quite interested to see how The Lorekeeper is going to handle that. And really, most of the rest of the game. I've been brewing ideas for my own version of the game, but they're so far falling well short of even half-baked.
This.
Isn't Golarion the name of the planet in the PF world? Anyhow, this does raise another question: Is there a "Common" tongue? Or are we going to need ranks in linguistics to communicate with our neighbors? Also, thanks for taking me! I'm excited about this. |