The Rest of All Possible Worlds: Publish and Be Damned

The press is one of the great movers of the new age. If you are going to spread ideas or report on a new discovery or promulgate a new law, printed materials can make this happen.

This includes for player characters. A good way to build a reputation is to print an account of your travels and discoveries - even if people violently disagree, the fact that they have to publicly speak against you (or a pseudonymous figure that everyone in the know can identify) will allow your star to rise. 

For TRoAPW's purposes, we will speak of three sizes of publication:

• Pamphlet
• Treatise
• Book

and three types of audience it may be geared to:

• Broad-as-possible
• General
• Specific (and technical)

That's not necessarily low-, middle- and highbrow, but the connection could be made.

We may say that in a city (near the press itself, or on a notable trade route to get them) a fully-fledged book goes for 20 silver pieces, a Treatise 10 and a Pamphlet 2. 

Actually getting something printed and on the booksellers' stalls yourself requires one of the following:

• Paying for it yourself
• Convincing a printing house to print it - usually on the basis that there is a way for them to make their money back
• Convincing a wealthy patron to put up the funds

Or, indeed, a combination of the above.

The costs of paying for it yourself are predictable enough: time and money.  Getting a printing house involved is likely end up with your work edited or suitably adjusted for the market.  Getting a patron involved may distract from your own fame, and indeed yoke you inevitably in the public eye to Lord X or Prefect Y or Arch-Priestess Z - aside from the tie of obligation involved. 

Of course, decent quality maps or illustrations will add to the cost of getting a book printed. 

It is assumed that if a character lacks the skills or inclination to sit down and write themselves, they may hire a hack to do it for them - usually at a rate a little below the average 'white collar' wage in the city you find them. A more highly placed collaborator can do a better job, but may cost more and absorb some of the resulting fame. 

So, what benefit comes from all this?

TRoAPW publishing sits alongside the usual set of carousing rules - but with wider social possibilities. If the Crucible Society want to gain fame from their exploits in the Bronzemount Free State or acclaim for their contributions to the field of Pneumametrics or draw attention to the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, then publishing can accomplish this. 

Looking across to The 52 Pages, in terms of hazard and unforeseen consequences, publishing looks more like 'Training' than the various other options. 

Unless a player wins the jackpot - the right book at the right time with the right distribution network and the right kind of people recommending it - it is assumed that any profits accumulating to them are fairly low. The roof stays over their heads. 

Actually trying to write for that kind of profit is difficult - by the time everyone's aware that they should be paying attention to (again) the plight of stranded sailors in the Alamgir Empire, that section of the market is swamped.
Writing on behalf of a cause or faction - Pneumametrics, say, or in favour of the Jointe in Tsymric - can get you a certain measure of publicity, but a smaller audience than you might hope.
In any case, player characters shouldn't be trying to be professional authors!

There are, of course, two more things to consider.

Firstly, grimoires. It is just about possible to pass on details of a spell without actually having to exactly reproduce a page of a grimoire. Think of an off-the-shelf spell as being like an equation with the final answer not yet given, but all the working shown - and which must then be rewritten for presentation in beautiful calligraphy. 

Accordingly, there are extra costs involved (even before you get to the point of dealing with the magical regulations for that jurisdiction). This involves things like specialist printing presses and secure 'behind the counter' retail transactions. Can't have someone else completing the equation!

So, a pamphlet length account of a new spell costs as much as an ordinary treatise, a treatise with (say) half a dozen spells as much as a full book and a full book with a good number of spells inside it - perhaps as much as ten times the cost of a romance.

***

Secondly, censorship.

Nowhere in Calliste has a formal freedom of the press, or of speech*. There may be city quarters where nobody cares what you say, or what you write - but a law may well have been broken all the same.

Let us speak of six levels of censorship.

1. Review and adjustment of all printed material
2. Review, adjustment of most
3. Review, &c of many
4. Review, &c of certain targeted works
5. Review, &c laser-focussed on certain works
6. Absolute minimum review.

1. and 6. are both basically non-existant- the former for reasons of state capacity, the latter for reasons of social structures.

This is further complicated by how keen the authorities are to actually carry out their duties. The lax censors of the Margravate of Fuchsunddachs may be commanded to review most material throughly (3.) but don't often manage this - unlike the Duchy of Brocq-et-Tod, whose Public Truth Commissioners carry out targeted censorship far more efficiently and dutifully. 

Thus, one pictures something like the below.

1	Painstaking review of all works
2	Painstaking review of most works	Lax review of all works
3	Painstaking review of many works	Lax review of most works
4	Painstaking review of targeted works	Lax review of many works
5	Painstaking review, laser-focused on certain works	Lax review of targeted works
6		Lax review, laser-focused on certain works
7	Absolute minimum review

But states don't have the same laws, or the same short-term policy objectives, or be rooted in the same cultures. The Grand Republic of Melesvulpia may have a robust tradition of political debate and broadsheets, but maintain public order via significant controls on what books of magic can be printed. 

So we might conceive of something like the below.

	Books of Magic		Books of Magical Discussion		Political material		Religious material		Military material
1	Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works		Painstaking, all works
2	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works	Painstaking, most works	Lax, all works
3	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works	Painstaking, many works	Lax, most works
4	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works	Painstaking, targeted works	Lax, many works
5	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works	Painstaking, laser-focused	Lax, targeted works
6		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused		Lax laser-focused
7	Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review		Absolute minimum review

This is not exactly complete - it leaves out, for instance, pornographic material. 'Targeted' in the above refers to a certain type of (EG) magical work - thus necromancy, mind control and so forth.

You will also note that Books of Magic and Books of Magical Discussion are different categories in Calliste. For reasons discussed above, they are different things (just one spell would be enough to make a theoretical tome into a Book of Magic). It may be assumed that most legal systems would wish to keep a closer eye on Books of Magic than Books of Magical Discussion, but Calliste is a big place with a wealth of little principalities and enclaves! 

Of course, it should be noted that states may also wish you to add something to a publication - a seal of approval, for instance. This is aside from states (or state actors) seeking, commissioning or encouraging publishing. 

Illegal presses may exist, allowing you to dodge the above but will have their own complications. The price will be at least comparable to a legal press - any costs (in time or coin) you avoid in not going before the censor you accrue in (for time) the necessary discretion an illegal press requires and (for coin) the premium they extract.

***

So as not to end on that note...TRoAPW is portraying a world in which substantial, influential works are being printed and circulated. Difficult to have an Enlightenment without that. Lawmakers are (perhaps) more often curious than censorious. Publishing in Calliste may be difficult, but it is also widespread. 

I don't insist on TRoAPW being a 'glass-half-full' setting (things might be going badly wrong!) but the glass definitely isn't empty.

*And, indeed, even places that proclaim both may have various organisations, cultural tendencies, &c. that suppress or discourage a certain kind of book.

Faufreluches: Where are the Inquisitors?

Because I definitely expected the Imperial Inquisition.

To begin: I've spent a month on-off ruminating on and writing for Investigating Censor. One of the things I praised that for is its titular Player Characters.

Players are the titular Censors. It's a wonderfully evocative set of ideas - the mix of legal, customary and religious authority could be quite heady. The very title of 'Censor' throws you into a different set of social expectations and ideas. This is a strength of Dave Greggs, I would say - the Investigating Censor, the detectives of Starling and Shrike. It's reminiscent of 40k's Inquisitors or Rogue Traders, and rather more successful than Mass Effect's Spectres.

Starling and Shrike is a sort of mercenary burgher republic described here in a little more depth (with a discussion of the inspiration in the comments here). This is something I should sort of dislike - the same way 'Adventurers' Guilds' rub me up the wrong way. The notion of a free-roaming highly-trusted professional hero who apparently can dictate the legitimate use of force...it doesn't work most of the time. 

Where is does (as above), it's submerged in maximalist settings - self-proclaimed in the case of Starling and Shrike, self-evident in the case of 40k. The Jedi of Star Wars also sort of work - however toned down the setting details is versus 40k, the operatic characters and emotions of those Space Operas sort of fulfil a comparable function. The Emperor's Questing Knights in Fading Suns likewise, in part because of the all-but explicitly Arthurian angle. 

To speak on where is doesn't necessarily - the Spectre Rank in the Mass Effect games. Although the strong presence of Jennifer Hale's Commander Shepherd rather stopped this from dragging things down,  the rank of Spectre with its self-consciously tough name and roughly sketched presence looked rather like an excuse to get Shepherd out into the Galaxy. 'First Human Spectre' could readily be replaced by 'First Human Alliance Marshal' or 'First Human Investigative Magistrate'. That the iconography of the games settled on the N7 rating code is no surprise.

Likewise, the notion of the 00-Rating in the MI6 of James Bond: sensical (if sensational) when it is merely a Field Agent who can kill in the course of duty, strange and stretched when they turn into Spies and Commandos alike - as in the opening of Goldeneye (a film that leaves me rather cold, even by the standards of the Bond flicks). 

+++

So where are the Inquisitors in The Thousand-Day Regency? (Hereafter Faufreluches to refer to the setting rather than the setting-defining polity). I admit that Faufreluches was written with one eye squarely on its relative position to 40k - so where are the Rogue Traders?

My response is this: everywhere.

Read enough 40k material and it becomes apparent that at a certain level of authority, Adepts and Commanders and so forth possess, are entrusted with or can acquire not only highly-trained personal protection and a bunch of assorted legbreakers and enforcers, but legally-sanctioned, armed (do I repeat myself?) savvy investigators or their own pack of ultra-loyal black-ops hardcases. This includes the administrative, commercial and navigational authorities, and even if the various system governors don't get the cream of the crop, they can still muster all the above.

[Is this crazy? Well, A) 'Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those who prosper may truly judge what is sane.' and B) It's an exaggeration of overlapping spheres of legal authority in the Middle Ages; compare legal pluralism and scorpion men.]

If you have to give any meaningful thought to or act on matters outside your planetary system, you probably have many of the powers of an Inquisitor. Thus, the Magnates in Faufreluches.

But that's not how any of this works, is it? The attraction of the Feudal Future of 40k is both for simpler Faufreluches-style reasons as sketched here and also for Hobbesian complex-web of influence reasons. The adventures of Inquisitor Tewt'nphonheem are the spark to which fuel is brought - the ridiculous grit thrust into the rational oyster to make the pearl of art (which is cast before swine....). We're right back to the question of whether or not GLORIOUS TULLY HEGEMONY is possible.*

+++

Setting that aside, here's a model of how Faufreluches (or something comparable) could string these together. 

There are Champions, Retainers and Scum**.

[The Faufreluches-adjacent Lazarus has the similar Waste, Serfs and Family, but let's draw away from that.]

Champions are setting-defining larger-than-life sorts, who presumably leap tall buildings in a single bound. Individual Characters have a great deal of strength, autonomy and potential (rises are swifter, falls greater). In Faufreluches, see Paladins and the Janissariat, despite their different tones - the one being Arthurian and the other Homeric/Wagnerian.

Retainers are bound into a wider system, giving them an awareness of the world around them, if not the power to change it. This is where the intrigue and politicking happens - firstly because of the number of factions that are involved, secondly because you might actually need to persuade, petition or bully people to get what you need.  In Faufreluches - the Magnates and the Seven Pillars. 

Scum are trying to survive. By law or choice or circumstance, they are in the midst of struggle for survival, against the foe or wild beasts or the elements - without major greater awareness or assistance from on high. Resources are limited, true friends or even reliable business partners are few. Faufreluches has some of these outlined on Zhiv-Moroz, and they likely exist elsewhere.

EXAMPLES. Zelazny's Lord of Light is Champion. The Metabarons is Champion. Emphyrio is ... Scum who get lucky? A Song of Ice and Fire is big enough to have strands of all three. Ancillary Justice is Retainer. The Empire Strikes Back is Champion, Rogue One is Retainer. 

So, for 40k: Abnett's Eisenhorn is Retainer, tending to Champion. Abnett's Ravenor is more purely Retainer. Feheravi's Dark Coil is Scum, occasionally reaching a strange Retainer status for metaphysical-supernatural reasons. Farrer's Enforcer is Retainer. Wraight's Vaults of Terra is Retainer, tending to Scum. Anything focused on a Space Marine is probably Champion. 

Macbeth and other Tragedies are likely Champion. The Henriad and other history plays are likely Retainer. 

The Guns of Navarone is a Scum narrative. Where Eagles Dare is Retainer.

The Maltese Falcon is Retainer, Chinatown is Retainer with a tragic close. 

Robinson Crusoe is an introspective Scum narrative (it's not all battles in the mud). 

Mythago Wood is dreamy Scum. The Well of the Unicorn is Retainer. Fury is embittered Champion. Votan is Retainer frequently out of his depth. Dr Syn is antagonistic Retainer (at least, in that first book).

One shouldn't push this model too far, but that probably helps you calibrate things. 

NOTES. These categories may characterise an episode, or an entire narrative. Something chronicle-like may pass between them. Thus, Dune passes from Retainer-category among the Atreides (Is an heir a sort of Retainer? Close enough for these purposes.) to Champion-category with the Kwasitz Haderach. Gaunt's Ghosts sees the regiment of the Tanith 1st go from Scum to Retainers (if not evenly so: see the Gereon mission).

This doesn't precisely match onto Social Class - but we are talking 'Feudal Future': it is impossible to avoid. Yet a protagonist from the Upper Crust can be thrust into a Scum Narrative - as the nameless hunter of Rogue Male, who is in the midst of a pretty Scummy episode. The aristocratic Gaunt of Gaunt's Ghosts is a useful window to demonstrate the predicament of the regiment when in Scum-category: he can get answers - polite answers, even - just not results. 

Nor is this meant to correspond to a levelling system.

+++

So, if this model is useful, the next step would presumably be to sketch out Champion and Scum narratives, even as Vorontsov at Bay was (roughly?) a Retainer narrative.

And in the meantime, if you need to know who the Inquisitors in Faufreluches are:

Pastorate Witchfinders and Wardens, Mint Auditors, Secretariat Assessors, The Mews Long-Range Security Detachment, Schematician Troubleshooters, Division 5 of the Maioral Guard, Siegneuria Heralds, the Vorontsov Office of Occluded Defence, the Salammboan Green Veil Circle, Stadtholder Circuit-Riders......

*Per Bret Devereux, it's perhaps desirable - see the section titled 'Other Problems'.

**'Footsloggers' would be more dignified and as accurate. The single syllable of Scum has more impact.

Troika: Some Thoughts

I hadn't read Troika when it first came out, and made a splash. I saw on sale as a PDF, and acquired it. Now, some thoughts.

***

Troika: you may know - but I'm going to restate it anyway - who this is by. 'Written by Daniel Sell. Illustrated by Jeremy Duncan, Dirk Detweiler Leichty, Sam Mameli, and Andrew Walter.' These chaps are attached to the Melsonian Arts Council. 

What's it attempting to do? Time for a quote.

Here is Troika!: a science-fantasy RPG in which players travel by eldritch portal and non-euclidean labyrinth and golden-sailed barge between the uncountable crystal Spheres strung delicately across the hump-backed sky. 

What you encounter on those Spheres and in those liminal places is anybody’s guess — I wouldn’t presume to tell you, though inside this book you will find people and artefacts from these worlds which will suggest the shape of things. The adventure and wonder are in the gaps; your game is defined by the ways in which you fill them.

 

Does it achieve this? Hmm. Apologies, this is going to get into the sub-genre weeds. Now, to my mind Science Fantasy is something like CL Moore's Northwest Smith or Leigh Brackett's Eric John Stark. A twinning of Science Fiction and the Fantastical, something a touch more out there than the use of Barsoom for two-fisted adventures. 

I might suggest tentatively that Sword-and-Planet involves (whatever the mysteries required by the plot) a grasp of essential skills and understanding of the world: John Carter is of the profession of arms, and may apply himself to his chosen trade on Earth or Mars. Science Fantasy involves moving from the familiar to the strange by the characters: from the world of space flight and blasters to psychic aliens and time shifts. Cf. Star Wars: the mechanically-skilled farm boy enters not merely into a galactic war, but a journey with a spiritual dimension. Feudal Futures (or a category including Feudal Future) involve starting and staying in an unfamiliar place. 

But, of course, the most obvious influence on Troika! is Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun. If you've read both, this isn't news. Reference to Cacogens, Clavigers, Alzabo, the Phoenix Throne, a familiarly phrased 'Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners', Notules, golden-sailed space-faring ships....all due respect to the author, but this path of influence is fairly clear. Besides, the blatant isn't always bad: here are some tools for the Wolfe-like, use them as you will. 

Anyway, in some ways all I've written there is merely surface. The underlying meat is the mixture of science and magic, in less than clear-cut ways. In some media, the mixture or confusion is benign, and comprehensible: see the invocation of Clarke's Third Law in Marvel films, for instance, or the various magi-tech urban settings of some RPGs. In others, it is horrifying - whether one of Lovecraft's Great Old Ones is merely a incomprehensibly vast working-out of natural laws or a staggering violation of those laws, it barely matters, given the results. 

In The Book of the New Sun, it is dismaying to see such ruin as has resulted in a great confusion of science and magic, but not as such baleful. In Vance's Dying Earth, it is awe-inspiring (if still ruinous). If the melding or conflusion is thorough enough, we speak of the Weird, the uncanny. If I say New Weird, some minds will instantly move to Miéville's Bas-Lag. To my mind this is a less pure example than (say) Steph Swainson's The Year of Our War.

All this is to indicate, if I may, that Troika! reads as sufficiently immersed in its world to be more like New Weird and Feudal Future than Science Fantasy as I read it. It lacks a foot in the familiar. This probably suits its purposes, and is bolstered by the presentation. 

An example, if you will pardon me.

Troika, P.7, Character Creation

This is one of the pre-generated characters you can roll into. Now, what does this suggest to you? A retired reaver? Dad-bod Elric? Frank Frazetta's King of the Hill?

Well, here is how Dirk Detweiler Leichty chose to illustrate that entry:

There is a hammer, but not a Warhammer.

Now, Detweiler Leichty will be quite tightly linked in my mind to the grand decay and meshing of mechanical and biological and otherworldly shown in Silent Titans. Is this true for the bulk of Troika's intended audience? Perhaps. Either way, the restricted but vivid colour, the geometric slashes, the dense lines, the hints of a roiling interior, 'the interlacing of the imagined organic/personal with the imagined space', indicate a distinction from the familiar lines of fantasy art - the thousand variations on Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn on paperback covers, or the older technicolour depictions of the 'cod-archaism of a Renaissance faire'. Either way, this is a deliberate indication of something distinct: a suggestion of several moods rather than one set icon. 

So, Troika steps out boldly in a new direction. And doesn't trip over its shoelaces. 

Would I use it? You're talking to the wrong fellow, but I'll take a stab. Troika's a chunkier beast than the W-B&W-G-backed 52 Pages, but then it is seeking to indicate a mood and world definitely not D&D. Call it a hundred pages, minus the included adventure. 

The d66 system - simple enough once your head's in the right place. Luck as a stat always rings a little off to me - pace Fallout - but when other stats have been pared down so far or amalgamated into Skill and Stamina, I can see why you would want a nebulous 'significance' stat to move around a focus as desired. Thinking on it, a (relative) resignation to (or acknowledgement of) the whims of fortune or the workings of fate does seem fitting for the intended genre.

A few more words on how Advanced Skills are meant to be distributed in one's own Backgrounds would be preferable. There's some obvious models, but a step-by-step somewhere would be good.

The notion of a stack of items to indicate turns is all very well, but could be troublesome on the table -where does the stack live, who can see it, &c.

Pinch of salt to the above: this is all speculative. 

Gleanings: Things to pull out and use.

• Witch-hair ropes 'immune to manipulation via magical means.'
• 'Salt is the poor man's silver'.
• Brittle Twigs is an impressively folk-lorish spell.
• This description, from the spell Iron Hand - 'The common man does not appreciate exactly how close flesh and iron are when considered relative to, say, flesh and the smell of hot tea.'
• The Donestre: strange deadly melancholy many-headed lions.
• I think more settings can find room for Lamassu and Rhino-men.
• Beef and Liberty is apparently one of those perennial human obsessions.
• Pocket Gods seem an interesting extension on Lord Dunsany's various small deities. 

Conclusions: Well, I'm not certain that Troika hits a level of Conceptual Density for me. But then, I've read a bunch of Wolfe already, and even written something inspired in good part by him. So it might do something for you, and I cannot really regret flipping through Troika all that much. Modified rapture.

Lost By Translation

Before you venture into the Dreadful Dungeon, it would be wise to acquire a map, or some record of those dreadful tunnels. But the only scraps of information you can find on the subject have been translated - either from a form of the Common Tongue so old as to be unrecognisable, or from the writings of another culture.  

Such translations are rarely exact, of course.

1. Distances As it turns out, the Dwarven Foot is a little shorter than the Human Foot. Who knew? This is probably fine in Five Foot corridors, but when assessing longer distances, the difference will add up.
2. Similar, but not Identical Perhaps as a result of 'False Friends', or some other linguistic custom, the difference between varieties of Goblinoid are not well marked in the language this guide was written in. One cannot readily tell whether these tunnels are infested with Goblins or Orcs.
3. Genre The translator of this text describes a frieze depicting 'A Curious Static Dance, with Masks'. He appears to have no notion of stage drama.
4. Zealotry The translator of this text renders 'Highly Potent Idols of the Spider God' as 'Ferocious Idols of the Spider God'. It seems that he does not believe that anything connected to the Spider God could be more than a Paper Tiger. 
5. Biology The original text was written by a Dwarf (or possibly an Elf). They refer to Vinth and Aggal (or Ulvian and Briolant*) features on a tiled floor. The translator has not rendered this into a form humans can understand - possibly from a desire to remain literally accurate, possibly from a lack of knowledge concerning the tiles in question. At any rate, some of the tiles are trapped. 
6. Idiom According to this translation, within a certain high-ceilinged suite of the Dungeon, Felids and Canids will descend to rule over you. 
7. Prudery Be it a personal or cultural peculiarity, the translator has declined to uncover certain terms. The precise bodily features of a certain statue that must be pressed to open a secret door will remain a mystery.
8. Poetry The original had it that in a certain room, witchfire would burst in thin but intense columns from a dozen sculpted ram's head. The translation merely refers to many ram's heads and much fire.

***

This quick little post is the result of being partway through Umberto Eco's Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. First published 2003 - there is a description of the use of translation software it would be interesting to follow back on two decades later. I found Mouse or Rat? quite readable, but it helped to have read a few of Eco's own works beforehand: he references the translations that were made of those on several occasions. 

Having written all this, I do realise that this is effectively a Rumour Table with extra steps. But sometimes those extra steps do add flavour to an adventure - there is a difference between getting your faulty information from (variously) the Soaks propping up the Bar in the Local Tavern, the Few Scraps High Command has been able to Piece Together or a Crumbling Tome of Eldritch and Forgotten Lore. 

*To say nothing of Jale, Ulfire and Dolm.

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: The Wrong End of the Staff

There are two things that prompted the writing of this. The first thing is a few recent posts by noisms on the problems of writing from the point of view of humans in a fantasy - or even pre-Englightenment - setting. Of course,  TRoAPW is specifically an Enlightenment or Enlightenment-equivalent setting. So, how does one avoid writing a setting in which everyone sounds.....suspiciously reasonable and modern?

First of all, of course, our own age is post-Englightenment. Quite when it became 'post' varies, I think, with how you judge such things. In literature, the ideas of Modernism post-Great War suggests a world where the settled march of scientific knowledge and Whig history is interrupted by the death and devastation of the Western Front. Of course, nobody told the architects: witness the square, 'rational' designs and 'machines for living' of Le Corbusier. This is to say nothing of the grand schemes of the post-war 1940s: social democracy, the centrally-planned welfare state and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - all of which must, I think, count the Enlightenment among their forebears. Still, there is a sense of distance between us and the Enlightenment that would make the magical Enlightenment of TRoAPW as if not more distant.

Secondly, change does not occur equally. TRoAPW positions its Enlightenment as taking place mainly on one continent: Calliste. Even there, it might be centred around a few states or a few cities or a few social groups. My mind goes to Manola's Own Private WFRP (see Points One and Two): 

'There's a Renaissance in progress! The cities are growing. The economy is booming. The tax receipts are up. .... The progress celebrated by the elites is real, but it has been purchased at a terrifying price in social dislocation and human suffering.' 

Even in the compact and politically active Datravia, not everyone is going to be up-to-date and alert and with it (whatever it may be). I've written enough about the Majestic Vision to suggest that it is still a meaningful force in Calliste. 

The second thing is that TRoAPW was in part suggested by the idea of being wrong about things - hence 'White-Hot Sparks from the Crucible of the Enlightenment'. Are you a brief speck of light and heat, or are you part of the final product? When we're talking about a process occurring across an entire continent, you might well be going down one of the dead ends of the maze. 

The suggestion of Voltaire's over-optimistic Pangloss in the title is no error! You might be going as far wrong as he is in Candide. Indeed, if Valentine Sims and Principia Arcana are the most influential and important product of Calliste's Enlightenment (they quite specifically are not!) it should be possible for Our Heroes to encounter 'That irritating little squirt Sims who's always barking up the wrong tree' and get written into the popular history books two centuries later as narrow-minded dunderheaded hidebound reactionaries! I've written it before: It's all the discarded ideas and first efforts and groundwork that contributed, bundled up and dressed in a periwig.

Indeed, when building up the ideas for TRoAPW and the magical debates ongoing in Calliste I did contemplate writing in a few Red Herrings. Eventually, I decided this wasn't necessary. Firstly, some schools of thought (e.g, Ante-Grimoireans) are wilder than others anyway and can act as potential implausible explanations. 

Secondly, a number of the debates I was writing up weren't about anything as solid as (say) the orbit of the planets or the circulatory system - how one divides up Spells for use by human wizards isn't something one can answer in a mathematically correct manner. This isn't to say that a GM can't say that in their Calliste (to take a side at random) the Polycameralists have it mostly right and their opponents are wrong, but I have no wish to put that rule in place.

Thirdly, in my experience RPG players are quite good at picking the wrong end of the stick all by themselves. When it's something as open as TRoAPW rather than a mystery solving game like Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, perhaps best not to through additional obstacles into their way. 

In addition to Pangloss, of course, there's meant to be a sense of possibility in TRoAPW. The Bastille has been stormed - now the future of France is wide open, and you are right there in the heart of Paris! You are a participant, not a tourist - Cf. Faufreluches - and unlike the rulers of Lakoto, you can make some bloody stupid decisions. 

Fine, some conclusions:

1. Even setting magic aside, the TRoAPW point of view should be in almost equal parts as like and as unlike to a modern PoV. There might even be an 'Uncanny Valley' effect - the reformers of Calliste trying so hard to be capital-M modern without succeeding that they end up becoming somehow repellant.
2. Players coming up with half-baked schemes is right in the spirit of TRoAPW. Players getting it utterly wrong is right in the spirit of TRoAPW.
3. You might be part of a movement with some overall positive effects - that doesn't mean you're a paragon of virtue.
     Likewise, that Calliste is presently free of Thirty Years War-style religious conflict does not mean it is free of strife. 

"And I only am escaped alone to tell thee....."

There have been more deaths in Abermawr. These have been discussed and analysed sufficiently in the past, and I see no reason to add to any previous memorials.

But the adventuring doesn't slow down. New characters are rolled up, backstories compiled, adventurers take over empty rooms in the slowly accumulated compound. The newcomers pick up the notes of the previous party and pick up where they left off.

Who is briefing them? The domestic staff? Magical familiars? Friends and family? How would they come to know all this? A little unlikely. (Not that that this quite matches the Three Mile Tree scenario at present.)

A thought crossed my mind: what if one escaped? Maimed, injured beyond the level of fighting-fit, but possessed of all the knowledge needed to set up a new party of adventurers. If an agreeable trajectory for players is full-blown establishment and possibly even retirement, it should be no surprise that someone becomes a manager.

The most ghastly fate of all.

The process is thus: TPK. GM taps Player A on the shoulder, asks her if she wouldn't mind having Character X stick around via a tiny little Retcon as M to a pack of 007s*. (The less flattering comparison is presumably the maimed recruiting sergeant in Starship Troopers). Player A says Yes; off-screen Character X crawls out of the dungeon minus left hand, right leg and fearfully scarred over the left eye. Character X takes over HQ duties, including bringing the newcomers up to speed.

Does this appeal? Certainly, if this was a new season of a television serial or Book Five of the Chronicles of XYZ, the reappearance of Star-Captain Fletcher Irving or Lady Steelheart might delight an audience. Master Bernardus escaped from the Platinum Immortals of the Supreme Syndic and has undergone a change in appearance, mannerism and motivation....allowing his actor to display a greater range.

Would such a thing work at the tabletop? Well, recurring figures in campaigns can delight the players. If your mysterious employer in the concealing cowl turns out to be our old friend Ajax Barjazid, it could do likewise. If cleared with Player A, who has fond memories of Ajax's STR 18 and CON 17, and doesn't appreciate this shabby resurrection. 

But cue the seeking of magical solutions: Get Barjazid a healing miracle! Get him a magical iron hand! Tear it off a god! Let's Corum that beautiful bastard Barjazid! That might even be an interesting quest, but this is all in some sense the same as bringing them back from the dead.

Mike Mignola's Corum.
(Looking less than delighted by the Eye of Rhynn and Hand of Kwll.). 

Anyway, if the Adventuring Party is in the sort of frequent deaths-no resurrections arrangement, I at least like the image of a scarred veteran directing the next generation (though perhaps a surviving NPC is better). But this is the sort of thing where tastes will differ, and there's probably something I missed. 

*Or whatever the collective noun is. A martini of 007s? An Aston? An innuendo?

World of Lazarus: A Worked Example

 I wrote in my World of Lazarus review:

• There's a nice section on how an organisation a GM creates might grow and plot to advance itself. A component I can see myself using elsewhere. 

Very well. Let's give this a try.

We will speculate that a minor family under Minetta aims to carve out a domain of their own in former Soleri territory. This is semi-plausible - given that A) there is no sovereign authority in the East African territory that World of Lazarus maps out as former Soleri territory and B) Minetta is relatively laissez-faire as a Family goes - not that they would be intensely relaxed by this move, but this can give said minor family more starting room to manoeuvre. 

What shall we call them? Let's give this minor family a name from the Karnataka and the Mysore region - Urs, and have them unite with a warlord; a former Soleri colonel who can muster enough diplomatic niceties to integrate himself into X+65 international society. We'll call him Gadarat, after an Aksumite king and base him in the plain around Djibouti. Urs-Gadarat will try to set up a Trans-Erythreaean power base...

[That is, one set up across the Indian Ocean. I'm being wilfully obscure, I suppose - but Trans-Indian could mean, e.g. between Mumbai and Kolkatta or Chennai and Lahore. So we're using an older phrase for the Red Sea and beyond, because I want a non-confusing equivalent to Trans-Atlantic or Trans-Pacific.]

....in, the aim would be, a quadrilateral with corners at Cochin, Hyderabad, Aden and Zanzibar. Penetration into the Ethiopian Highlands and the Nile below Khartoum can wait. 

This draws on A) a history of trade across the Indian Ocean, B) The Aksumite empire mentioned above had territory in Ethiopia and what is now Yemen and C) a desire to see another scattered set of family territories like Bittner on its arc across the North Atlantic, another thalassocracy. (I take it that sea trade in X+65 persists despite fancy future aeroplanes, &c. No one's seriously restarted travel by airship. The Macau Accords would likely affirm something like present Freedom of the Seas for de facto King Canute reasons.)

***

Let's trace out a year by some of the tables in World of Lazarus.

The first stage of Urs-Gadarat is a Plot action: a Surgical Strike against Mogadishu to knock out the local rulers (a group of strongmen operating through puppet-Magistrates). Initial strike by helicopter, with drone reconnaissance; reinforcement by Land forces from the Jijieh-Gode highway (widened by Soleri). The defence advantage is matched by the intelligence Urs drones are able to provide. A qualified success: the Gadarat strike force suffers severe casualties. But in the next fortnight Urs civil engineering teams are able to clear and operate the harbour, opening it to vessels from other Minetta sub-groups. 

Attempts to Grow Urs-Gadarat properly into the interior of the Horn are stymied by an Organisational Threat: Shortages.  Their ports might be secure and there may be no military threat, but compliance is slow. Farms, mines and production facilities can only produce the desired commodities with assistance -  crop-strains, machine tools, vehicles. Repayment is more likely with U-G managers and enforcers in place, but this will still require a sacrifice of Capital.

And U-G is Plotted against. Their expenditure has not gone unnoticed in Minetta, and the scheme is now more obvious. Any action against Minetta is Undermined. 

The proper response to this is a Plot of Corruption. Influence and Capital are applied to Minetta inspectors, who may convincingly state that this is Gadarat's action, with Urs purely involved in a commercial sense. 

A further season of Growth will now be needed: A Hardening of Systems - both Urs enclaves in Mysore and the Djibouti-Mogadishu line.  Harar will stand as a strong point protecting the Horn region. Mysore assets will undergo a reinforcement from the veterans of Mogadishu - newly trained in the advanced weapons and battle-drills of a Family-level army.

The slow trickle of profits from existing Urs properties and new acquisitions allows Recapitalisation by U-G. But all this does now go unnoticed, and a mix of proxy efforts go against them. The Khartoum Clique begins selling arms to the Provisional Governate in Addis Ababa, and Nkosi flames into life rumours of U-G injustice in Mogadishu. Bad PR. Growth in the next year will struggle.

Accordingly.....

***

So...this was a fudge. I'm not quite using the Modern AGE mechanics here - it's a partially random, partially chosen set of ideas, which I hope hang together. A better option would have been to copy out the relevant tables, scrubbed of explicit mechanical detail. 

But was this satisfying? Eventually, yes. It's aping a real story or set of events, but by X+66 we have decent powder-keg in the former Soleri territory. There's the possibility of war along the Awash river valley and the ridge of the Ahmar mountains. The Islamic shrines of the city of Harar devastated - incensing religious leaders in the Minetta bailiwick, who have a ready-made strike against Urs-Gadarat....

Let's call the above, then, the turning of a starting-handle. Lots of sweat and grinding, but the motor is now purring nicely.

The Rest of All Possible Worlds: Trajectory

So: The Rest of All Possible Worlds has several locales, and several magical disputes. But what would a group of assorted ne'er-do-wells do in this world?

Where are the Adventures?

The continent of Calliste is settled. Any wars of religion are over and done: cabinet warfare is the order of the day. Street violence is present, but has not led to civic breakdown. There may be isolated regions or dense forests, but this is not Warhammer Fantasy: the teeming herds of Beastmen do not lurk in the backwoods. There is no such thing as Skaven.

However, the pursuit of magical knowledge (and fame, and money) will lead people into danger. Tracking ley lines is a theoretically simple idea, but there are those that object to outsiders - especially outsiders with theodolites. Travel beyond Calliste is fraught with peril: not everywhere speaks Common, and not every continent is so free of monsters. But there are unknown magical doctrines to be uncovered, mystical artefacts to retrieve (by fair means or foul...), studies to be made. Adventures like Quelong and Hot Springs Island suggest themselves for the proven adventurer.

Some 'dungeons' might remain in Calliste - Horatione tombs complexes, perhaps, or the vaults of the older magical colleges. But there are fewer liches in the barrow mounds of Glengallow than you might imagine.  

Further, there is the possibility of magic opening up new prospects for adventurers. Portals are known to the mages of Calliste, and there are those who are very excited about the possibilties they offer.

Thus, a sort of trajectory for an adventuring party suggests itself.

A Trajectory

An assortment of mages, rogues, pathfinders, pietists, &c are gathered to support a ley line survey in a province of (say) Pavaisse. They defuse local tensions, see off a few spectres and plot a course through the wilderness. Having thus bonded, they rent a house together when they return to Purlitz. 

Trading on their reputation (and in need of money), they sign onto an expedition to the distant Alamgir Empire - there to investigate and learn about a form of Illusion magic practiced by the local mage-caste. In this they will have the support of a Pavaisse magical institution and the local factor of the Pavaisse-Orient Trading Company.

We will presume them to have conducted themselves with the necessary blend of grace and strength in order to triumph - and make a certain amount of money. Their reputation increases, via a blend of patronage, wealth, experience and a short burst of niche fame. They start getting invited to the right parties: those mages among them are asked to take positions on the magical questions of the day. They invest in resources of their own: a library, a bank account with suitably generous terms, access to the better sort of suppliers. They take a formal name: let us suggest 'The Crucible Society' - for they have been tested under pressure and under fire. 

Then a Minister of the Crown retains them for auxiliary support in the Campaigning season. Scrying, scouting and sabotage leads them to intelligence pertaining to the movements of the Tsymricane Western Corps. In the right circles, approval or grudging admiration grows. When an armistice is declared, they return to Purlitz.

It is in Purlitz that they learn of a site in the Bronzemount Free State which seems to be a nexus of ley lines. Other magical institutions would like to investigate it - which may have very different ideas about the future of Callistan magic (or, indeed, of certain polities within Calliste). Accordingly, the Crucible Society sees an opportunity. They can raise money of their own, speak to the correct patrons and appeal to the certain Arch-Mages - all to outfit an expedition to the Free State, to fame, fortune, power and progress.

This is the trajectory I conjure for TRoAPW. Steps are taken from 'Service' to 'Independence' to 'Influence' to 'Establishment'.  'Comrades' to 'Club' to 'Institute'. Prospects increase, but security does not. Eventually, there may be the chance to opt out entirely - to retire from active research and prepare the new generation, to withdraw to the country, to take a noble title, to go into politics - or to step off: 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world....among The Rest of All Possible Worlds.