The Campaign Builder's Guild

[ooc]Shoot, I was going to fill that in but forgot... damn.  And yeah, very RRish... (now fixed)

As for the silk thing, lilix don't have spinnarets, so they can't produce it in substantial quantities.  Ironically its the Moth-Kings of Skein who have the silk monopoly in the Cadaverous Earth.[/ooc]

[ooc]Added Spiderchatter names for the Tiers, since I felt they lacked the flavorful names of some of the other cities.  I'm trying to go for something between Lovecraft's Rhleyian and Drow... sort of unpronoucnable with too many s's, z's, and ch's.  Each tier is named after its respective number in Spiderchatter.[/ooc]

QuoteAs for the silk thing, lilix don't have spinnarets, so they can't produce it in substantial quantities. Ironically its the Moth-Kings of Skein who have the silk monopoly in the Cadaverous Earth.

Well what I was wondering is if a race worshiped spiders, why they would not have bred spiders which do have spinners that are strong enough to bridge the gap between the buildings? It would seem to make sense that they would be obsessed with spider-weave... especially if their towers are completely designed with spider art.

Maybe they can't. And elements that pervade a culture don't have to be omnipresent. Spidersilk-everything seems to me to be overdoing it.

[ooc]Hmm good point about the specially bred spiders, I hadn't considered that.  The scripture of Verlum is a spider-silk tapestry, so maybe that'd be a good way to incorporate the silk - as a decorative material, and perhaps to shore up holes and do repairs.  Households could keep giant spiders as humans keep cats and dogs... as in this painting.[/ooc]

Sounds like a good solution Steerpike!

Surely if they worship spiders, then making the spiders, specially bred or otherwise, do menial construction work for them would be pretty anathematic?

[ooc]Perhaps there are castes within the spiders, and/or only male spiders are permitted to do any sort of work, with female spiders being kept purely as pets.

I like the idea that spiders are sacred animals, not to be harmed, with strays just wandering the streets of Dolmen, susbsisting off blood donated by the clergy or those citizens wishing to curry the favgour of Verlum.

I'm going to have to write up a detailed entry on them, for sure.[/ooc]

[ooc]Added a section on spiders to Dolmen.  Thanks everyone for all the input!![/ooc]

QuoteVenomous spiders of both sexes are occasionally used for assassination, placed in the room of a would-be target and then directed through eldritch means to attack. If the target awakens they are placed in an exceedingly awkward position '" either kill the spider and thus suffer the consequent penalty for their blasphemous actions, or attempt to escape without killing the spider, a potentially difficult prospect, especially if the cunning assassin has blocked their chamber door.

Cruelly amusing. :)

The fashion part shows you at your visual best (I am NOT going to get into you ocular fetish again), though I found myself wanting a description of the fashions and conventions of the upper class to complete the picture.

[ooc]I added an opening vignette to Dolmen.  It's a little bit more character-driven (I hope) than some of the others, though like most its designed to evoke a sense of place first and foremost; it features a member of Dolmen's lilix underclass (not a slave), which hasn't recieved as much attention...

EDIT: I also addeda  little bit on upper class fashion, as Lord Vreeg requested.[/ooc]

I was wondering, what are the limits of magic in your setting? What can you achieve?
And how many different schools of magic are there? (you are "slightly" Mieville-inspired, and as you are well aware he has a hell of a lot of different thaumaturgic and semi-thaumaturgic disciplines)

[ooc]Most individuals in CE would have trouble achieving really grandiose things (nothing in the region of a Wish spell, or a True Ressurection, for example - or planeswalking), but those sorts of things are probably theoretically possible.

For magic schools, I haven't totally decided yet, and will probably write up detailed school descriptions, but basically I was thinking something like these:

fleshcraft: grafting, animation/reanimation, some necromantic effects, etc - mostly for construct creation or augmentation, slow and ritual-based.

diabolism/demonaltry/demonism: demon-summoning and similar conjuration stuff, like circles of protection or binding - again mostly quite slow.

elementalism: simialr to Mieville's elementalism in some respects; conjuration, basically, or giving animacy to normally inanimate phenomena, rather than previously animate phenomena.

nigromancy: mostly offense hex-based witchcraft and curses; "black magic."

glyph-graving: mostly defensive glyph-based witchcraft.

shamanism: variants practiced by tribal individuals, with a smattering of healing/offensive spells and basically whatever'd be useful for a medicine man/elder figure.  Auguries and entrail reading a must.

mysticism: lilix system, mostly about divinations and voodoo-esque assassin witchcraft.

soul-tinkering: like fleshcraft, but less material.

gutter-witchcraft: the most common sort - petty magic and cobbled-together glyphs and hexes stolen from many sources.  Mongrel occultism.

I don't think these "schools" will be nearly as discrete as DnD schools but as in DnD, in pratice most witches would probably borrow from a number of traditions.  So a magister of Skein might specialize in diabolism but would probably know a handful of battle-hexes as well, perhaps...[/ooc]

But these all rely on the basic hexcraft ideas right? (maybe except for demonalatry). Do you have anything that doesn't rely on those premises? Not that this isn't more than enough :p