The Campaign Builder's Guild

Every living thing is bound to every other living thing, by generations stretching back into timeless protean space.  They are each a child of the first amoebic eve, indeed, a splintered reflection of the firstborn's own self, an unbroken chain of life and being '" one life, one being, with a trillion faces.  So too are worlds, all worlds, daughters of the first world in uninterrupted sequence: the same living planet divided and rebirthed.  A study of their genesis reveals the path to the parent and the ancestor: the first world whence all others, even ours, are spawned.

It is not, as some have speculated, a mere quirk of uncertainty in the physical nature of the cosmos '" no reconciliation of contrary possibilities or a need to account for all variables '" that demands new worlds be born.  If so, there would be no counting their number and no nuance too subtle by which they might be differentiated.  Rather, much like living animals there are moments of fertility, when a planet overburdened with histories or ideas or thronging organisms, must discharge the excess, budding new spaces to accommodate that which it has no place for.  And so the nascent planets blossom, and the parent, divested of old weights, is itself a new creature.  It forgets.  Those who call it home will most often forget.  And the new worlds have no past to remember. '"J.Titus

ANTEBELLUM: The past belongs to another place.  It lingers here only as a glimmer seldom glimpsed: a phantom of regret and unshakeable fears that once refused the possibility of paradise.  So we do not know what caused the War, or what the world was like before it.  If you like, the War itself was the birth of Quoth; to speak of a 'before' is to speak of impossibilities. '"Poiñee

ARMAGEDDON AND AFTER: Queen Shybbel and the Waking Bubble; Vi, Ferd and Tingwe, the Duchesses of Infinity; CROMLIER the father-mountain and all the tiny Gods of Morning... by war's end these gods were dead, their kingdoms crushed by mighty BLUE SKY, questing Long Nan Muto and the evil Ragamattia, scoured away with fire and cannon and little marching horrors.

But not forgotten.

Jangwa, King of Spite, who is slave to Ragamattia, chased the ghost of Wanohano, the smallest of all gods, through the streets of Pars, even as its towers toppled and burned.  'I will not be silenced!' the little one shouted, 'We will be remembered!'  And though bitter Jangwa is tireless, Wanohano was quick, leavened as all things are when the flesh is cut away, and the Black King could not catch her.

From the ashes of the world, muddied brown with the blood of empires, came the forests of Qetiphot, and Qetiphot bade the great trees strike the ruins that remained, and the creeping vines to choke and split the towers that gaped and screamed at the sun.  By the will of Sputhain, First King of Earth, the mountains opened wide their mouths and swallowed up the gory rivers and charnel fields.   Huah-Huah! who writes the story of the world compelled the winds and the rains: 'Forget!'  But they would not.  Not air or water defamed the face of shattered Pars or humbled empty Manayan.

The shame of the gods was not hidden, and not forgotten. '"R.D.Gustaeo

...OF GREEN PEOPLE: Qetiphot, emboldened by the spread of her woods, made a race of her own: the Green People with cities of leaves.  Being of the wood, they had no hearts, and less kindness in them even than Ragamattia.  The whole world hated them, and they learned in time to hate themselves.  They took the sword Flame from Cassipode as she slept and even as it consumed them they sought the head of their mother.  She scattered them with a shrug, of course, and tore their lords apart to feed her soil, but her pride was humbled.  The Green People live now in the cool dark beneath a few traitor forests and scheme forever new ways to spite their mother.

SHADDAI RISES, FALLS: In the early days there was an empress named Wesser.  Once proud and ruthless, her wits were denuded by age and warped with paranoia.  Her daughters and sons gathered to plot her demise and agreed that young Shaddai, an imperial grandson who was handsome yet simple and easily led, would succeed her.  But when Wesser sat at banquet, ready to drink from the bowl her children had poisoned, a gale blew in by the will of Long Nan Muto who had loved the empress before her madness, and it carried the news of their treachery.  Discovered, bold princess Jimoid cast away caution and leapt at her mother with a knife, but the winds had already carried Wesser away.  

There was a long war in which Jimoid and many others died.  But Shaddai lived and by war's end he was sixteen, and a man.  Cynicism had fouled his native gentility; tragedy had worn away his trust.  Still beautiful, lords and spirits alike gave their daughters to him so that he might have a wife from every kingdom.  He made slaves of them all and married none, for he thought he would live forever and saw no need for heirs.  Nevertheless, at the end of his life he did take a wife, and sire an heir, for the gods had not yielded their secrets to him.

This second Shaddai was crueller still.  He gave in kind with all gifts received: was loved by the wealthy and despised by paupers, who had nothing to give and so were starved or put away in unlit mazes and sent mad.  When a king seeking favour gave Shaddai the best of his horses, a pearl-white charger with hooves of gold, and the beast shat loudly as the emperor moved to mount it, Shaddai sent him all the sick and deranged of the empire, thus infecting his subjects and making a leper of his realm.

The third Shaddai was as unlike his forebears as can be imagined.  Gracious and even-handed, he knew in his youth that he must one day kill his father, but could not think how to accomplish it, for his father had become a sorcerer.  At last he heard tales of Flame, stolen from sleeping Cassipode and guarded by the Green People, and set out to find them.  Because they have no hearts, the Green People did not tell him of its curse; they thrust it gladly into his hands and hurried back into their burrows.

The world itself rejoiced when Shaddai put the sword Flame through his father's neck and burned him to ash.  But many lords had profited from the emperor's ways and they knew the son would prove their ruin.  Young Shaddai was murdered in his bed, never having worn the crown. '"Anonymous

AGELESS WHITE CASTLES: Centuries thence, when the name Shaddai had long since been forgotten, a human man otherwise of no importance found a magic unknown to the Living Gods that could make stone immortal.  He was murdered by his closest friend as soon as he shared this discovery.  That traitor became a king and made a castle which could not be sundered, then passed the secret to his children who became kings and queens of other places.

One day, much later, when their kingdoms covered half the world and were set pointlessly against one another '" their walls could not be broken and even gods were kept out '" Ragamattia said to Jangwa 'There is one Queen, and she is Ragamattia.'  So Jangwa crept to a tiny castle window and whispered poisonous words that filled the people's hearts with hate, so that they set upon one another and soon the halls were silent.  To each castle he crept, until all were dead amid the immortal stone.  But the castles remained, undaunted, filled with ghosts. '"Apocrypha

PARS FALLS, RISES: For ten thousand years dark-eyed Xont ruled the city of Pars.  A million invisible chains descended from his palace of air and clung to the people below so that he could shepherd their minds with sensuality and suggestion.  Because of this, the people were happy, but stupid.  Then Fabool the Demon came, fleeing the justice of another world.  He fell through the sky and broke the beautiful palace of Xont.  The illusion crumbled.  The citizens despaired of their true surroundings, warred against their god and almost killed him.  But Xont is the dream of ecstasy and thus unkillable.  He slunk away into memory and nursed his wounds.

Fabool ruled, then.  As a Demon from the stars his very being was poison, so the city, already a ruin, decayed and putrefied.  Though inhuman, Fabool was mortal.  He was strangled on his throne after a century of degenerate rule, and it again sat empty. '"C.N

THE QUEENS OF PARS: Twenty-two queens held the throne of Pars between the fall of Fabool and the rise of CROMLIER.  Pim the Eater of Hearts died peacefully in her sleep; Ley-or-Ley? who may have been two queens at once, was struck dead by the wrathful Langoor; Narn was crushed by her own weight; Sarmonise was burned alive in her bridal chamber; Hama was strangled by her impatient successor; Mamodel was flogged to death for Matricide; Dimardenda died in childbirth; Nosemardenda died of old age; Nimgua was eaten by trolls; Bamuncephelin abdicated and was not seen again; Rangal Puji drowned under suspicious circumstances; Tingal Puji died of the pox, as did all her daughters; Ursull Pan Orsid was slain by a hundred arrows at the battle of Pann; Vertimine died of an infected wound; Xarpir died of a broken heart; Fulminid Crassea fell from a great height; Sessil was poisoned by traitors; Bwaroji was poisoned by accident; Padmose poisoned herself; Onee was crushed by Mons the Tower; Lamili was murdered by her lover; Fumili went mad and cut her own throat... The gods have a rotten sense of humour. '"M.P

MOON AND THE VIRGIN: The goddess MOON looked down from her gardens one day and saw the boy Dimiu resting naked in a field.  Smitten, she went to his parents and begged that she be permitted to have him, but was denied.  She slew them, and when Dimiu returned home to find his parents dead he thought they had been killed by some monster.  He lived alone for a time, fearful of the beast that had taken his parents, while MOON watched him in yearning and shame.

At last he left with his mother's mattock and his father's knife, and journeyed long until he reached ancient Pars, where war was brewing.  There he became a soldier and saw the summoning of Mons the Tower, who had lain dead beneath the streets since before Time began, and fought the endless armies of Black Jangwa.  All the while, MOON watched him and defended him, and came to him in dreams.  For this reason alone he survived, became a general, and even once turned back the King of Spite.

Then MOON approached him undisguised and offered him a kingdom above all the kingdoms of earth, but though she was more beautiful than any creature of this world, his heart belonged to the soldier Qalil, who had fought beside him for so long.  That night Dimiu lay with Qalil, and MOON, seeing this, left him at last, in sorrow.  Her blessings left him also, but Dimiu, not knowing why, felt it was a burden lifting free after so many years, a burden he had not known was there. '"a fable

Those are ancient things, of which there is much more besides.  We could speak of the ire of Ragamattia, of her death and her resurrection; of CROMLIER's return or how arrogant BLUE SKY was thwarted; how Jangwa stood alone against all the other gods and lived; how humankind learned flight, and how to raise the dead, and how to speak with stars...

But all this is a long, long time ago, on a world you've never heard of.  Better, then, to speak of now.

[ooc]I spent half the day coming up with this instead of looking for a job, and I don't even know what it is. :-/ It's like Manic-depressive Lord Dunsany word salad.[/ooc]

King of Spite?  How can I not like this?  
Teaching writing as a thereputic release should be your job, if they let you on the other side of the funny white jacket.
CROMLIER???  and a pervert moon?  That is worth some stealing, if I have your permission.

Well, it's a beginning, and an evocative one, if rambling; full of tantalzingly unfleshed allusions.

May favorite fable is the one about MOON.   assume the capsolocks indicate some sort of ur-spirit/primordial/elemental, as opposed to one of the smaller gods?

I confess to having read little Dunsany (really only the Gods of Pegana), but I do see the influence in your prose here, especially in the "Armageddon and After" section.  These lines: [blockquote=Salacious Angel?  Aer you using that monkier anymore?]Jangwa, King of Spite, who is slave to Ragamattia, chased the ghost of Wanohano, the smallest of all gods, through the streets of Pars, even as its towers toppled and burned. 'I will not be silenced!' the little one shouted, 'We will be remembered!' And though bitter Jangwa is tireless, Wanohano was quick, leavened as all things are when the flesh is cut away, and the Black King could not catch her.[/blockquote] sound very Dunsanyesque... Dunsanian...Dunsanyan.

What this does somehow make me think of is the idea of roleplaying in small vignettes in order to form a sequence of stories or myths: if the players assumed the roles of cosmological figuers, gods, princes, kings, paupers, whatever is relevant, and then are suddenly placed in a scene, few statsitics to speak of if any.  It would require exactly the right sort of players and the right sort of DM but it could be an interesting experiment.

Anyway, ramble over...

[ooc]Vreeg: steal away!

As I imagine it, Black Jangwa is actually a human being - thanks to Ragamattia, the oldest human in existence.  His mistress does love him, in the perverted fashion of a crazed god of mayhem (she's like a fusion of Loki and Echidna), and he serves her dutifully.

Steerpike: I'm particularly fond of the MOON fable as well.  Reading it over I think I see a sort of metaphor, but it was purely by accident.

I'm not sure what the significance of the capitalisation is, though.  BLUE SKY isn't exactly the sky, and MOON isn't quite the moon... there is a sky apart from the god and a moon apart from the goddess (indeed, MOON's pale gardens are on the moon).  Not entirely sure what CROMLIER is, but he definitely ain't an actual mountain.  He's probably bigger.

The setting started to take on better shape in my brain while I slept last night.  As it stands, it's a sort of "quasi-futuristic mythical bronze-aged Wierd Opera" (if I can coin that phrase) in a parallel dimension.

The names of the gods so far:

Ragamattia (chaos/control)
Huah-Huah! (history and wisdom)
CROMLIER (who knows?)
Langoor (one of many gods of murder)
Xont (ecstasy)
MOON (the moon, sort of)
Cassipode (nothing in particular)
Qetiphot (forests)
Kronon (an immortal warlord)
Sputhain (a king of the earth, but I don't know what that means)
BLUE SKY (the sky, sort of)
Baar Sengar (something gross)

The initials at the end of each fable are the names of actual individuals in the setting.  M.P=Mardenand Panodphantion, and so on.[/ooc]

A simple question: Are you composing a world largely made up of gods or godly beings?
Or will it, at some point after the mythical history, take place in a mortal world?  
That is, if this has any connection to an actual setting at all ^^

The entire history takes place in the mortal world.  Mythical history and "modern" history are one and the same.  Pars is a genuine city of millions, that has experienced real growth and tragedy, and has been ruled by 22 human queens with unique identities and tragic fates all their own.

So with that in mind, I think the setting places mortals on equal footing with the semi-divine, at least in terms of narrative power (and playability).  Consider, for example, the tale of MOON and the Virgin: here we have a mortal boy, disastrously the object of an obsessive god's affections, who goes off and fights in a real war against the ancient servant of the Goddess of Chaos and Control, and beats him (in Jangwa's defence, he is really old).  Those stories/slices of history serve in part to give you an idea of the sort of things that might happen to the PCs.

Now, those events did in fact happen a long time ago, but those sorts of things still happen.  Thankfully, with Ragamattia no longer a nuisance, whole civilisations are no longer disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Getting back (after what, ten months?) to something you said, Steerpike, I think the whole idea of roleplaying vignettes is pretty kickass. I got to thinking about the idea while I was messing around with my wizard thread, and it occurred to me that you'd already mentioned it.

Additionally, I've tied this thread thematically to the wizard one. It could even be the same setting. (I'm actually "tying things thematically" to all sorts of stuff other people have posted on this site. Some of you may call it theft...)