The Campaign Builder's Guild

This is the discussion thread for the sixth most awesome setting on the CBG. Here are its previous incarnations as well as other dead settings scavenged for their fluffy deliciousness:

A lot to digest.  A lot that's familiar (love the half-hidden allusion to Tammurand - the desert-folk who live in the carcasses of huge invertebrates) and a lot that's very new.  All in all the feel is of a slightly more fey, ethereal version of dystopia; more than anything I get a sense of age and impermanence.

One question to start off: what do the "edges" of the world look like and how are they viewed by the inhabitants of the wheel?

Oh, and the question I'm sure we're all dying to know the answer to, will there be cephalopods?

Hmm one more: what exactly are the natal chambers?  They're later than the as senat, right - instrumental in humanity's rebirth?

Good old-fashioned Salacious awesomeness :)

I love the wasted aesthetic...

To respond in reverse:

I'm not actually aiming for wasted, though that isn't a disagreeable interpretation. Much of the setting is, after all, fluid and imprecise. And deliberately so.

I was actually aiming for a simple sense of age. The world goes on: this race is born and that one dies. Humans come along then they're gone. But then human's come again and it seems perhaps a rule has been broken... what now?

Natal chambers are the machinery in which humanity was gestated and born again. I'm thinking they were supposed to shut down for good when the humans woke in Dautat, but they didn't. After some indeterminate period they may spit out another race, more changed than the last (more diminished?). That isn't their only malfunction, of course. They also birthed the mara, who could exist only by consuming other creatures' patterns.

Cephalopods? Well, I don't know. Probably. Or something very much like them. The world is massive, and Dautat is one of the smaller regions in Tyr in terms of setting material, so the Cephalopod won't be detailed for a looong time. Before that there's Scath, Sar, Simulcre (a portmanteau; can you tell what of?), Samnast (it's already been alluded to in the Feb contest entry), the data plains, Calaymid, Yeldte (used to be the maggot kingdom, but now it's the chrysalid; as much moth as it is fly inspired), Baennet, and possibly Dothol (which is a reimagined version of the old Glossolalia).

The edges of the world are mountains. Wheel is essentially a ringworld, and the ridiculously tall mountains keep the atmosphere in. You can't actually see them beside you on account of the intervening atmosphere. You can see them flanking the lands overhead though. They are massive, dark and beautiful. Within them are the paths to the Outer World, the Antipodes and the city called P_______. I stole the whole ring idea from Orion's Arm, and those guys stole it from that guy with the novel.

Fey and ethereal. I like that. Aged and impermanent pretty much sum up the intended global tone (though global might be the wrong word), and I decided to describe Dautat first not because it was most important (there are, after all, two other cradles of human civilisation, and plenty of places with greater wealth and complexity) but because it tied directly into the setting ethos.

I want to convey a science fiction feel without using any actual science fiction elements. Because I'm such a big fan of Gene Wolfe and the whole Vancian motif it's tempting to suggest that this ancient, storied world with its incomprehensible past is a vast supercomputer or an artificial planet created by godminds or something - you know, yank the ol' "sufficiently advanced technology" chain. In truth it's a little bit like that, and there is definitely advanced and forgotten "science" here. But it isn't our science. It is the science of pattern, which I can not describe or compare to anything in our own experience without misrepresenting it and leading you astray.

As for Tammurand, well that's there somewhere too.

I'm going to take my time with this one. Make sure I get it right.

I am somewhat unsure, but what I've gotten out of your comments and your writings is that humanity was re-created three separate times (in three separate places) by the as senat re-birthing devices, one of these being Dautat. Also, in mentioning that the shadow of the as senat lies on a faraway shore that one of these re-birthings was somewhat successful in both parts, but still did not do what it was supposed to do.

Or am I completely off?  

(Also, as a whole I find it supremely interesting and look forward to reading more)

You are totally, completely spot on.

Off topic but out of curiousity, if this is the sixth most awesome setting on thecbg, what are the other 5? :P

I'm going to start looking through this Glossolalia and do what I do : Post questions and comments as I go. The first is very simple, why did you choose the name that you did for this setting? It is nearly a tongue twister.

At least the first paragraph of the setting thread makes me think of Lovecraft. That is not bad. I like Lovecraft. Is there a connection of inspiration there?

Your initial description seeks to give the setting a grand feel. Great for a fiction setting if you want an epic but I hope that there is room for the little guy.

Is this setting just on one side of the inner part of the wheel?

Glossolalia...glose derives from the greek "glossa" (tongue), and the suffix lalia (from greek as well) means "to speak"...yeah, I know, useless ethymology, but I didn't know what else to contribute with.

As Cap Karn pointed out, glossolalia means speaking in tongues, a thing some nutty religious types do. I tend to come up with names first and then build the tone and themes of a setting from that name. I used Glossolalia because I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. I think my ideas often depend on things half understood or misremembered and the divine hidden within the mundane. That's glossolalia.

Lovecraft is a big inspiration for me but Gloss' is a lot less bleak  and dark than his work. It's not about ominous and unknowable monster-gods and worse whose designs are anathema; the gods and great beings are the mothers and fathers and cousins of the present races. In fact so far I've only mentioned two peoples whose intentions toward the world are largely destructive: the mara and the anarchs (I suppose there's also the mirror queens, but they're really just greedy superhumans, perhaps the consequence of the mara trying to consume something from outer space). An individual on wheel should feel like they're part of something huge, not lost and alone in an uncaring vastness. So with that in mind there is room for the little guy. Any given person on wheel is very small indeed but the opportunities for distinction and adventure span from the worldwide to the personal.

The setting encompasses the entirety of the inner face. There might even be pilgrims who try to travel all the way around the world, which is a long, long, long way to travel.

First, I even searched on Google and I do not know what your new screen name is supposed to be. It sounds horrifying.

Seconds, I'm back here now.

Are these Anarchs something like the horsemen of the apocalypse in a way? That's what I get from this little bit about them here.

It's actually a Glasgow smile. It's what the Joker has.

As for the Anarchs, they are a sort of manifestation of the nature of reality. I got the idea from that Greek guy who said that the world cycled between extremes of order and chaos. The anarchs can only exist in the world when entropy is in full swing and they use this opportunity to push it even further into chaos so that the conditions are right for the emergence of the Inverted King. In that sense they are horsemen of the apocalypse. The purpose of the Nomon is for the great races of the age to come together and work a common miracle with their knowledge of pattern (pattern mastery is what determines whether a race is "great" or not. The as senat would have been a great race if they had survived until the Nomon. The iovalde definitely were) and thereby restore order to wheel.