When changes happen in the Order and Mundanes societies, especially at the beginning of a new Cycle, the Conclave can be called upon for legal decisions, not as Philosophers but as the
I think the last word is missing here.
members of each factions have sook the favors of the Conclave for their projects
I think this is supposed to be "seek" not "sook"?
Worst, a few of the new merchants (or Practitioner of the Art of the Deal, as they call themselves to not be considered without craft) have proven untrustworthy, lying on their goods and leaving the City before the people they have tricked can act (one of the most infamous was even found collecting the tablets of complaints sent by his "clients" !).
Well, skills in estimating values of things and negotiation are certainly a valuable art... the whole lying, cheating, and running away sightly less so, but at least the idea of Mundanes crafts as beyond physical craft and art is certainly one that we should spread.
Also, collecting tablets of complaints? By chance, would that merchant happens to name something like Ea-nāṣir?
[] Righteous Reordering of Travels [0/2] [Consume 1 Scale] [Sundial Tower]
[...]
By erecting towers of stone at regular intervals on lands and seas, and mystically connecting them, they would reduce the time needed to travel the distance between each tower.
Are we... building fast travel towers?
Anyway, 2 quick notes on potential synergies I notice.
[] City of Growth and Health [0/2] [Use 1 Scale] [Living Tower ; Tower that Think] [Gardener; Healers;Potiooners] [Path of the Elements] NEW
[....] that would allow the creations of multiples localized, controlled environment, the growth of almost any plants and provide a blessing from a God dedicated to Health and Growth.
The controlled environment seem to be something that would be extremely useful for both our spaceship and offworld colonization. With luck, it might even be useful for
Study the smallest live with needing to keep potentially lethal microbes somewhere safe.
-[] Explore in Force [0/1] [Ruins] [Mundane] [Guilds] NEW
[...]
The Mundanes could be more than a liability in such armies, if commanded by wise Philosophers. Doomed to protect, Navigators to guide, Singing Shepherd to command Spawns, Precises to labors, Keepers of Harmony to watch them all.
Explore the ruins in force, ???
With explore in Force, we are sending navigator into ruins to help, well, navigate. Something that
See the Invisible Stars would be rather useful with not being able to see sky and all. So I think any plan that take
Explore in Force should also take
See the Invisible Stars.
Now, for the big part. Politics.
For
Collaboration, While I understand people are unease about excessive bureaucracy, especially when we were told that bureaucracy are the limit of our AP, I would note that leaving people to collaborate on their own without any mechanism to organise it could also lead to inefficiency as well, especially when it come to something as elborate and complex as Philsophers' Working which require precise control over multiple factors.
Of course,
Sa'kage has made a great point about how we can use this meeting ground as a spring board for more organised collaboration, so I won't exactly mind that much if that choice win.
There are longer term implication to consider. If we attempt to bureaucratise now, it might led to us having a more organised and comprehensive - perhaps totalitarian, if one wish to use that word - bureaucracy in the future. On the other hand, White Tower choice will lead the Order toward one that is less interventionist, so to speak. In a mechanics term, it might be something like more AP vs. having an autonomous dice roll about what projects is getting pursuit for free.
...I supposed, we could try to merge the two choices together, but that pretty much go against the spirit of having the choices at all and trying to have a cake and eat it too like that could be something that backfire on us.
For
Travelers and Merchants and
Guilds and Tyrants, is something that I believe should be look together. They both deal with solidly Mundanes affair after all.
The problems before us are the follow; There are no authority or precedence that deal with how Mundanes from different God-Cities interact, at least not on this scale, and that we are now creating what might be the middle class in the form of Guilds, which threaten to dominate the rest of Mundanes society.
These two problems ultimately come from the same source. There are no forms of Mundanes organisation outside of the Guilds that operate on global scale that can regulate their behaviour - which should not come as a surprise, consider that whatever propose such organisation effort would serve has already been fulfilled by the Order, at least, until we begun delegate our work to the Guilds.
How can we solve this issue then? Well, firstly, we should start asking whatever this is actually an issue at all? Or in a more mechanical term - choosing the "freedom" approach in both choices.
I would say that yes, it is an issues. Leaving the Mundanes to figure out rite of hospitality on their own might be more effective than anything we can do... Or it can end disastrously with massive civil conflict. The same is true for Guilds. Ignoring that we and they hold disproportionate power in comparison to the Mundanes is merely avoiding an issues instead of solving one.
If we agree that this is, in fact, an issue, how can we solve it? I can see a couple way.
Firstly, we can go full totalitarian Order and subjugate everything under our formal authority. The Guilds? They are part of Order now and beholden to our rules and dictate. The travellers? Have someone study the Mundanes, write up some law, told God-city to proclaim it and have Guardians help enforcing them.
Of course, that approach run directly against the Order's philosophy (heh) of not being a king, so that's not applicable.
So, the next approach. Isolate the Guild from the rest of society - Tower that Think's and White Tower's Guilds choices, in a more mechanical term. This transform them to a miniature version of the Order, so to speak. The problems with this are that this does not fundamentally address the power imbalance, as I said, pretending power imbalance do not exist do not help anyone. Additionally, it would be a rather wasted potential of having some sort of intermediate between Order and the Mundanes if we declare that those intermediate is no longer allowed to interact with the Mundanes in a meaningful way.
Continuing that line of thought, If the problem is that power imbalance existed and we should recognise it.. Shouldn't we just embrace and regulate it? To be honest, this is my prefer solution. The Guilds should not be forced to be isolated, but regulated and be accountable. In a practical term, I agree with
Lord_Abaddon's
Council of Guiding Hands write-in for this. Having an overreaching formal mechanism to coordinate and hold them accountable seem much more to the point than Living Tower's and Sundial Tower's solutions of individually organise them to other propose.
At this point, it's worth come back to the point I raise earlier that the two issues are interlinked.
To elaborate, the fact that the Guilds - and the Order, for that matter - become so powerful over "the elders, the customs, priests, nobles and other Mundanes of power" is not just because of their skills and power. It because of their world-wide organisation that allow the transmission and coordination of skills and knowledge to happens that no other Mundanes organisation could hope to match. The organisation that would only be intensified by the formation of
Council of Guiding Hands.
Since doing universal education to uplift the Mundanes on "skills and knowledge" part is.. a long while away, the only way left that could somewhat address this power imbalance is through better organisation of the rest of Mundanes centre of power - which is to say, an expansion of Sundial Tower's
Conclave choice in the Traveller issue. Perhaps something like;
[][Travel][write-in] : The Mundanes' notables from all God-City shall be organise into a conclave, hold regularly and overseen by the Order, with mandate to regulate and coordinate Mundanes affairs that involves more than a single city and with ability to offer opinion - but not decision - on projects that impact Mundanes people.
But if this did not pass, Sundial Tower's
Conclave seem like a good starting point anyway.
Another, unrelated note. Since most of what seem to be consensus plan this turn involves
Carve the World-Spine, and iirc,
bioticgrunt still have one free mundanes point from his omakes, we might want to coordinate this a bit and have him use his point on this action so we can have Mundanes do another thing this turn.
