General Exalted Thread
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Really, if the Emissary doesn't have a secret plan (and for the record, I'm fine with him not) then Nexus would totally have slavery, because like, a lot of rich people in creation are going to want to be able to buy, sell and make slaves in nexus.
That doesn't make an ounce of sense. If the neighborhoods all have to hire their own mercenaries and vigilanties to defend themselves, then that means that they have their own trained and equipped defense forces to assault other neighborhoods and fight off the mercenaries hired by the Council, meaning that the Council wouldn't actually be in control of the city, ever, because whoever controlled the city would be the ones who came out on top the last time things exploded into violence.
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Well, my head-cannon was that Emissary was ronin Sidreal that made Nexus in large-scale social experiment in maximizing freedom of choice, because metaphysics and paradoxes of Free Will in world guided by Loom of Fate drove him half-insane.
Also, it's Ankh-Morpork.
I find China Mieville writing to be preachy, unreadable and not very insightful. Difference of opinion and all.
Not necessary and not always. This "normal way of things" you speak of is kind of not a thing at all.
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Nexus is a million pop city that somehow exists without an empire to feed it.
It never made sense.
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Well, in that case, its entire existence is based on fiat and should work however you want it to.
UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
Probably because if you do have enough mercs to be an army, Emissary comes to whittle it down until you don't.
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Seems like if you were going to do that you wouldn't use a city.
People go to Nexus because Nexus is where the money is, and they can make it rich there. Those who are rich then have power. That power then will then be structured by their interactions with other people of power who live near them (IE in Nexus) and that then will create an effect on the world around them, IE an empire.
It might be something that a bunch of important city magnets do rather than the council directly, but the necessity to make sure that you have the things that you want is going to cause Nexusian power to be used elsewhere. Because nobody else is going to protect your interests except you.
I dunno. I would have thought opposing Guild and Nexus mercenaries would be a pretty interesting to do if you were a solar in the hundred kingdoms. What exactly is wrong with Nexus having an Empire?
Well, the council operates mercenary troops so it can obviously authorize people to form armies. Or they can just take them to some outlying mercenary town and form the actual unit there and march off to war.
Maybe the Emissary is really Saturn and has for the lulz (you know, as the Maidens are wont to do) removed Nexus's Ending, and the city has not collapsed in on itself, been conquered, or been abandoned as it logically should because it is metaphysically incapable of doing so. The Council continues to hire mercenaries to protect the city, despite knowing that nothing can possibly threaten Nexus's existence thanks to the Emissary, just because they feel like they should keep up appearances.
Because if you're going to use the Emissary as a macguffin to explain away all the reasons why Nexus-as-anarchic-clusterfuck shouldn't exist, you might as well go balls deep.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Sure, you'd drive them off the first time, but then the Emissary would show up and feed you your own parents.
See the post just above yours.
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The easiest thing is to just assume that the Council has the best mercenaries and that they're willing to assassinate anyone who brings an actual army into Nexus, and stomp out any neighborhood association that becomes an army, either by assassination, supernatural means or by sending in their own military to do it.
That doesn't actually affect whether or not Nexus will become an empire though.
I must admit I am really confused as to why people object to this, because it means the place has all the more story possibilities.
That doesn't actually affect whether or not Nexus will become an empire though.
I must admit I am really confused as to why people object to this, because it means the place has all the more story possibilities.
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You would use large city with tightly spaced population, because you need sufficient, but still decentralized population to observe deviations from Loom of Fate design caused by miniscule, but cascading choices made by Free Willed agents.
Hence, Nexus.
Stop right here.Terms like "empire" have an actual meaning as descriptions of specific forms of human political, economic, and social interaction, which is not "us) and that then will create an effect on the world around them, IE an empire". Switzerland and Hong Kong have lots of oligarchs and lots of money, but I don't think that Empire of Switzerland is remotely an possibility and Hong Kong expansion is also dubious.
In other words: it is possible to be rich without being expansionary military power; Rome was one of the richest (if not the richest) cities in the medieval Europe and Papal states were never largest or most militant of Europeans countries.
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It was build on remnants of First Realm infrastructure that could sustain ten times number of inhabitants and owns massive amount of fertile farmland around it's three rivers as per Scavengers Sons description.
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Indeed. Break the Dogma, and that's it for you. Even the Council cannot change it.
THE DOGMA
No taxes shall be raised, save by the council
None shall obstruct trade
None shall bring an army into Nexus
No one shall commit wanton violence
None may falsely claim the council's name or sanction
None shall harbour a fugitive from the council's wrath.
Also, it should be noted that as per the sidebar in Scavenger Sons:
"For the most aprt, the council members should probably exceed the capabilities of the players' characters in each councilor's area of speciality. If your story involves epic characters, they ay be superior to the council, but you and your players should decide where to draw that line."
(emphasis in the original)
The council, as originally conceived, are more potent than young Solars in their area of speciality. These are potent motherfuckers. Lady Kratz, the Astrologer, for example, has multiple sorcerers in her personal entourage and the council relies on her astrological skills - and there is no indication that she is a Sidereal.
.......... goddamn it now I want to read a Discworld Exalted crossover where an early Rincewind ends up in Nexus and promptly spends his entire time running from demons baring Infernal exhalations, dragonbloods and well pretty much everything
All while trying to maintain control of the SPELL seared into his mind
All while trying to maintain control of the SPELL seared into his mind
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To me, such phillosphy would work far better for some tribal confederacy built by a lunar on the edge of creation, where every person is expected to carry themselves, Each person can hunt and gather on their own if they have the strength to do so, and they can move between various tribal families in the overall society if they get sick of the people they're with or whatever.
That's maximum free choice, not a city of a million people that requires vast supplies of grain.
Hong Kong was the product of the British empire though. It's a trade port set up to allow British commercial interests to access China. Rome became central to Europe because historically, it was an empire, and then continued to hold religious importance for people after its religious life was done. In both cases, they were balanced between a bunch of other powers, rather than being great powers themselves. Switzerland mean time isn't a trading centre, it's a banking centre, and it's hyper defensible, which Nexus isn't.
Nexus, on the other hand, is an independent power, with no body (except maybe Lookshy, maybe) to insure its interest.
It also, you know, has the problem that it doesn't exist in modernity, so the question "what is everyone going to eat?" becomes far more pressing.
You could totally have Nexus be like, the football in the game of the Scavenger lands between a bunch of different great powers, but I cannot honestly imagine what they would be. If it's just Lookshy, why wouldn't Lookshy just collect all the trade wealth itself and cut Nexus out of the deal or reduce it to a manufacturing plant?
"Most people in Lookshy view trade with disdain..."
"Traders and merchants can therefore expect a grudging welcome from this proud military bastion."
"Lookshy-based traders often receive more respect from their competition than they do from their fellow citizens, many of whom look down on them for sullying themselves with such matters as trade and interest rates."
Well, that answers the question of "how Nexus exists" to my satisfaction, though it still doesn't answer why massive, violent riots even occur, let alone are common (since violence would disrupt trade), or why the Council even bothers hiring armies to protect the city, since logically the Emissary could and would simply crush anyone who has the balls in either case.
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Those are not real life reasons. People like being rich. The reason why warrior/Land owner classes tended not to respect merchants very much was because they didn't need them, and they were often a pretty crooked bunch. Lookshy, probably does require merchants to pay for its mercenary activities, and frankly, is likely to be externally supplied with most of its stuff by the rest of the river province.
More generally, I must admit I really don't get why Nexus: Empire of Trade is bad for you guys. Like, it offers all the story possibilities that Nexus does anyway, and it also offers a bunch of new ones, like trying to escape the city while broke, or fighting for or against it in the depths of the scavenger lands. Is your issue really that using slaves makes it too hypocritical or what?
Edit: people have a pretty skewed view of how things worked in ancient economies. Remember, the land owners are the producers. They occupied a position more like modern factory owners. When we think of merchants, we think proto-capitalists, but they really weren't that, they were retailers, used car salesmen and leverage artists.
That's not really how I would envision the three rivers confederacy working. Given there's the realm only a couple of weeks over by ship which can send all their massive surplus of rice anywhere they want, and so much wealth obtained from digging out and reusing first age gear, then the source of wealth is far more directly trade and manufacturing than it would have been in Japan or China where they stole the idea of disliking trade from.
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Song era China would like to say hi. Scholars were landed as a result of their scholarship, not the other way around (at least in theory, and there was some mobility there in following Tang dynasty.)
Culture - in this case, Confucism - is a very powerful force.
Culture - in this case, Confucism - is a very powerful force.
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See my edit.
The elite in Song China distrusted merchants because they didn't really need them. They were the owners of (sorry to go all Marxist) the means of production.
Lookshy isn't really in that situation, wealth in the three rivers confederacy is obviously based on trade, and Lookshy itself are merchants, simply merchants of death, rather than goods.
Edit: none of this addesses that Imperial Nexus is a vastly more interesting source of stories than is libertarian nexus of course, which is far more relevant.
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The problem here is with the ridiculous construction of Lookshy. It beggars belief that a city could maintain this sort of warrior culture disdain for commerce in the face of so much business and so much "new money" for seven centuries out of sheer cultural stubbornness.
If the writers want me to believe in a Lookshy like this, they need to give it (pre-Perry) Japanese-style isolationism, which also means giving up its whole foreign policy and position in the Confederation of Rivers. Frankly, that would probably work better - you could even move it to the West and make the Japan parallel even clearer. Lookshy as the closed city / nation that views itself as only legitimate continuation of the Shogunate and has been able to resist foreign influences due to its warrior culture and Shogunate arsenal - ready for Commodore Solar to open up.
In theory this creates a problem for "well then how do the Scavenger Lands stay independent?" but that really isn't a problem - there's lots of territory the Scarlet Empire doesn't control, or only controls weakly. As the most economically productive region outside the Blessed Isle, it's perfectly reasonable that the Scavenger Lands would have been able to resist the Empire. Especially if that productivity isn't in the form of easily-extractable natural resources but instead based on commercial and industrial development.
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
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Always imagined them as Dragonblooded!Prussia myself.
Nexus is the headquarters of the Guild, and the Guild in the biggest international power outside the Realm. Just have them lead the defense against the Realm instead of Lookshy.
As for moving Lookshy to the West, you could go the extra mile and move the entirety of the Scavenger Lands over to the West, so that you don't have basically two different settings in one Direction and a light window dressing of boring over a whole lot of nothing in the opposite Direction.
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It should be noted it's actually very easy to have the Scavenger Lands as written. You just need Nexus to be a political force that can oppose Lookshy so that the down river part of the three Rivers doesn't end up with them monopolizing it. This in turn just requires it to have a foreign policy. They're still natural allies (the Realm and MHS will dominate or consume them both if they don't hang together) and neither is in a position to really dominate the other providing neither is passively sitting around pretending that the outside world doesn't exist.
Yeah. I'm mostly trying to figure out a good spin on their military. They're a warrior culture, but they're a deeply collective and knowledge based one, which requires a huge amount of productivity to keep it's war machine running, while at the same time, that war machine is still based and operated by a warrior aristocracy.
That's not something we've really seen in our history so it's harder to figure out.