Paths of Civilization

pbluekan said:

Why highlanders? I'm curious, we've seen over the years that they're nothing at all like us and they're hereditary as fuck.

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Sivantic said:

The update even said that if we don't take it, no one will.

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Academia Nut said:

Also, if she could convince the dye merchants of this, she could go to the miners and tell them that they vitriol produced by their work could be immensely valuable instead of a toxic byproduct they had to carefully seal away. She could also let the small glass maker's group that they were now more important than ever - simple glazed pottery would likely never be enough to contain essence of vitriol. The relationships of all the goods that were needed to make this all work in more just a lab was immense, but she could see the connections, and she felt like a spider sitting at the centre of a web only she could understand the significance of. Combine with her contacts among warriors... yes. Yes, Rulwyna would have the connections and the power to keep herself safe, and beyond that to keep herself comfortable.

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CeBrudras said:

Did we ever take art patronage so far? I remember AN saying a while ago that there is an action we have never taken that we would wish we had once we learn what the mechanics behind it are and I dont think we ever figured out what it was.
I suspect Art Patronage might have some cool new stuff.

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Romv said:

[Main] Proclaim Glory
[Secondary] Restoration of Order
[Secondary] Enforce Justice

Stability party!

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CeBrudras said:

Did we ever take art patronage so far? I remember AN saying a while ago that there is an action we have never taken that we would wish we had once we learn what the mechanics behind it are and I dont think we ever figured out what it was.
I suspect Art Patronage might have some cool new stuff.

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Elbrasch said:

[X] [Value] Highlanders
[X] [Prog] Build Glassworks (-1 Econ, +2 Art, increased chance of new innovations)
[X] [Refugee] Those who arrive on their own (Chance of stability loss, +2 Econ)


Didn't we do Art Patronage in the beginning of the tax crisis combined with proclaim glory?

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TheDanishLord said:

no not'greek fire or bombs

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pbluekan said:

Alright, boys and girls, have a totally not canon omake. I wrote this a couple weeks back during the temple updates, and I got pretty into the temple description and didn't want to change it. So, enjoy.

@Academia Nut here's an omake for ya.

Spoiler: References/Translations/Reasoning

So a few translations and references for you guys so you don't have to go look them up:

1. Chital - Wikipedia It's a deer from the Indian sub-continent. Why? It's a beautiful animal, the climate it lives in is similar to ours, I used it in my last omake, and it has a really cool name.
2. Gwylwyr - This is welsh for "Sentinels" It doesn't translate exactly but whatever.
3. Cedar Trees - Historically they lived in this exact climate. See the Lebanese Cedar They were prized in the ancient world, to the point of being holy objects and feature in the Epic of Gilgamesh. They can also grow to ~120 feet. Also, AN confirmed their presence in this post:
4. The Ritual - I know it smacks a bit of sacrifice, but the way I saw it was thus: The supplicant gives a bit of themselves to the soil that the sapling is growing in, symbolizing Ymaryn work ethic and attachment to the land. The sapling growing in the soil is eventually transplanted away and a new one is planted. The sapling taken away "contains the essence" of all the Ymaryn that gave their blood there, and will carry it forevermore wherever the sapling is planted.
5. The Statues - I actually went though a lot of variations on these, thanks to @BungieONI for his help. The other variation is posted at the end. I was pretty set on Fythhagyna, however. I chose to use more Grecco-Roman inspiration there to try and emphasize the comparative gentleness of Ymaryn culture compared to their neighbors, while the contrast of Crow showed the terrible fury of the angered Ymaryn. I assumed our statues would be carved of alabaster, which is extremely easy to carve with our toolset.

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The Elder Steward
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Brynwynnen, elder shaman, walked the Shaded Path one last time. His steps were heavy with age and all its regrets; his face and hands wrinkled and spotted by the slow rumble of time.

"Why do you come so far, elder?" asked his escort, a Blackbird fresh to her cloak and mask. She is a small thing, lithe and nimble. Her steps are light, neigh a stone turned by her passing.

"Why should I not?" It is a familiar game in his long years, the leading of the young to knowledge.

The black mask twitched. The young lady had yet to learn the serenity of the morning glade. "Redshore is no small distance from the temple glades." Her voice is layered with gentle chastisement; that tone the young will use evermore and the old will ignore.

"And I have legs."

"Legs that creak."

"So they do," Brynwynnen said with a laugh, "and so I fear that the chital will remain out of our sight this fine day, my dear. I am here all the same, however."

"Have you been here before, Elder?" The young blackbird asks some few minutes later, her lilting voice a strange counterpoint to the birdcalls.

"The Sacred Forest, or the temple, my dear?"

"The temple."

Brynwynnen considered the question for a moment before answering, "I have, and I have not." He waited for a moment, enjoying the silent confusion exuding from the young woman beside him. "It was completed naught but eight summers ago, yes?" At her nod, he continued, "I have not been here to see the temple completed. I was here when it was begun, and lived here 'till I was a young man, but I have not been back in many a year."

"Th-That would- you are-" the young woman stuttered in shock.

"Yes," he said with a smile, "I've seen some hundred summers pass me by. I am a very old man, my dear, though I dare say that's why my knees creak!" Brynwynnen was sure he could feel the heat of her embarrassment from where he walked at the blackbird's side.

The two continued in silence for a time, enjoying the peace of the still wood. The foliage was thick and lush, though orderly in the way of natural things. A cut could be seen here or there to the experienced eye; light touches by human hands to cleanse, invigorate, and guide. Trees, old and ponderous, arched over the path as if to wrap Brynwynnen and his escort in Fythhagyna's embrace. Ahead, rising over the rest of the forest stood the Gwylwyr, the two Guardians of the Gate, and behind them, concealed by a cunningly woven wall of living wood lay the Temple Glade and the Eglwys y Coed Byw; the Temple of the Living Wood.

"What was it like?" She asked, having plucked her courage back up. "The construction, I mean. Could you feel Crow's guiding hand? Fythhagyna's touch in the trees? What was the Temple Glade like before? Have the Gwylwyr always stood? Did King Gonwyllmyn really-"

With a light rap to the shins from his staff, Brynwynnen cut her off. "Peace!" he snapped, though he was hard pressed to keep his lips from twitching in amusement, "Crow save me, woman, I'm old! One at a time!" He paused for a moment, "And remember your lessons. Crow does not act so overtly or in such simplicity. Where on Earth did you learn such a thing?"

"Elder Cynwyn-"

"Elder Cynwyn?" Brynwynnen asked, his white brows drawn together. "Elder Cynwyn is an Arxyn blinded fool of the highest order." He chanced a glance at the blackbird to see her hanging onto his every word. The disagreements between shamans were legendary in their pettiness, after all, and a tidbit of elder gossip would feed the hounds for months. However long ago it had been, Brynwynnen had once been a trainee. He remembered how the grapevine grew. "I once caught trainee Cynwyn 'practicing his technique' with a goat! And you say he educates blackbirds? Phaw!" he harrumphed before turning away to hide his smirk that threatened to split his wrinkles.

"The Glade," the blackbird asked after another few minutes in silence, "what was it like, before the Temple was laid down? I've heard stories of it, that it was Fythhagyna's glade, made beautiful by her coupling with Crow. There is a mural in the temple…"

Brynwynnen smiled, "I was a just a boy then, a little one, but I remember." He paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. "The Glade was a quiet place in those days. So far out from the village you could stay there for a cycle and not see a soul. Even during the planning when the wall was seeded and the Gwylwyr planted, it was quiet. But it was a glade like any other, I suppose.

"And why should it have been any different?" he asked, to her unvoiced disbelief. "Are not all things that grow under the eye of Fythhagyna? Would she so favor this over another, even in her own forest? That mural … My clan, we are the Stewards, the forests are our duty, and none more so than Fythhagyna's own. The Gwylwyr were our contribution to the temple grounds, my grandfather and grandmother planted them. The mural was another. A Steward who wished to remember the glade as it had been; to preserve it as they had seen it so others might see the same. Beauty rests in the viewer's eye, after all."

"I-, but why?" the young woman seemed to be lost for words.

"Why?" Brynwynnen pushed her for an answer with a nod.

"Why is the mural not true to form?" she asked after a long moment. "Would that not have been the most untainted, the most beautiful for all?"

He hemmed and hawed for a bit, thinking over the best way to lead her to the destination he had mapped out. Their slow pace had drawn near the Gwylwyr and the living wall. The two great cedars towered high, guided straight and true by human hands. At head height, a visage of Crow screamed out from the wood. On either side of the two pillars, a living wall of wood and green foliage stretched out in a gentle curve. At the far extent of the wall, Brynwynnen knew there to be a third great cedar marking a line that split the temple in two.

"Do you and I not see things differently?" Brynwynnen eventually asked as they stepped past the Gwylwyr to where the narrow passage opened up into a sunlit meadow. Some distance on, a great temple stood at the center of the glade. It was faced in white alabaster, and even at distance, vine like carvings snaked up and over the walls. "Should the color of living grass, or the shine of the temple look the same?" he gestured to their surroundings. "Should these things look the same to you and I? We who are so very different from one another? The true elegance of this world, my dear girl, is in the individual exclusivity granted to each of us."

With a clack of his wooden staff on stone Brynwynnen stepped from the gravel paved path to stone promenade, and there he stopped and turned to his escort-turned-pupil. "Now," he began with a stern scowl, "before we enter the temple's peace, can you answer your first question?"

She blinked at the abrupt turn of conversation. "I- what?"

"Come now, you are young with a young memory. Your first question, answer it."

The young woman tilted her head this way and that as if looking for the question that must have been dogging her steps. "'Why do you come so far, elder?'" she finally asked.

"Indeed."

"You've been here before," she muttered to herself, "but not after the temple was complete. You are an elder, surely you've heard a description or been given a depiction, so …" She trailed off for a moment before apparently landing at her answer: "What you've been told of is not the temple as you might see it but as others might. You wished to see it yourself." She glanced up to see the pleased glint in the shaman's eyes. "But, elder, that is such a distance for a man of your age…"

"I have eyes that work, legs that creak," Brynwynnen said as he doffed his slippers and began to walk to the wide archway that lead to the inner sanctum.

The blackbird could do little but follow in his wake.

The temple was grand, with the understated beauty so prized by The People. A series of arches carved into the likeness of the gnarled trunks of trees supported a vast domed hall. Little idols, murals, and shrines to sundry gods glittered along the walls in little alcoves lit by sunbeams from slanted windows set high above. At the center of the hall, in a spot bathed in sunlight, sat the statue of a nude and nubile young woman before a basin of tilled soil and a living cedar sapling.

Fythhagyna.

She was young, a few years into womanhood and at the prime of her beauty. Her legs, long and lissome, were curled to one side, and one slim arm reached out to the young tree while the other supported her still form, tracing a line from the floor to shoulder. Hair, full and lush for all its timeless rigidity was pulled over one shoulder and reached down to cover one full breast and up to frame the statue's serene smile.

Just behind the statue of Fythhagyna stood another; a vigilant guard over the scene. The shape could just be seen beyond the glare of the sunbeams, its image dimmed and blurred to the eye by the contrast of sun and shade.

Crow.

The statue seemed to flow up from the floor of the temple. Lines twisted and writhing drew the eye away from the figure, even as rough black granite took the form of a crow: spider-eyed and massive in proportion with wings spread wide and maw open in a silent scream. Terrible to behold, the eye flinched from the statue of the eldritch creator; yet, it was placed such that all supplicants to Fythhagyna's fair form were forced to look upon it.

Above it all stretched a great mural of the eldritch carving, writ large.

Delicately etched and painted onto the alabaster ceiling, the encompassing presence of the spider-eyed god was truly awesome to behold. Wings, open with billowing feathers, encompassed all below within his shadow and under the light of his eyes. The floor, set with ceramic tiles glazed and polished to a mirror shine, reflected the terrible mural, keeping even those who bowed their heads in shame or deceit within Crow's vision.

Brynwynnen shuffled his way to the central altar, each step punctuated with the rasp of dry skin on tile. A reed mat and a basket, set across from the statues, awaited him, and there he knelt, his escort waiting at the edge of the ring of arches. Slowly, he pulled the items from the basket before setting each in its place: a trowel and a fork to the left; a fine copper knife and a bowl of boiled brine to his right; a linen bandage and a thimble of honey at his knee.

All so arranged, Brynwynnen, elder shaman, bent and pressed his head to fresh earth.

He remained there, silently praying, and paying his respects in meditative stillness. Some long moments later he unbent his neck and began his ritual. With perfunctory indifference and a sure hand on the knife, Brynwynnen tapped a vein and held his left hand out to water the soil. A long moment passed as the old man squeezed crimson blood into the soil, and then he was done. With a dab of honey and a rustle of cloth, the wound was cleansed and wrapped.

With quick, practiced movements the soil was tilled and overturned, the bloody offering folded into the earth for the cedar to bring into itself. A moment, a rustle of cloth, and a weary sigh later, old Brynwynnen was on his way out of the temple he had journeyed so far to see.

Many summers later, when old Brynwynnen was naught but bones in the earth, an old woman, wrinkled and worn, knelt before Fythhagyna, as a mentor long dead had done, and left a bit of herself to be brought into the trees.

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Spoiler: Alternate Temple

The temple was grand, with the understated beauty so prized by The People. A series of arches carved into the likeness of the gnarled trunks of trees supported a vast domed hall. Little idols, murals, and shrines to sundry gods glittered in little alcoves lit by sunbeams from slanted windows set high above. At the center of the hall, in a spot bathed in sunlight, sat the statue of a nude and nubile young woman before a basin of tilled soil and a living cedar sapling.

Fythhagyna.

She was young, a few years into womanhood and at the prime of her beauty. Hair, full and lush for all its timeless rigidity cascaded past a serene smile and over one shoulder. Her legs, long and lissome, were curled to one side, and one slim arm reached out to the young tree while the other crossed her body, demurely concealing full breasts. Upon that modest arm, the three aspects perched.

Crow.

Each was delicately carved of the blackest obsidian and set with six eyes of colored amethyst: Crow in his many forms. The Teacher, with blue eyes filled with wisdom, had its head turned up to whisper the secrets of the world to Fythhagyna's ear. The Trickster, with black eyes glinting in restrained amusement, had its head tucked beneath a wing with only one glittering eye visible. The Devourer, with eyes red and hungry, had its head trained upon the supplicant; jagged beak drawn wide in a scream.

Above it all stretched the spider-eyed face of Crow.

Delicately painted onto the alabaster ceiling, the six eyes of the spider-eyed god allowed him sight of all dealings and prayers. The floor, set with ceramic tiles glazed and polished to a mirror shine, reflected the terrible mural, keeping even those who bow their heads within Crow's eye.

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