The Manticore Gardens

[Rhamnousia]

This is a quick and dirty list of the core concepts for a weird fantasy setting I've been working on, which revolves mostly around courtly intrigue. I know there isn't a ton of it, but I want to see what sort of impression it makes on you all.


The Manticore Gardens are a colossal pleasure-palace; large enough to house thousands while still have room enough for much of the interior to be rarely-explored. Something of a tiered tower, the architecture is a synergy of Byzantine, Islamic, and Indian styles, with lots of arches and open ceilings. Everything is colorful and made from beautiful or precious materials.

The world outside the Gardens matters little to anyone within them. The lands immediately surrounding it are a flat, bone-white desert, and it sits on the shore of a midnight-blue ocean. More does exist, of course, as dignitaries travel fast distances to visit the pleasure of the Manticore Gardens.

The well-defined hierarchy is as follows: Sovereign Babylon > Dragons > Nobles > Knights > Thralls

Sovereign Babylon is the enigmatic, undisputed ruler and creator of the Manticore Gardens. While Her physical vessel is that of a human girl barely come of age, She has the aura of something far more terrible lurking behind the veil.

Dragons are Babylon's viziers and advisors, all of them ancient monsters in their own right and most decidedly non-anthropomorphic in appearance. They have their own, often convoluted agendas, and many Nobles owe some sort of fealty to one or more Dragon.

Nobles are immortal courtiers who have had their souls transmuted by Babylon into Golden Essences, the youngest of them at least a century old. While they vary wildly in appearance, they are bound by the Anthropomorphic Dictate, so they are all at least roughly-human.

Knights are servants, bodyguards, valets, etc. to the Nobles. While they have no real status or authority in and of themselves, they are sufficiently valuable that it is considered in bad taste to kill one that isn't yours.

Thralls are the meat that feeds the Manticore Garden. They are nameless creatures used from everything from fighting to fucking to eating.

Golems are artificial automata, crafted from any number of materials.

Tulpa are intelligent spirit-forms created to assist courtiers or otherwise perform some intellectual task, like a magical AI program.

Babylon lets the Nobles of the Gardens do entirely as they please as long as it doesn't interfere with her own desires. So, with all of their needs sated, they are free to focus entirely on their wants: they gossip, bicker, flirt, fuck, duel, gamble, throw parties, feast on strange dishes, drink all manner of potent beverages, ingest every sort of narcotic imaginable, peruse ancient volumes, practice music instruments, craft works of art, and many other things.

Perhaps the most important device in the Gardens is the Uranus Loom, the source of the fantastic physical vessels the courtiers inhabit. Rather than producing cloth, the Loom weaves together living bodies out of a variety of "threads": animal, plant, alchemical, stars, dreams, corpses, etc.

There are several types of magic practiced by the denizens of the Manticore Gardens. Gross Alchemie, transmuting the outward substance of the world. Subtle Alchemie, transmuting the inward substance of the soul. Divination, sort of a cross between clairsentience and omen-reading like casting bones or drawing cards. High Summoning, the conjuring of beings alien to this reality.

[Skyfire]

Well, there are some interesting ideas here. Truth be told, it's not immediately to my taste, but I would be interested in learning more.

My main questions:

• Why were the Manticore Gardens built in the first place? The grand legacy of a powerful, mad, ostentatious emperor that Sovereign Babylon came to inherit, or maybe the secret part of a conspiracy? From the descriptions, it seems there's not a lot of practical reasons for it to be there.
• Are the Thralls basically Human, or a different species entirely?
• When you say they are used for food, do you mean the Thralls themselves are eaten, or are they forced into maintaining vast artificial farms within building?
• How is the richness of the Manticore Gardens maintained? On the backs of the slaving thralls, on a thriving sea trade, or on the skills of the Alchemists?
• Lastly, what kind of roles would the players take in this setting? Thralls, who work to start a revolution; Courtiers, who seem to work only to their own ends, or any kind desired?

Its definitely an interesting concept, even if it doesn't fit usual preconceptions. I look forward to reading more about it.

[Superfluous Crow]

This could be good! Interesting location. I have trouble placing it in "the world" so to speak. Are they self-sufficient? What do the dignitaries bring back home from the court? Does the Sovereign Babylon interfere with the outside world or is she focused on her own domain? Has she ever been deposed/replaced?
I can't quite settle on how to visualize this:
Is it a hedonistic fantasy Las Vegas set on the Plateau of Leng?
Is it dreamlike place near the edges of the known world?
Is it a physical place inhabited by mighty beings akin to a cthonic Olympus or chinese/japanese heaven?

[Rhamnousia]

• Why were the Manticore Gardens built in the first place? The grand legacy of a powerful, mad, ostentatious emperor that Sovereign Babylon came to inherit, or maybe the secret part of a conspiracy? From the descriptions, it seems there's not a lot of practical reasons for it to be there.

That's one of the big in-setting mysteries. Based upon the information that can be gleaned from those outside of it and the accounts of the eldest Dragons, the Manticore Gardens are at least as old as the oldest kingdoms. And according to rumor, it was the Sovereign Babylon who built it Herself, not that she'd ever confirm or deny that fact.

• Are the Thralls basically Human, or a different species entirely?

They're human, but other courtiers frequently alter them to suit their own desires.

• When you say they are used for food, do you mean the Thralls themselves are eaten, or are they forced into maintaining vast artificial farms within building?

Both.

• How is the richness of the Manticore Gardens maintained? On the backs of the slaving thralls, on a thriving sea trade, or on the skills of the Alchemists?

Lots of ways. Thralls dredge up precious minerals from the living earth far beneath the Gardens themselves, foreign dignitaries bring huge offerings in exchange for the privileged to spend time within the walls and trade with courtiers for their crafts, foreign ships arrive every fortnight bearing precious cargo. It's also something of a mystery that I'm leaving open for the PCs to explore if they wish, and willing to ignore if they don't.

And finally, I intended for the PCs to take on the roles of Nobles and their retainers, along the lines of that they do in Ars Magica.

This could be good! Interesting location. I have trouble placing it in "the world" so to speak. Are they self-sufficient? What do the dignitaries bring back home from the court? Does the Sovereign Babylon interfere with the outside world or is she focused on her own domain? Has she ever been deposed/replaced?
I can't quite settle on how to visualize this:
Is it a hedonistic fantasy Las Vegas set on the Plateau of Leng?
Is it dreamlike place near the edges of the known world?
Is it a physical place inhabited by mighty beings akin to a cthonic Olympus or chinese/japanese heaven?

I'm intentionally leaving the rest of the world a mystery, to heighten the theme of the Gardens being a "gilded cage", so to speak. Babylon is as old as the Manticore Garden, and while there have been plots against her, she typically snuffs them out in secret or punishes the conspirators in the most graphically-public way possible, so they're not exactly common.

And as to your last question:

Why can't it be all three?

[Rhamnousia]

Life of the Nobility

The Nobles of the Manticore Gardens sit in the middle of the hierarchy. Above them, the Sovereign Babylon, to who they all owe ultimate fealty, and Dragons, to which many swear lesser oaths and contracts. Below them, Knights, their servants and handmaids, and Thralls, whose very lives are at their disposal. Their needs fulfilled, they are left free to explore their every want instead, their desires, their curiosities.

Every Noble in the Gardens owes their existence to the Sovereign, for She is the one who transmutes their souls into Golden Essences. As a result, they are ageless, slow to wound and quick to heal, and capable of transmitting their ego between physical vessels. Some were Knights or thralls before this ascension, others part of the retinue of a foreign visitor. Some even claim to have been animals, even plants, the Sovereign Babylon giving them the gift of human shape as well as immortality. If there is rhyme or reason behind whom She chooses, She has never revealed it.

Nobles have the power to determine their own physical appearances, thanks to the wondrous creation known as the Uranus Loom. The only constraint placed upon them is the Anthropomorphic Dictate, which demands that every Noble must be human in shape, with two arms, two legs, and a head. Within those limits, however, they have nigh-total freedom of expression.

The Uranus Loom works by "spinning" strands, the essential substance of things, together into living bodies; a process which is both sorcerous and scientific. At its simplest, it allows Nobles to tailor small details of their bodies, the tone of their skin or the number of joints in their digits. It is capable, however, of so much more than that, for the substances it spins need not be limited human flesh and bone. The Loom can craft a vessel from the animal or the botanical, alchemical elements, unliving flesh, the substance of stars and emotions.

The result is Nobles with bodies of living marble, of water shaped into human form, like that of a predatory feline lifted up on two legs.

With eyes the exact color as a mournful sigh, the eightfold cluster of the arachnid or the multifaceted orbs of the dragonfly, eyes made of polished rubies, or filled with the evening stars.

With flickering flames for hair, or fleshy tentacles like those of an octopus, or spikes of jagged quartz crystal, or the blooming petals of a heliotrope.

With skin of olive bark or bony chitin or the tiny golden scales of a dragon, covered by a soft coat of downy fur or actually engraved with curling arabesques.

With prehensile tongues a foot in length, with thin webbing stretched between fingers, with teeth made of mother-of-pearl or set in many jagged rows, with flightless wings both feathered and filament, with all these and countless more permutations.

The sex of a Noble is far from binary. In fact, there are six: the male, the female, the true hermaphrodite, the masculine quasi-hermaphrodite, the feminine quasi-hermaphrodite, and the androgyne. To further complicate things, not every Noble necessarily identifies with the gender their physicality would suggest.

In the parlance of the Manticore Gardens, there are four pronouns:

He – the masculine pronoun, connoting strength, direction, brutality.

She – the feminine pronoun, connoting creation, subtlety, mania.

They – the androgynous pronoun, connoting neutrality, balance, dissociation.

Qe – the transgressive pronoun, connoting rebellion, willful deviance, the rejection of the norm.


Never wanting for food, drink, or shelter, utterly detached from the petty struggle of survival, and with all the future before them, Nobles are free to focus themselves entirely on indulging their wants, their desires, and their passions. The Manticore Gardens, as a monumental pleasure-palace, was designed for exactly this purpose, providing the means for exploring any interest or pastime imaginable.

Intimate Politics

Sex.

Sex is an ever-present part of life in the Manticore Gardens, one which takes countless forms.

Two Nobles not only exchange vows and ironwood rings, but each alters his physical form to more perfectly suit his husband's ideal.

A Knight is rewarded with an hour of pleasure for every fortnight she protects her Noble's person and privacy: after two decades, she finds her thoughts growing less and less professional.

A Noble, their face neither masculine nor feminine, their endowments both, takes an oath to bed every courtier in the Gardens.

A thrall catamite drifts in a haze of aphrodisiacs and psychotropics, brought out of it only to satisfy his twin keepers.

Whatever form it takes, from the product of a romantic entanglement to the satisfaction of base desires to a politically-motivated ploy, sex is everywhere. It is impossible to name anything else that even approaches the degree of influence sexuality has over how one thinks, acts, the way they dress, the art they enjoy, the company they keep. It should be no surprise then that it is at the root of much of the drama and intrigue that color the Gardens, fueling the social games that are so much a part of the average courtier's life.

Alcohols and Narcotics

Another common facet of life in the Gardens are the enormous variety of intoxicants courtiers regularly imbibe, shoot, snort, swallow, drink, smoke, and inject.

Some courtiers poison themselves to escape the banality of their eternal existence. Some seek to heighten the sensation of an already-pleasurable experience. An artist might require a spark to set her creative energies flowing. Still others do so with the intent of expanding their consciousness, experiencing waking dreams and vivid hallucinations. For some, it is part of a social engagement, like a tea party.

And some simply like the taste.

Mundane fare requires little effort to acquire. There are wines fermented from an number of fruit, beers, brandies, ales, liquors, whiskeys , rums. There are psychoactives, like cannabis, hashish, coca, opium, heroin, peyote, amphetamines, and all manner of hallucinogenic acids. All of these thing, grown and brewed within the bowels of the Gardens, and served on the silver platter of a waiting thrall to those who would but ask.

But there are more potent toxins still, in the lands beyond the Garden walls, and many a connoisseur has gone to great lengths to acquire but a the smallest of doses. Foreign dignitaries sometimes bring them, and most are willing to barter them for some other treasure.

A few exotic examples:

A bottle of rice-whiskey in which a single serpent is pickled until it has dissolved completely. The sting of venom accompanies the burn of the alcohol; it is of such potency, it will try to slither its way back up the drinker's throat.

The left hemisphere of a learned scholar's brain, dried and ground to a fine powder. Snorting it brings the satisfying sensation of stirring intellectual discourse, but leaves the tongue tasting faintly of ink.

The viscous milk lactated from an ancient Dragon's manifold teats. Those courtier favored enough to be granted a taste claim it resembles nothing so much as the warm, loving embrace of a matronly hermaphrodite. Whatever that means.

[ooc]To come: more fantastic wines, liquors, and narcotics.[/ooc]

Sport

In the Manticore Gardens, sporting events fulfill one of three purposes:

When the participants are Nobles, it is to enjoy the thrill of athletic competition and to showcase their skill and physical prowess.

When the participants are Knights, it is for the spectacle of watching opponents of equal ability battle one another in a heated contest.

When the participants are thralls, it is to watch someone die.

Courtiers enjoy a countless variety of sports and games, for which the Garden hosts an equally-countless variety of courts and arenas. Some deliberately eschew violence, more welcome full physical contact between participants...and many of the most popular are centered entirely around it!

Hand-to-hand combat is perhaps one of the most popular spectacles in the Manticore Gardens. The sight of two fighters, most often nude or only barely-clad, inflicting horrible punishment on each other blends together the two things courtiers enjoy most: sex and violence. Masters of dozens of styles, from the pragmatic to the exotic, dwell within the Gardens, and rare is the bout that only showcases one of them. Nobles and Knights can spend decades honing their bodies into brutally-effective weapons that they turn on their peers with pugilistic glee. Thralls often bear even more extreme enhancements: multiple limbs, wicked talons, horny carapaces. Even those who aren't warped into more effective (and more entertaining) fighters typically step into the arena wearing weighted, spiked, even bladed caestus.

Popular for much the same reason is the sport of armed dueling. While the archetypal weapon for such is of course the sword, which can take any form from the slender rapier to the two-handed claymore, it is far from the only weapon used, or even the most popular. Pike-fencing is considered one of the ultimate tests of a duelist, requiring incredible finesse to maneuver the five-meter spear, an angle of a few degrees all that separates a fatal strike from a fatal opening. Other popular weapons include shorter polearms, axes, and flails.

Surprisingly enough, ulama does no revolve around combat. Instead, opposing teams compete to keep a heavy rubber ball in play within a long court, touching it only with their heavily padded hips, knees, and elbows. While hip-checks and headbutts are far from rare, there is surprisingly little bloodshed: much of the appeal comes from players' incredible athleticism and the spectacle of them keeping the ball airborne with as little contact as possible.

Though it is not something they participate in directly, many courtier love bloodsports. There is something primally, viscerally satisfying about watching savage creatures tear into each other (or a few unlucky thralls). Some engineer their own unnatural beasts in the Uranus Loom, while others go to great lengths to acquire exotic monsters from outside the Gardens.

Among other things, courtiers also engage in football (both full-contact and not), rugby, tennis, field and ice hockey, racing (on foot, on mounts, and in chariots), many forms of stickball, jousting, polo, and gymnastics.

Fashion and Sempstry

Few things command as much attention from courtiers as the art of fashion.

In the Manticore Gardens, style is everything. It goes a long way in determining one's place in the informal social hierarchy Nobles arrange themselves in, so all but the most extreme of introverts gives at least a cursory though to how they present themselves. Style is everything, but it is also many different things: it's how one speaks, how one moves, how one eats, how one fights, how one fucks, even how one smells.

But most importantly, it is how one looks.

There are two layers to a courtier's appearance. The first, their physical vessel. Though mutable, something they may shape and reshape as they like, it is seen as being a concrete expression of their "true self". Over that goes the second layer, their wardrobe, something far more fickle and inconstant in meaning.

Courtiers invest an incredible amount of emphasis and symbolism in their garments. Clothes are not just clothes; they are talismans, banners, declarations both subtle and loud. Even something as simple as a ribbon, a pin, or the angle of a hat may possess some meaning. A carefully crafted outfit can create a powerful emotional impression, representing those felt by the Noble or eliciting them in onlookers.

Clothing is not divided along gendered lines. Men, women, hermaphrodites, and androgynes all dress in whatever manner suits their individual tastes, and while certain cuts and styles may flatter certain body types more than others, many courtiers enjoy the irony of deliberate subversion.

[ooc]More to come.[/ooc]

[Hibou]

Your descriptions remind me of the PS2 Prince of Persia games, which I always thought were pretty cool because the environments were entertaining to explore and look at. This sounds similar in that regard with the Eastern influences. I look forward to reading more. :)

[Rhamnousia]

Where specifically are you getting the whole "Eastern influences" bit? I have to admit, I'm a little sketchy on what that specifically entails.

Though this isn't me attacking your input or anything. I'm just a little confused.

[Mason]

I really like what you have so far, I think it is a good solid foundation to expand on. I get the whole "pre-history age of myth and heroes" vibe from the whole thing. Why do they call them the Manticore Gardens?

Where specifically are you getting the whole "Eastern influences" bit? I have to admit, I'm a little sketchy on what that specifically entails.

Though this isn't me attacking your input or anything. I'm just a little confused.

My understanding of Eastern influence is anything decidedly non-Western. This includes a large portion eastern European cultures, Africa, the Middle East, and India. A few snippets from your post that emphasize Eastern influence (for me anyway):

"architecture is a synergy of Byzantine, Islamic, and Indian styles...arches and open ceilings. Everything is colorful etc. Naming conventions including the Babylons viziers..golems are from jewish mythology...alchemy and summoning are from middle-eastern cultures, also the hierarchy class system, and the concept of "pleasure palaces"  makes me think of nothing but Arabian Nights type stories.

[Rhamnousia]

My understanding of Eastern influence is anything decidedly non-Western. This includes a large portion eastern European cultures, Africa, the Middle East, and India. A few snippets from your post that emphasize Eastern influence (for me anyway):

"architecture is a synergy of Byzantine, Islamic, and Indian styles...arches and open ceilings. Everything is colorful etc. Naming conventions including the Babylons viziers..golems are from jewish mythology...alchemy and summoning are from middle-eastern cultures, also the hierarchy class system, and the concept of "pleasure palaces"  makes me think of nothing but Arabian Nights type stories.

Ah, I see your point. I actually have ideas for the setting that I haven't shared yet, such as two of the foreign nations being the Tengu and the Rakshasa, and the like. So other than the obvious shout-outs to Oriental architecture, I didn't see the rest of it as being intentionally "Eastern".

[Rhamnousia]

So I've added more about sports and generally gone and fleshed-out a lot of the other sections. While I'm still very, very far from being anywhere close to done, I was wondering if there was anything others would like to see out of this or anything they think I should do differently.

[Hibou]

I like the way sports are divided between social classes. How much of the drug intake is "normal" and how much is exotic? I'm guessing that nobility has better access to more exotic drugs, but I am curious to see what portion of them are more mundane like those of the real world and what portion is supernatural.

[Rhamnousia]

Well, I put a couple samples up. Coming up with exotic drugs and alcohols is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought, but hopefully that should give you a slightly-better picture of what I mean.

[Tangential]

I want to snort your brains!

[Rhamnousia]

[ooc]I'm currently leaning towards a diceless system along the lines of the FLOW system used in the Stalker roleplaying game I've recently fallen in love with. In a nutshell, when resolving any challenge, players are given two scores, 1-5. The first is the merit of their idea, how likely it is to succeed. The second is how in keeping the idea is with their character and how well it's roleplayed. Possessing a relevant Aspect adds a one-point bonus to both scores. The two scores are multiplied together and if they exceed the target score, the character succeeds at the test. If not, they fail. While the players may have an inkling of how easy or difficult a challenge may be, the actual target number is a secret. This would only provide whether or not the characters succeeded: the gory details would be left up to player fiat.

Characters begin with ten Aspects that define their character's abilities and experiences. Every Aspect comes with A Drawback, some way in which it has negatively affected the Noble.

Players are encouraged to describe their characters in as much detail as possible. I'm talking pornographic levels of detail. The color of their eyes, the shades and textures of their skin and hair, the shape of their teeth, the sound of their voice, the way they speak and carry themselves, the garments the clothe themselves in, the jewelry they sport...all of these are things that influence how other courtiers view and interact with them. Not sure whether this will be mechanical or left up to Storyteller fiat. Plus, it adds flavor.

I'm planning on somehow keeping score of each character's relationship with important NPCs, which will affect their overall status in the Gardens. This'll probably come in the form of "strings" or tokens that characters can burn for dramatic effect, representing the strain put on relationships as they call in favors or exploit intimate secrets. Again, not sure if there'll be a mechanical system to award strings or if I'll leave it up to Storyteller fiat.

Death is not something players will be regularly threatened with. Killing a Noble is a dramatic, involved undertaking, one that will only come about as a result of player actions, never suddenly or by chance. That said, NPC relations are far more fragile...

A more common threat is the loss of status, which is a big deal in the court intrigue of the Manticore Gardens. The hope is that even if their characters are not actively threatened with destruction, the players will still be motivated by the threat of social death or the deaths of their characters' friends and relations.
Still not sure how, in a system like this, I'd deal with magic and high technology.

I'm not the best at homebrewing/modifying mechanics, so this is all very rough and nowhere near set in stone. Are there any questions, comments, and/or suggestions for members with more experience when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts of systems?
[/ooc]

[Rhamnousia]

So, I'm stuck in a rut.

I've tried to move on to other projects, but I can never seem to pick up any traction and I keep sliding back to add more to the patchwork monstrosity that is the Manticore Gardens. Currently, I have at least half a dozen partially-finished Word documents detailing magical traditions, technology, foreigners, the Sovereign Babylon and Dragons, the world's cosmology, the physical shape of the Gardens, etc.

So my question is, does anyone want to see me do more with this setting? If so, what do you think I should do? What would you like to see from it? A better description of what the Manticore Gardens actually looks like? A piece of descriptive fiction? Some sample characters? Something completely different?

Thank you in advance. I really hope to here from some of you and hopefully make some real progress towards this being a setting I could easily run a game in.

[I hope I don't sound like I'm asking you all to do my creative thinking for me. I work best with a little bit of prodding. Also, a lot of the members here seem to think a lot in line with my usual group of players, so you're a good sort of litmus test.]