The Campaign Builder's Guild

So:

Talisman	4320
the Spatter Eel	200
Harpoons (10)	10
Net (2)	40
Dagger	2
Leather	10
Misc.	5
Total (rounded)	4590

Sling and quarterstaff are free. I assume I can waive the 1 sp cost for sling bullets as I rounded...
This leaves Lhars with 410 obeloi (615 drachmi) to spend on other things.
By the way, would be glad to receive more info on Hagman culture in general and specifically in and around Lophius. What is the social order? Are they facing any external threats? Internal? Are they active on Lophius' political scene?

Sure!

So hagmen are somewhat split between the urban and the swamp-dwellers, and further split between urban traditionalists and those who want to assimilate.  The swamp-dwelling hagmen are backwoods primitives with little technology beyond the bow and arrow and the spear, plus vodun/witchcraft.  Their only major buildings are temples to the Aeon-Worm's many aspects built of stones and mortared with their own mucus.  Otherwise they live a hunter-gatherer style existence, fishing and hunting game for food, defending their territory (and sacred grounds) from human hunters, leechkin, and demons.  There might be some trade here and there with other settlements: hides, poisons, and herbal remedies for metal, tools, and similar goods.  Life is tough in the swamps, so swamp-dwelling hagmen learn to be tougher.  In the swamps the greatest challenge is the daily task of survival; more broadly speaking, tribal hagmen fear the eventual encroachment of the city into their lands and the corruption of the swamps by "human deviltry."  They consider many urban hagmen to be race-traitors who have betrayed the hagman way of life, though this extreme attitude s not universal amongst the tribes.

In the city, many hagmen view their primitive kindred with disdain and horror, or even embarrassment, though some nostalgically long for a simpler time, or a time when they were closer to the land.  Urban hagmen of the traditionalist branch want to preserve their culture, honouring the traditional deities and maintaining age-old customs.  They tend to retain their racial prejudices (against leechkin, predominantly).  These hagmen live primarily in Snailsump, the hagman ghetto.  Many work as stevedores in the docks, others as fishermen, still others as traders or ferrymen like Lhars.  A cadre of conservative elders rules the district.  The biggest challenges from their perspective include holding on to the old ways, teaching their own young their culture, etc.  External threats include the constant pressures placed on Snailsump by the city's ruthless gangs.  Bands of hagmen patrol the canals and streets of Snailsump, especially around the borders, ensuring that toughs from other districts can't harass their citizens.  The traditionalists also tend to be a bit isolationist, though at the same time they recognize that to be part of the city they have to interact with other species.

In the city, though, many hagmen have sloughed off many of their old traditions and embraced a more cosmopolitan lifestyle, becoming gangsters, gamblers, thieves, scavengers, and mercenaries.  These hagmen are the most likely to worship gods other than the Aeon-Worm's Aspects (or to worship no gods at all).  From their perspective, the swamp-dwellers and the traditionalist urban hagmen are trying to hold on to a dying and defunct tradition with many dubious customs.  For example, hagman reproduction, in contrast with human reproduction, is a public, communal affair: those who become female and wish to bear young become temple prostitutes in the service of Myx, male hagmen donate to the temple to take their pleasure, and the resulting young are hatched in towers and raised by semi-female androgynes, without knowledge of their specific parents.  Thus the idea of "family" or of having a monogamous, long-term sexual relationship in hagman culture is somewhat alien.  You have a relationship with the community, with the Aeon-Worm's Aspects, not with individuals as such.  Hagmen who want to assimilate find these concepts rigid and suffocating.  They also often find the bigotry of traditionalist culture disgusting.  The traditionalists, in turn, claim that those who assimilate are simply substituting (inferior) human culture for hagman, valuing concepts like money and pleasure over the well-being of their fellows.

The distinctions between the three broad groups are not cut and dried.  There are plenty of hagmen who believe that some customs should be observed but that others are barbaric, for example.

As a weird detail, hagmen also tend to be very good Imbroglio! players.  The hagman brain is wired in such a way that it always anticipates a creature's next move: when you're looking at a fish swimming through the water, you have to place your spear not where the fish appears to be or even where the fish is but where the fish will be.  When you're hunting a crocodile with half a dozen others through a murky lake, you have to possess a solid grasp on tactics and lines of power and force.  To make things harder, hagman sight sucks, so hagmen have learned to rely not merely on their senses but on intuition, calculation, and tactical reason.  All this translates very well into the complex, three-dimensional clockwork chess that is Imbroglio!

Hopefully that fills in some blanks.  Let me know if you have any more questions, and feel free to invent details yourself.

EDIT: urban hagmen, especially non-traditionalists, often either wear spectacles/optics to correct their vision or have their eyes replaced with grafts from humans or other species.  Arch-traditionalists consider this a vile practice which denigrates the hagman body.

How structured is the society and who provides for the young? How are they inducted into professions and society? What are the roles of the liminal genders? Pure females are temple prostitutes (only?), pure males take on a variety of roles as well as mate and one of the liminals raise the young ones, but the rest are uncovered. A gender reserved for the shamans/elders?
(also, what are the other primary aspects of the Aeon-worm?)
(final question: how old do they get and when do they reach adulthood?)
I will do a preliminary version of Lhars' background today, possibly taking a few liberties with Lophius' history.

 

Here is my first draft for a background story.

[ic=The Previous Life of Lhars Grendwoyn]
Born in the temple hatcheries of Lophius, Lhars was raised to serve his community as a fisherman.
Following the path set before him without objection, Lhars' nature nonetheless saw him question the role of himself and his own people in the greater world. He grew into a brooding youth full of doubts.

During the 3-day Launpaliya Festival of his 17th year, Lhars fell in with the hagman witch-preacher Moul Daugm and the revolutionary cult of the walking worm. As the months passed, his dedication to the cult grew more and more extreme and he abandoned his old duties in favor of his new religious duties to the community and Moul Daugm himself.

Lhars quickly rose through the hierarchy of the cult to become Daugm's right-hand man and enforcer. Daugm preached that the hagmen had become divided and for their culture to survive they must gather and unite. Further, he saw the swamps as a doomed life and wished for all his worldly brethren to join in a new hagman community on firm soil, to rebuild and prosper. It was under this dogma that the Resettlement movement began and Lhars, amongst others, was sent into the swamps to bring their people back to Lophius, promising food and a better life to all who'd follow.

Many did follow and Lophius saw a surge of barbaric hagman immigrants. The city tried to close its gates, but the cult smuggled the fugitives across the canals at night. So many followed the promises of the cult to the city that the food grew scarce, and instead the hagmen turned on the city, wild with anger and  disappointment. The gangs cracked down on them hard and to this day even the hardened people of Lophius remember it is a massacre, the streets flowing with the viscous blood of the hagmen.      

Support for the revolution dwindled and after an unsuccessful coup d'etat orchestrated by Moul himself, the walking worm cultists fled into the swamps with gang enforcers hard on their heels. Some say Moul grew mad with vengeance on that day of exile, as he started waging a merciless guerilla war on Lophius, harming what he saw as the oppressors of his people in whatever way he could.

Meanwhile, Lhars and the other remaining zealots were sent out into the swamps to gather support, of which there was little. Under orders of the mad prophet, Lhars was instead sent to poison the clean springs, burn the trees and force the hagmen by force to march on the city.

Gradually, his fervor faded and his zealous faith festered and when the mercenaries known as the Leering Legion were sent into the swamps to round up the rebels Lhars abandoned Daugm to torture and execution and fled deeper into the wilds.

He lived as a highwayman for a year, but in time he grew disillusioned with all his crimes. He became a hermit, self-sufficient and alone.   

Love for his city and the people he thought he had fought for finally brought him back to Lophius, after many years in self-imposed exile, where he now lives an unassuming life as a ferryman. Few remember him and those who do don't know what to think of him.

He has turned his back on the Walking Worm, but still keeps faith in the old ways while yearning for a new life for both him and his people
[/ic]

I don't know if it comes off as too "dramatic". He is basically just a slightly above average guy/hagman who got caught up in bigger things like so many others. I was trying to paint him more as a follower of Daugm rather than as a leader of the cult, as I don't want him to be too central a figure: he was just blinded by his youthful zeal into serving a madman.  
Didn't specify what the cult aspect of the Walking Worm was, but it probably has something to do with a Hagman messiah who will unite the people and give them a new and better life.

Quote from: CrowHow structured is the society and who provides for the young? How are they inducted into professions and society? What are the roles of the liminal genders? Pure females are temple prostitutes (only?), pure males take on a variety of roles as well as mate and one of the liminals raise the young ones, but the rest are uncovered. A gender reserved for the shamans/elders?
(also, what are the other primary aspects of the Aeon-worm?)
(final question: how old do they get and when do they reach adulthood?)

It's a pretty structured society: at first a nursery, then later a boarding school, in essence.  When they reach middle-adolescence (at roughly the same time humans do) they may be fostered with a trader, artisan or at a temple, etc. according to their talents and to a lesser extent their wishes; accepting an apprentice of this sort is considered a communal duty, though the hagman accepting the apprentice also gets a free labourer.

Each Aspect of the Aeon-Worm has attendants of a different gender.  So Myx's priestesses are female, but Eptaar's are male, and Agnath's are androgyne, etc.  The main aspects are Agnath (wisdom, knowledge), Myx (fertility, femininity), Nemoch (change, transformation), Hereten (death, finality), Tsuggoth (decay, degeneration), Eptaar (battle, masculinity), and Anguilla (hunting, competition).

Artisans, artists, architects, agriculturists, and those who produce/create things tend to be liminal females.  Those inclined to study and scholarship tend to be closest to pure androgyne.  Traders, brute labourers, and hunters/fishermen tend to be liminal males.  Warriors are pure male and temple prostitutes/breeders are pure female.  During the ritual month of Myx, in the spring, many hagmen of all genders temporarily become males to do their "sacred duty."

Outside of the traditional strictures of hagman society, many hagmen embrace whatever gender suits them most at any given moment.  In practice, most hagmen experiment with the profusion of genders available to them before "settling" on a default gender.  During their upbringing they are taught how to effect each metamorphosis, and will spend time as each gender at one point or another once they become fully capable of the change (at puberty)

I hadn't given much thought to their final age but I'd say roughly comparable with a human, maybe a little less.  Nothing dramatic.

Did you miss that I posted the actual background story?

No, I had to run so I responded to your questions quickly, but it's a great background!  I like the idea of immigration troubles and the Walking Worm is very CE. This would have occurred perhaps a decade ago, give or take?

Yeah, something like that. He was still young back then, now he is probably somewhere between late 20s and mid 30s.
EDIT: he might even be older if it can be justified.
I'm also a little uncertain about what kind of sounds and style to use for hagman names. I assumed that Bregm and Skaumn (Lophius districts) were derived from hagman language, but the divine aspects have a more roman sound to them. 

They probably sound roman because they're mostly adapted from the scientific names for hagfish and eel genera.  For hagman names I've tried to go for a mashup of Latin, Mieville's Vodyanoi names, and Dying Earth style names, though Caribbean influences might also fit.

Hah! I was aiming for Vodyanoi, it seemed likely you would be inspired by them :D
(although Grindylow probably influenced his surname; do hagmen actually have surnames?)

I hadn't thought about it - probably not, since surnames usually denote family ties.  Maybe some progressive hagmen who know their biological parents might have surnames.

I suppose there might be tribal names or something, though.

I was thinking the surnames might be profession-based. Since their community seems fairly caste-based/role-based this would be a good way to discern between individuals.
Grendwoyn would therefore mean Fisher(man).
Identifiying with your clan/community would also make sense, though. This practice might not be followed by urban hagmen as they are essentially all part of the city community ("of Clan Lophius" in hagmanic?).

Hagmen could have a tribe-name (surname) and a profession-name (middle name), but urban hagmen have lost the tribal structure, so their professional name (acquired at a certain point, obviously) becomes their effective surname.

For monday if you want to run wispy's one-shot, I may be around potentially as early as 4:00 or 5:30 EST. Of course, for the reasons we discussed on IRC these times may lapse sadly :( but whatever happens I expect to be online by 9:45 PM EST at the latest (unless the internet dies) :o.

Cool!  I will be around from about 6:30 EST onwards, but at 10 EST I will have to break for a bit - not long, just 15-20 minutes or so.