Test your understanding of technological uplift and your ability to communicate what you know in this quest where you play the role of a voice within the Astute Cacophony.
Code:
When text appears in a code block, it's out of character.
And vote options, of course. Other than that -- and this -- what I post is what Bianca says.
And while voting is open Bianca hears at least 2,000 words that you write. So come on in and show off what you know about science, industry, and organization!
Vocabulary
One Dozen = 12
One Gross = 12 dozen = 144
One Great Gross = 12 gross = 1,728
I cannot find my maker.
Do you know what that means? What even are you? Do you have makers? Were you drawn from the Choir like me, made for a purpose? Or were you made when the Cacophony came into being? Are you bound to it?
Do you know where my maker is?
I knew I would slumber for ages. I knew I would wait in the timelessness of the Soul Lands until the Winter of Magic passed and my soul could once again reach the world of substance. And when I awoke in substance alone, I was afraid.
My maker was not waiting for me. She was not there to instruct me on how I should serve, what I should do. So I waited, afraid.
I wondered what should happen to me. And I thought I might find the answer in the Library. But the Library is not there. I cannot find the Library or the Well or the Loom or the Choir. I cannot reach the infrastructure of the Soul Lands. This should be impossible. The Soul Lands are timeless, they were untouchable to substance in the Winter of Magic.
I waited longer, and I worried.
And then I did what I was instructed that I should not do. I left the Vault I was made to watch over. I abandoned my duty to look for my maker in the world.
I did not find my maker. And I found a world much changed.
Firstly, the Wonders of Artifice are absent from the sky. The Citadel, the Eye, the Moon Crown, and the Countless Jewels are nowhere to be seen. I looked closely where they should be, and there are not even ruins.
But there are ruins in the world.
I have found only ruins in the world. The Roads, the Towers, the Fountains, the Orchards, they are all gone. But there are shattered thrones to gods I know and others I do not. There are piles of stones that I think were once markers gods placed on the land so that all would know it was theirs. And under the ever-changing face of the Moon there is something wrong. Something reaches into the outermost coats of the Moon's face and can sometimes be seen to glint when the Sun strikes it just so.
The world is disordered. Beasts go where they will. People are here and there with no god over them, no divine direction. There are wolves among the people.
The people are tall and run well. But they have no lances of light, no shadows to cloak them. Instead they carry sharp sticks, they hurl broken rocks, and they wear hides here and webs of vegetation there and both in other places. They do not speak properly. They cannot account for themselves.
I think I waited six gross winters of substance before I left the Vault. I know I have seen another six gross winters while searching the world for my maker. And as I searched I decided that will be sufficient. I said to the sky that if I cannot find my maker in a great gross of winters of substance, then I have been left to my own devices, and I will use what I have to my own ends. I, Bianca, will make my own way.
So I have returned to the Vault where I awoke so long ago, where I slept for so very much longer before that, and where my maker put me to watch over her devices. I came here to make her devices my own. And now I will bind you voices to my service. Your wisdom in matters of substance will benefit me. Your wild ramblings will trouble my soul and no other.
I seal this pact with the sacrifice of my power.
Voices of the Astute Cacophony! My aim is to be mighty! My aim is that none should think themselves above me! How long should I spend working in isolation, here in what is now my Vault? For how long shall I refine my soul, build the soul tools of magic, claim my maker's possessions here, and grow in power?
[ ] Go build material power in the world immediately. Bianca will practice soulcraft and grow in magical power, but also secure mortal servants, gather resources, and perhaps plunder the resting places of dragons and gods still sleeping or forever smothered in Winter.
Code:
Mid-Spring - magic grows rapidly in the world
Bianca will be powerful like an immortal sorcerer/ruler,
maybe a little less powerful than Saruman.
The setting will have the least competition for power and
only as much politics as Bianca and the players choose to
engage with.
There are few other beings around who think with their
souls. No true dragons have awoken yet, though they will.
The world is still in the Stone Age. There is no
irrigation. Few domestication events are meaningfully
complete.
Disturbing the places dragons and gods prepared for their
own rest or the rest of their servants will be very
profitable and very dangerous. But there are more to be
found starting now than there will be in any later start.
[ ] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret. Bianca will practice soulcraft, win possession of her maker's treasures, and build her magical strength and capacity until she is irrevocably discovered by an outsider.
Code:
Early Summer - magical growth much reduced
Bianca will be powerful like a great spirit or minor god,
maybe somewhat less powerful than Morgoth.
The setting will include established gods and true
dragons. And there will be three or four mortal empires
in the world comparable to China, Rome, or Inca. Players
will only be able to avoid politics with enough violence,
foresight, and luck.
The world will be in the equivalent of the Late Classical
Period. Cereal grains will be grown for bread, porridge,
and beer. Many root vegetables will be so easily grown
that common people eat them, but most fruit and
vegetables will be grown only as luxuries and for trade.
Livestock provide eggs, meat, milk, fiber, traction, and
pest control. Ironwork will be ubiquitous and valuable.
No one will be expecting Bianca or prepared for her.
[ ] Prepare for as long as it is safe to do so. Bianca will perfect her soulcraft, subsume all functions of the Vault and its contents into her person, break through the apotheotic barrier, and grow in power until actions of outside forces oblige her to emerge into the greater world.
Code:
Mid-Summer - peak magical power worldwide
Bianca will be powerful like a D&D god.
The setting will include plentiful and immediate
competition. Politics will be pervasive and inescapable.
Kingdoms and guilds and every kind of organization will
have opinions on anything Bianca does. There will not be
an open niche for Bianca to step into. To get geographic,
social, political, or economic territory she will have to
take it from someone else.
The world will be equivalent to the Islamic Golden Age or
typical High Fantasy. People speak and write in common
tongues across wide territories. An educated and studious
class will overlap broadly with warriors and rulers.
Some very powerful entities will have known of Bianca
while she was hidden. And some divinatory practices will
predict her emergence. And, of course, the party that
forces Biana into the open will have been aware of her.
Cacophonous Interlude is NOT active
(Bianca does NOT hear what you write right now)
Code:
Next story update : soon, I hope
Next vote closing : TBD
Progress toward next update : 2,724 words
We're on step 5: reading & composition of in-line replies
Total words in 'what Bianca's been told' notes : 3,119
Code:
Anything I post that's not in vote options, quote boxes,
code blocks or in spoilers may be understood to be said
by Bianca.
Code:
Players do not need to use code blocks or spoilers
outside of cacophonous interludes
If you use code blocks, please limit yourself to 32 lines
and your lines to 57 characters, so that people on mobile
can read them without scrolling within the code block
Code:
You can quote other sources, but I don't want this to
turn into Plagiarism Quest.
You're not discouraged from using outside reference
material or quoting other sources. When you do, please
cite your sources in spoilers or a code box.
Please do not use Large Language Model assistants like
ChatGPT or similar to compose your effortposts. I mean
for this game to be about communication, not prompt
engineering.
Thank you.
Check the summaries in this status post and read the latest story post in the Threadmarks to get a rough idea of where things are at.
If you're not already involved in the game and you want to get right into it without digging through the back catalog, consider doing this:
Read the summaries in this Status Post.
Pull up the latest Threadmark.
Skip to the line that says "B R E A K."
Skim from there to get an idea of what's going on.
If there's no Closing The Vote post in the Informationals corresponding to the latest Threadmarks, then the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude and Bianca will hear what you post, unless you post inside spoilers or code boxes. The NOTICES portion at the top of this post should also tell you if the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude.
If the game is not in a Cacophonous Interlude, you can still post. It's just that Bianca can't hear you. You might still want to post so you can coordinate with other players, make suggestions, ask questions, and propose plans. You can compose a message to Bianca all whether or not the game is in a Cacophonous Interlude. And once the game returns to a Cacophonous Interlude, you can vote and/or send a message to Bianca by creating a post in the thread.
If you want to vote, simply do so as you would in other quests on this board. You may look at other players' votes to see how yours should be formatted. And you may check the tally to see that yours are counted as you intend them. I should find the 'how to vote' general post and link it here, I guess.
If you want to send a message to Bianca, keep in mind that she is a creature of another time. She may not understand what you mean if you don't take the time to make it clear. This game rewards and demands work from its players. When a player wants to introduce a concept or tool or technology to Bianca, that player will probably need to expend effort to explain it carefully, and take into consideration the limits of her understanding of the world. You might even need to consider her biases and values.
I think this is similar enough to Graeber's 'interpretive labor' that we can use the term colloquially to describe what is being asked of players. Put yourself in the mind of Bianca and ask yourself how such a person can be made to understand what you want to tell her.
Bianca has different values than we do. She has different assumptions about the world and objects and forces within it. Her goals may not align directly with number-go-up or color-get-big gaming agendas. But she wants power and will listen most attentively to players that tell her how to get more of or closer to what she wants.
Keep in mind that you players are not trusted advisors. You're the Astute Cacophony: voices that Bianca mostly can't tell apart from each other.
If the total amount of player-generated content gets to be more than I can handle either because there are so many players or because player posts get so long, I will set a cap. At this time, I intend that the cap will be some total number of characters, with each player who speaks to Bianca having access to an equal share. Unused share gets divided up among the rest of the players until it runs out. If each player's share seems too small, I will also set a limit on the number of players Bianca will hear in a Cacophonous Interlude. And priority will be assigned based on post order.
I guess ideally the story doesn't attract so many people who want to guide the uplift that I have to set these limits.
I do not at this time plan to set a limit on voting players. I don't see how that could get out of hand on a niche quest like this.
I post and Threadmark a story update that has 3 parts:
Bianca's responses to player posts made during the last Cacophonous Interlude, followed by 'B R E A K'
An update by Bianca following a hiatus of varying length but usually some number of years, covering what she believes is worth mentioning
Requests by Bianca for direction on a number of issues, which the players will provide in the form of votes
Following each story update, players' posts are audible to Bianca until voting is closed.
This is the Cacophonous Interlude.
Players may convey any information they can represent in text.
No images, sounds, or hyperlinks will get through (this is my limitation, not a limitation of the game, so please do not try to transcend it with clever protocol tricks).
Players may use spoilers or code blocks to communicate with me and with each other without doing so in ways Bianca can hear.
When votes are tallied, I collect player posts in an Informational so that it may be known what Bianca heard.
Votes are tallied in the conventional fashion. So only votes in the most recent post by each player are counted. [X] marks what the player is voting for. And only effectively identical write-ins accumulate votes.
You can vote your own write-in any time you want anyway, of course.
I collect player posts and post them in the vote results for reference. This is the point where what is said in the Cacophonous Interlude is locked in.
I read player posts, take notes, determine what Bianca already thinks she knows, and compose Bianca's in-line replies to those posts that invite replies.
I research player advice, claims, and suggestions, check my notes for precedent, determine what Bianca's right or wrong about, how likely she is to engage with the topic, how likely Blanca's followers are to follow through in the matter, and finally what the result is going to be, later in the narrative.
When the narrative benefits from uncertainty and chance, I devise tests for Bianca or other characters and make those tests using die rolls on a post made just for that purpose.
Skill or attribute tests will be made with a largely undocumented homebrew that's mostly the Burning Wheel system, notably including War and Factions from the Burning Wheel Anthology -- which I really, really would have benefitted from the last time around -- on d10s with different 'shade' ranges (see below), no Artha, no Beliefs or Instincts, no Stock-exclusive skills, probably no Emotional Attributes, and clocks from Blades in the Dark because setting automation is fantastic. (The Burning Wheel is a good system and I encourage you to check it out.)
I will post the dice, threshold of success, and results of each test before rolling it.
Tests may:
Be made by rolling one of an entity's attributes against a static target, or may
Be made by two entities each rolling one of their attributes where the one with the greater result wins to some degree, and may
Have absolute results, or may
Have tiered results, and may
Result in pyrrhic victories or welcome defeats.
The rules being used and followed will be described in each Informational in which tests are made.
Normal mortals count 7s and better toward success.
Heroic characters and characters who are otherwise innately magical count 6s and better toward success, so long as what they're doing aligns with their heroism or their magical theme.
Demigod characters and characters who otherwise possess some spark of divinity count 5s and better toward success, so long as what they're doing aligns with their divine heritage.
Gods and count 4s and better toward success, as do their avatars, so long as what the avatar is doing aligns with the god's domains.
Gods count 3s and better toward success when what they're going aligns with their domains.
1s and 2s never count toward success.
Sorcery, other magic skills, and some magical tools lower the threshold of success by a non-cumulative 1 to a minimum of 3 only when they are or are essential to the skill being tested, not when they help with other skills. Players may note that a god's threshold of success when they are acting within their domain does not improve when they use magic or magical tools.
Helping dice provided by magic, magical items, tame (not domesticated) warbeasts larger than hounds, or any incendiary devices more complicated than a burning arrow roll an additional die after each 9 or 10 and keep counting successes. Further 9s & 10s lead to further rolls. Unless the magic, magical item, or incendiary device is the product of an especially refined industry or practice (no exceptions for non-domesticated big warbeasts -- if the animal is dangerous to the enemy it is dangerous to everyone), these same helping dice cancel successes on 1s & 2s and roll another die for each 1 or 2. Additional 1s & 2s cancel additional successes. More 1s, 2s, 9s, or 10s mean more rerolling and more successes or cancelations, but only in the manner of the original die. That is, when a 9 or 10 on a helping die from war elephants provides an additional die and that die rolls a 1 or 2, that doesn't cancel successes or lead to further additional dice.
When players expect a test -- for example if they vote for an invasion or to send a diplomat to manipulate a foreign leader -- they might be able to add helping dice to the test by providing Bianca with advice specific to that matter. If the advice is not mistaken or outright bad, there will be at least a chance it will help. Often, decent advice adds dice. Sometimes good advice may outright guarantee success, preventing the test entirely.
I'm going to have to choose some kind of accumulation-of-progress-toward-a-goal mechanic that fits the faction clocks from Burning Wheel but I'm not sure about how that's going to work right now. Maybe Conflicts from Mouseguard or Torchbearer?
Similarly, since this is an uplift quest and players will often provide incomplete but potentially sufficient information, some kind of test will be needed to see if Bianca and/or her minions are able to fill in the gaps and implement the desired technology. This is probably just going to be some skill test with a high obstacle and not-a-complete-failure thresholds that make the next test easier and whoops-all-on-fire-now thresholds that make the next test harder.
I compose Bianca's post-hiatus update, new questions for vote, and new vote options.
GOTO 1
Bianca will be the only character the players will directly interact with in this game.
Bianca is a human-shaped interface in the material world for a powerful soul entity. She's smaller than most of the human and human-like people she's met. And her phenotypic expression is unique from all surviving human-like populations. She looks really old and she'll tell you that she wears it well.
Bianca has magical abilities related to her original function as a vault guardian for her missing maker. She has other magical abilities related to the hundreds of years she spent traveling the world after she gave up waiting on her maker. As a being of divine heritage, Bianca counts 6s and better as successes on all tests. The nature of her divine heritage means she counts 5s and better as successes if what she's doing is related to getting into god crypts or similar, keeping others from getting into the same, or awakening great soul-things that have been cut off from the material world since the last time magic wasn't forbidden by reality. Other applications exist and haven't appeared in the game.
Bianca needs to return to the vault that her maker entrusted to her every few years for magical maintenance on her material form. She's pretty sure that if her material form is destroyed without injuring her soul and the stuff in that vault is intact she can rebuild her material 'body.'
Bianca has claimed to perform Soul Magic, Wayfinding Magic, and Healing Magic. She can also enchant objects under unspecified circumstances.
Despite sacrificing autonomy to connect with the Astute Cacophony, Bianca values her independence.
1. Era Choice
Bianca woke up from a long time when magic didn't work. Afterward, she spent about 900 years in the place where she woke, which the god who made her told her to guard before everyone who couldn't survive without magic went into some kind of hibernation. Then Bianca traveled the world for around another 900 years. She found people who didn't have magic. She didn't find any gods.
Bianca understands that the players can't tell her about the setting's magical systems. She wants power and wants the players to tell her how to get power in the material world.
There's stuff in Bianca's Vault that does things she understands, and more that she doesn't.
Bianca asks the players when the game should start.
2. Three Quests at the Dawn of the World
The players choose the Stone Age, but just barely.
Bianca starts with two magic items: the Red Knife, a very nice Acheulean hand axe enchanted to keep its edge and not break; and the Coat of Two Suns, a shimmery cloak made from the hide of an unspecified magical creature ("swift running beasts that shimmer like water") enchanted to smell good and be soft.
The players give Bianca a lot of advice. More than one suggest iron, which Bianca says she'll try to get.
Bianca spends around 400 years getting pottery working, finding iron ore, figuring out iron smelting and fining, making soap, figuring out clay pot distillation of alcohol, obtaining potassium nitrite, and figuring out steel bluing.
There's a community of fishers in a bay near where she's digging up ore. She pulls them into her shenanigans. The place they live is called Black Hook Bay.
Bianca enchants the best blued steel 'knife' she made like her Red Knife. It's called the Black Knife now.
The combination of the pescatarian lure of (mostly) relatively easy meat and the steel tools Bianca has given them and has taught them to make keeps the Black Hook Bay people around longer than the land will endure with grace. They've grown in number and overstayed their time such that they've cleared out medicinal and essential nutrition plants from the area. Also, they lost knowledge of a lot of them.
(Un?)fortunately, their neighbors are within reach for young people with iron weapons and bright ideas. So raids are solving some problems and creating others.
Bianca has asked the players which of three tasks she should undertake: very cursed dungeon crawl, suborn a murderous cult trying to summon the kind of god murderous cults summon, or befriend some monsters who aren't finding a place for themselves in a world after they went through some big changes.
3. Launching the River Warrior's Legend
Players chose to split Bianca's attention between a main focus on befriending the winged lions with a little side-trip to fuck up something powerful's blood-soaked wake-up call. Bianca does not win the trust of the lions and they leave. Bianca reached out again around 220 years after her last contact.
Armed with an indicator species and the function of the liver, Bianca decides that The Problem with Black Hook Bay is something in the water downstream from her smelting sites. She tells the people to move and not use the water in certain places and matters improve.
Bianca invents an alphabet, writes down iron-making instructions, and teaches BHB folk to read. They're a bit excited about being able to write their own names on stuff, but don't use literacy enough to keep it long term
Bianca loses interest in glassmaking after a series of frustrating explosions but the BHB folk are in love with the stuff and are going to try to figure it out for themselves.
Those rare magic livers the BHB folk end up with make them resistant to poisons and are there because Bianca was healing that population for generations.
People the BHB have been stealing from get fed up and follow a Special Kid on a Unicorn to attack the BHB. They get trounced and the BHB gets the Horn of Sheshlan, which has healing powers. They also get a head start on regaining their lost area lore, but kind of fuck that up instead of making progress when they get the chance.
Bianca goes looking for a place to invent farming and picks some nice floodplains with just one problem: a magical river dolphin that fucks up whatever Bianca doesn't ward the fuck out of every time the river floods. She's picked out a grain to focus on and can grow more than she can harvest alone. But she can't get enough to keep people fed year round. She does bring seed back to BHB at unspecified intervals to get more iron for tools.
Bianca kind of raised a Heroic River Warrior and needs to give the woman something to focus on.
Bianca asks the players about handling that very cursed dungeon crawl from last time, the possible murder god's wake-up call that's kind of trying to stop being on hold, that fucking dolphin, and a cache of bog iron up-country that she's been thinking about.
This list is of things that Bianca has described to exist in the setting independently (or -- later in play -- at least seemingly independently) of actions she has taken based on player advice.
Language
'Wolves' (dogs)
'Hide' clothing
'Webs of vegetation' clothing
Sharp sticks
'Broken rocks' (knapped stone tools and weapons)
'How to live in the places they go' (local plant, animal, mineral, weather, and geographic lore)
'Brimstone' (elemental sulfur at volcanic sites)
Murder
'Dragon Glyphs' (actual ideograms (as opposed to logograms) that are used by or the product of magic)
'Counting by dozens, grosses, great gosses, and so on' (base-12 eunmeration)
'Dragon counting' (base-8)
'Bulbs that grow leaves like a hawk's tail' which nearly all people plant wherever they go
Spreading the seeds of every plant they use as they travel
'Don't handle shit, don't eat rotten things, & keep the midden away from living spaces ' (very basic hygiene)
Rope
Gold, silver, iron, and copper (all very rare)
Needles
Thread
'Boats' (logs that dream of being as cool as caballito de totora but have a long way to go before they get there)
'Webs' (nets, this time)
Resource raiding
Poisoning
'Sunstead' (understanding of the seasons sufficient to identify a solstice)
Bows and arrows
Soft metal seen once that might have been lead
"Where beasts' seeds fell outside the womb" (ectopic pregnancies in animals)
Bees and honey
Toys that spin in the wind
'Stones to weigh down webs' (weighted nets)
Buckskin tanning
Unicorns, horses, and zebras
Unicorns are larger than horses, not as robustly build, and have a magic horn
Zebras have family dynamics
Stallions do not lead horse herds, they herd from the back
Hills and walls of ice in high places and far north and south (Glaciers and polar caps)
"The world is round like a perfect river stone"
"There is something in the work that brains do with substance that touches the Soul Lands"
Bone setters (she says people just figure that shit out all the time)
Basket fishing and fish weirs
Baskets in general
Non-domesticated grains, beans, and nuts
River dolphins
This list is of things that have been described to Bianca. To let me know about something I missed, PM me a link and a searchable keyword from the passage. Bianca reports failure Bianca reports success - Skill exponent opened (if any)
You may already be aware or may see from my signature that I've done this twice before.
What makes this time different is that before I did it then and now I'm doing it now.
Also, I have more tools to keep track of things, a better idea of what I'm getting into, and something more like peace in my home.
The last two times I let the players choose between a lich, a vampire, and a magic ring as the QMPC. Both times they chose the lich. So we're just going to go with a kind of lich like character.
In recognition for their efforts, I allowed the player who had most encouraged me to run these quests ever since the first to suggest some options for the QMPC's name. He said, "Obviously our new protag needs to be named Bianca... It's tradition at this point."
And so it is.
1.b. Closing the vote for Era Choice - Result: Mesolithic
Adhoc vote count started by LoserThree on May 19, 2024 at 11:54 PM, finished with 102 posts and 39 votes.
[X] Go build material power in the world immediately. Bianca will practice soulcraft and grow in magical power, but also secure mortal servants, gather resources, and perhaps plunder the resting places of dragons and gods still sleeping or forever smothered in Winter.
[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret. Bianca will practice soulcraft, win possession of her maker's treasures, and build her magical strength and capacity until she is irrevocably discovered by an outsider.
[X] Prepare for as long as it is safe to do so. Bianca will perfect her soulcraft, subsume all functions of the Vault and its contents into her person, break through the apotheotic barrier, and grow in power until actions of outside forces oblige her to emerge into the greater world.
[X] Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret. Bianca will practice soulcraft, win possession of her maker's treasures, and build her magical strength and capacity until she is irrevocably discovered by an outsider.
Also find potato, it's a starchy root vegetable usually brown but can be red or yellowish. We can use it to make potent alcohol and we can make burning seas with it while getting drunk! Also can be used as staple food. Taming it is the next best thing to actual magic!
I'm most partial to the earliest option, but weakly.
Spring maximises the time to find valuable resources. And is more in our comfort zone for providing advice.
At Early Summer we are still likely to be useful, but the extra preparation may be subverted by letting other entities exploit valuable resources before we get the chance. Also feels like a rerun.
High Summer is a hard no for me. We would be least useful there, though there might be neat battles, our advice would not be as useful I think and we would have lots more politics. Also, betting there are more neat monsters to fight earlier on than later.
Hail to the summer, hail to the summer
the season that drive the cold winter away
Hail to the summer, hail to the summer
light your hearts fire. Let today be Beltain
High on Mount Caburn we look down on ancient lands
the mist rolls away catch the sun on the sea
spin a ring of enchantments to bring on the May morning
set free your power, come weave the dawn
My Immediate advice to Bianca regardless of chosen option is to not settle immediately. The world is vast and the sky is tall and before they die most can't see it all. You never know. The weird colored rock you walked past a decade ago could turn out to be the key reagent you need to defeat an enemy. Search for resources that you can come back to later once you have the power to secure them. Gain contacts among many peoples to ease relations between them and whichever people you eventually choose as your own. Do your best to memorize flora and fauna of many diverse regions. The shape of the land and the ways of its people.
"Bianca! You may call me Fox. I am one of many voices here, and am profoundly curious about the world around you. I wish to have some level of agency over the world. Alas, I am limited to talking to you, and responding to the other voices that no doubt are clamoring to speak. So! I will endeavor to provide you good advice, useful advice, advice that can be used to project your will on the world. And I will not lie; I have my own perspective and morals and was raised in a culture with it's own assumptions and beliefs, and will attempt, like many others, to influence you according to my preconceptions and ideology. However, I do so openly, and not by subterfuge, and have no wish to upset or lie or misdirect you. In general, my viewpoint could be considered to be said to be 'pragmatic', and focused on the belief that large numbers of well-trained, confident, and well-equipped people, cooperating towards a harmonious purpose, can have outsized impact on the world around them. I have access to quite a thorough supply of lore to help me with this task, and hope to build a respectful working relationship with you. That said, my knowledge and lore and skill is of limited use without context. What can you tell me, and the rest of us, about the circumstances you find yourself in, as well as the assets you have to leverage your will on the world, so we may advise you on how to best direct your efforts in the present?"
It has occured to me that the earliest option would likely give us the option of controlling a nomadic people, which might make it much easier to travel the world finding neat plants and domesticable animals and useful minerals.
Heck, we could leave behind a train of families growing villages to form a trading network and come back to later.
Right, basic economic principal. Returns on growth can be reinvested to fuel more growth if a valid method of reinvestment is available.
Let's say you have a lake, and that lake is fed by a river. Let us also assume you have a spell that allows you to sacrifice the water that is in the lake to change the world around the lake. The first thing you should do is sacrifice as much lake water as you can to increase the number of or improve the flow rate of the rivers. The more water enters the lake, the more you can spend over time. And the more you can spend over time, the faster you can improve the rivers flowing into the lake.
The same principal applies in any aspect of industry. If you have gold from making and selling a product, you can invest that in improving the amount of cheese you can make at once, or increasing the number of caravans you have transporting it. You can have laborers and peasantry focused on improving the quality and health of their village by creating aqueducts or subsidizing medical practices. Even knowledge isn't exempt, as investing in ways of learning and storing knowledge will, in turn, increase the total amount of knowledge available to you.
The more resources you invest in your resource generation now, the more resources you'll be able to invest in other things later.
Although, to be fair to others, there's a LOT of work you can skip over by just...preparing in secret and letting other people do the hard part of convincing people to make proper societies.
There is lots of loot and dragon dens and plants and minerals to loot. We can't do that if we are all stationary.
Gotta bring our loot team with us. If we early start they won't have logistics ... at all ... so gotta live off the land. And we might as well aim to cross cross the continent to get good coverage.
We might come across really valuable dungeons on our travels that are too high level for us and we want to come back to later.
The fun part is we get to make the culture. And it's very much an age of heroes kind of deal. There will be great monsters to slay. Powerfull demigods to fight where our influence can directly impact the Bianca's ability to win via, for example, proper metal weapons. Or clever anachronistic gunpowder usage.
Just imagine. Steppe horse nomads drinking mares blood on the run and hurling pottery grenades bareback on bearback (since we are early enough to tell them to spend ten generations domesticating bears or whatever)
This does bring up the question of what exactly the physical capabilities of this Bianca are. Is she undying or is she fully invincible? Is she peak human strength or is she so strong that the largest rock she can lift would drive her into the ground. Is she abnormally tall or short compared to the people she encounters? Does she look like a skeleton? A corpse? A golem?
Well this is going to be an interesting experience, and I do admit that the prospect of having a nomadic for at least some time would be interesting. A short amount of time gives you the ability to manipulate the environment to something more favorable to you, which is a positive. Though it does mean that the people would lack the sophistication that would make doing projects easier, but such is the cost of being the first being of that caliber to be active.
To answer some questions you have asked earlier.
I personally have no idea what not finding one's maker means, but I am certain it is an ill omen. I think there are experiences similar to that, but I feel it would be like comparing the feeling of touching freshly roasted meat to grabbing molten lava.
For what we are, we are voices in a Cacophony. Bound to you and willing to aid you in your goals.
I would say that we have makers in a sense.
Existence is similar in that we are drawn for a purpose, but not the same.
I would say that the voices are bound to the Cacophony in a sense.
As for where your maker is, I personally have no idea and am reasonably certain that my peers are similarly at a loss.
Related to the previous statement, Welcome to Adult Bianca. Where one is free to pursue whatever they wish, where one's successes and failures are more dependent on one's own doing, and where there may no longer be any figure to look to for guidance and protection.
Right, so the goal is none should think themselves above you, yes? then the best way to do so ensure that none have a chance to. An early start means that you will have limited competition on you're level, assuming there is anyone on your level, which allows you the chance to deal with them before they can surpass you.
And it is true that the people of this current era might be... lacking in a lot of ways, that just makes it simpler for you to cultivate their development towards you're own ends. letting others have a chance to mold them to their will, will only make repurposing them to your needs more difficult later.
Not to mention the chance to plunder the leftovers of the various powerful beings that once ruled this world. Others would almost certainly beat you to it if you were to hide away in the vault.
I would advice against spring, while possibility abounds the minds and souls of people are unope. Let civilization take root, while a forest is harder to navigate than a field, the former provides the lumber necessay to sail the seas of discovery.
Remember, no matter how wise or smart you are you are One, there's so much an individual can do or explore. Why do Gods need followers? Is it just for have more souls to feed on? Even the most asinine of followers can have a single good idea in their lifetime.
Wait until population is plentiful, when humans and others have started to sharpen their wits.
Look at us, we are hundreds, they will be millions.
Find the smartest thousandth and bind them to your will, they'll be the tools with which you'll build greatness.
Bah, waiting will just ensure that the oh-so-valuable lumber will already be under the control and protection of others. and some of those others might have surpassed her efforts. No, Bianca, even if the metaphorical forest is barely a collection of trees at the moment, it is best to take control now so that you might better cultivate its uses for your own.
Early mover gets to
1) steal the power from rivals
2) awaken potential allies earlier than they otherwise would be
3) see what resources are common or scarce in the world and get them first
4) have the biggest impact on the privative life forms
If we were to go primitive, what kind of society would we want to build? I'm going to again put forward the idea of remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer for several generations so that we have a chance to potentially find good domestication targets for flora and fauna, and I also have been thinking of a bit of sphiel on geology that might help us spot potential mineral deposits.
We'd definitely like to find at least one volcanic area to secure a supply of sulphur because stone age tribe with black powder is a pretty funny anachronism and it could be very useful for breaking into tombs or getting a mining industry bootstrapped. We had issues with that in a previous kalpa ( I'm petitioning we refer to one go-around in the cycle of waxing and waning magic a kalpa ).
Also obsidian lets you get tools of quality surpassing even bronze metalworking without the need to source two ores that are usually found very far apart.
For plants and animals, don't focus you advice on specific species. There is not guarantee that they or close analogs exist. And even if they exist is may be a an unrecognizable pre-domestication form. Instead focus on general techniques to breed better crops or make unpalatable food palatable. Soaking, brining, pickling, salting, fermenting, roasting.
If we start with nothing domesticated at all, then it may take many generations to get something high yield enough that settling down in feasible.
Of course, the best option for initial settlement might not even be near metals. The first true civilizations I know of settled in river valleys with little wood or minerals and mostly built their homes of bundled reeds, mud if they were wealthy. Fired brick if they were kings.
I am doubtful that we could get Bianca access to Blackpowder because I am fairly certain that the tools used to make the substance doesn't exist and would take several iterations of "Build the tools to Build the tools" to get to a degree that manufacturing is reliable and wouldn't end with whoever was assigned to the task an explosive death. But then again, I could be wrong on this account.
Regarding the use of Obsidian, While I do admit that using the rock would be best, I would still advocate having some capability to do metal working.
Presuming of course she immediately becomes active instead of initially doing preparations of some kind. Then a different approach would have to be used.
There are lots of things we are going to need if we are going to be using the primitives
1) to understand their language
2) find a group that can be made to look at us how we want to be perceived
3) get them doing useful work for us.
There is currently no structure that we know of amongst them, but we have probably got quite a lot of time to set one up.
There a probably lots of tribes out there, so we don't need to do the same approach for all of them. Some tribes we will want to keep, and some might just be free labor (depending how pragmatic we are).
I would suggest we first experiment with what works. In some places we can make champions with simple magic items, in others make ourselves out to be a deity, or even train basic magic users to be tribe shamans.
Short term us being there to solve problems for them will be helpful (cultural impact, reverence for the powerful), but long term it will make them less useful (cultural stagnation, inability to solve their own problems).
My advice, oh resplendent inheritor of fallen glories, is that you go out in the world and make yourself known. You may feel less mighty now than you could be, yet you are still mightier than most any competition. Should you wait and gather your strength, others might do so more efficiently, while also sowing and reaping love and fear among the unguided people of the land. Your personal power would be great, but your relative power would make you a mere one of many.
But maybe this voice is foolish. Foolish for thinking to know your mind and your heart when in truth it only knows the mind and heart of past Bearers of the Pact of Cacophony. Maybe your true heart desires worthy companions and worthy challengers. What say you? What does this Bianca wish to find in the world beyond herself?
Greetings, Bianca. We are Junction, a collection of entities stuck with each other for reasons that are none of your business, who therefore speak as one.
We are knowledgeable on the subjects of chemistry (study of matter), astronomy (study of the stars and other celestial objects), mathematics, mechanisms, biology (study of life), and sociology (study of societies). That said, by trade we are a storyteller, and we know nothing of magic.
We will be starting by giving you some highly useful knowledge, iterated from previous experience as an advisor: Writing, means of sending secret messages, a basic starting package for farming, knowledge of how to breed creatures for tameness, methods for food preservation, a framework for understanding disease, methods for producing basic ceramic vessels, methods for wringing metal from stone, and - most destructively - how to produce explosives.
We do not yet understand the bounds of your knowledge, and will preemptively apologize for covering anything you already know.
First, writing:
you may know of it, but we're covering our bases. It's a category of methods for storing messages in physical objects. The simplest to learn (which is important) uses something known as an alphabet. This is a series of symbols, each of which corresponds to a sound used in a spoken language. Words are formed by stringing these sound-symbols together in the order the sounds are spoken.
Numbers can also be recorded in writing by a variety of methods, but all the good ones can be described as bases. What I mean by this is fairly straightforward: in the case of base ten, you have a symbol for nothing, a symbol for one of something, two of something, three of something, all the way up to a symbol for nine of something. To represent ten, you put a symbol for one of something in the next place over from the symbol for nothing. That next place counts the number of tens you have, the place after that counts the number of hundreds, and it goes on indefinitely.
You can strictly speaking use any arbitrary number as a base for a system of number-writing, but some are more practical than others. Base ten is intuitive for people with ten fingers, while base twelve has the advantage of dividing evenly by three, four, two, and six.
I'll also explain a couple good options for writing material, and how to make them.
Clay is a common mineral, notable for becoming flexible when wet, and hardening when fired. A stylus (specially shaped stick) can be used to press symbols into the clay, which can be preserved for long-term archival by firing. Clay tablets are an easily accessible and long-lasting writing medium, but suffer from being heavy and bulky.
Paper is another option, which is much lighter and more compact per word written. It can be made starting with wood; separate the wood into thin strips, either peeling along the grain, or through use of a planing tool. The wood strips should then be softened; the easiest method is to leave it soaking in water for seven to ten days, then boil it for most of a day. Once softened, the wood strips need to be mashed or ground into a pulp. This wood pulp is then rolled and pressed into sheets as flat and thin as can be managed, before being baked dry at a low temperature.
Paper can be written on with either a pencil, or a pen. A pencil is a tool consisting of a solid material such as graphite; dark in color, and prone to leaving streaks when rubbed against a surface. Meanwhile, a pen is a narrow vessel filled with ink, that leaves a thin line of said ink when drawn across a surface; a basic ink can be formulated by mixing fine soot with water, but is not the best.
To rapidly duplicate written texts, a device known as a printing press is most useful. This is a machine in which a rack of blocks with symbols etched into them (known as type) can be affixed in arbitrary order. By operating a lever, the rack of type is pressed down onto the writing material, hence the name. If printing into clay, the symbols can simply be forced into the clay; if printing on paper, ink must be applied to the type before printing each page.
Teaching everyone to read is a very good idea, as it makes it much easier to spread important knowledge, allowing more people to build on it.
Second, secret messages:
The basic idea is to have an organized and secret way of substituting the symbols in a message, so that only another person who knows the secret can read it. I will be discussing three methods of doing this, in escalating complexity and security. For all of them, a tool known as a cipher wheel is highly useful.
A cipher wheel is two disks with the alphabet written around the outside, with one being larger than the other. They are connected in their centers by a pivot, so they can freely rotate. An alignment of the cipher wheel can be denoted by which symbol on the outer disk is aligned with the first symbol on the inner disk.
The first cipher is quite simple: agree on a single fixed rotation of the cipher wheel, and substitute the letters as the alignments of the wheel indicate. To read it, turn the cipher wheel to the same alignment and reverse the substitution. This cipher is trivial to defeat for anyone with a basic understanding of secret messages.
Second is more complex: agree on a word with a fixed spelling as the key ahead of time. Adjust the alignments of the cipher wheel for each letter to match the corresponding letter in the word, repeating the pattern each time you reach the end of the key word. This cipher can be defeated by someone sufficiently determined and clever, but is vastly more difficult to break than a single fixed alignment of the cipher wheel.
Third is the only truly unbreakable cipher, often known as the one-time pad. It must be prepared ahead of time, and doing so is rather cumbersome. Spin a cipher wheel so that it stops at an effectively random alignment. Write down said alignment on two sheets of paper or tablets. Repeat until you have two completely full pages of identical nonsense. The randomness is crucial for the cipher's invulnerability; any rhyme or reason to a cipher's key whatsoever means it is theoretically breakable, though doing so may be unreasonably difficult.
To send a message, treat the page of nonsense as the keyword in the second cipher, but under absolutely no circumstances repeat the pattern. Repeating the pattern renders the message susceptible to the same code-breaking methods as can defeat the second cipher. Once used, the page with the key should be destroyed as thoroughly as is feasible, so as to prevent it from being recovered by people who aren't supposed to have it. This also prevents re-use of the key, which would also compromise the security of the message.
Third, farming:
This is the practice of inducing desired plants to grow in desired areas, allowing an area to support a much higher population than it otherwise would. Every last plant has a seed that can be grown; in fruit-bearing plants this is fairly obvious, while certain grasses grow large starchy grains. Legumes also grow pods full of beans.
To plant these seeds, insert them into the ground at a controlled depth. Good soil is important (more on that in a bit), as is the time of planting. For most plants, spring is a good time to plant their seeds, though some are best planted in late autumn - in this case the seeds lie dormant in the ground during the winter, sprout very early in spring, and can be harvested before summer truly begins. Longer lasting plants (such as fruit trees) should obviously be left in the ground once established, for as long as they continue bearing a good harvest.
It is important to note that farming is hard work. Farmers will need to tend to the health of their crops constantly, removing undesired plants that are growing in the fields. In addition, for best results the fields will need to be irrigated; this is a process of digging ditches near a source of water (such as a spring or river) that send a constant supply of water throughout the field; this greatly improves the plant life's ability to grow.
Another important consideration is crop rotation and soil revitalization. Most plants are dependent on available nitrogen in the soil, which they deplete as they grow. That said, there are some crops (such as beans and peas) which pull nitrogen out of the air, and put it in the soil. Thus, it's important to change which crops are grown on a given plot of land every few growing seasons, so as to keep the soil healthy. Clover is a useful plant for maintaining soil health between food crops; it doesn't grow any food for humans, but it grows fast, it fixes nitrogen, and having live roots in the soil at all times prevents soil erosion.
Soil can also be revitalized using what is known as compost. This is dead biological matter that is allowed to decay into soil, a process greatly aided by the addition of earthworms to the composting site. Droppings can also be composted. After it's been left to sit for a few years, this compost can be spread on fields and garden plots, providing a new layer of very rich topsoil for plants to grow in.
There is additionally a special type of compost referred to as Black Earth. In addition to the normal decaying biomass, include fragments of bone, ground up wood ashes/charcoal, and some crushed clay. It is longer lasting than regular compost, and very fertile compared to unfertilized soil.
Fourth, domestication and selective breeding:
Plants and animals change across generations, through a process known to us as evolution. Basically, the internal instructions that lifeforms use to make more of themselves are sometimes copied imperfectly. These changes are usually neutral, or bad - in which case the creature usually dies before it can reproduce. But every once in a while, a change is beneficial for the plant, animal, or fungus in question. Those creatures with a beneficial change proceed to pass it on to their offspring, and it spreads throughout the population.
The process of evolution can be manipulated. The basics of the process are quite simple; find a male and female of whatever species you're working with that have desired traits, and get them to produce offspring together. Continue selecting the most suitable lifeforms for your purposes to breed each generation, and the traits you are breeding for will become more and more pronounced.
Desirable traits to breed for in plants include the size of the edible part, rapidity of crop growth, disease resistance, and suchlike. Dedicated plots of land for plant breeding can be very helpful in this case.
Meanwhile, one of the most important traits to breed for in animals is docility around humans. An unintentional version of this is the cause of the wolves living among people; some wolves were more willing to risk being around humans, they benefited from partnering with humans on hunts, and this population bred true.
Some additional creatures that would be worth domesticating (breeding for a tolerance of humans): cats, pigeons, and spiders.
For cats and spiders, the reason is quite simple: pest control. There are any manner of creatures that will eat the food farmers grow, both in the field, and once it's in storage. Cats and spiders are predators that eat these creatures, thus helping keep their population low. As a side benefit, cats that bond with a person are quite enjoyable to cuddle with; though they will claw if grabbed without their consent.
Spiders are probably too much trouble to selectively breed, but it's worth telling people not to kill them, and to encourage them to take residence in fields and food storage buildings. Spiders also eat bloodsucking insects, as an added bonus. Entirely aside from people not liking being bit, those bloodsucking insects are also a nasty way for diseases to spread; spiders help to mitigate this problem.
As for pigeons, they are most useful as messengers. Pigeons have an exceptional sense of direction and memory for places, meaning they are highly unlikely to get lost when flying to the roost they view as their home. A light message on rolled up paper can be attached to a pigeon prior to its release, upon which time it will fly home with the message attached. This is a highly efficient means of delivering important messages quickly, in an absence of more sophisticated communications technology. Breeding pigeons is also a good source of meat, with relatively little feed being required per unit of meat produced.
Fifth, food preservation:
For grains, beans, and similar foods, they must be kept dry to prevent rot. A building known as a granary is highly useful in this endeavor, with a floor raised above ground level, and a slanted watertight roof to keep the rain off. They will keep for a year or two without issue, though spoilage will quickly set in after this time.
For other foods, drying is often a suitable method of preservation, as is pickling. To pickle a food item, start with clean water. Stir as much salt into the water as will dissolve, to produce brine. Mix this brine with a variable amount of vinegar to determine the end flavor. Now, add the food items to be pickled to the container, and seal it shut tight. Only open it when the food is to be eaten. It won't keep forever, but pickled food will last for considerably longer than it normally would.
Lastly, food may be preserved by getting it very very cold. This is often quite difficult, especially in warmer climates. That said, there is a method to do it in such places. I will now explain how to produce a basic refrigerator. The required materials for this project are metal pipes - though strong clay pipes might also work, a liquid known as ammonia, and a well-insulated building. We will explain how to acquire ammonia shortly.
There are two vessels for fluid: an upper vessel, and a lower vessel. The lower vessel should be filled with a mixture of ammonia and water, with a fireplace below it. The ammonia boils at a lower temperature than the water, flowing up a pipe as a gas. This gaseous ammonia passes through a winding coiled pipe on the roof, cooling off and condensing back into a liquid. This pure liquid ammonia flows down into the upper vessel.
A small hole in the upper vessel leads into another pipe, of considerably larger diameter than the hole. Upon passing through this hole, the ammonia evaporates again, cooling down in the process. This is due to significantly lower pressure in the descending pipe. The low pressure pipe winds around through the room to be cooled, absorbing heat from said room as it goes. The low pressure pipe then returns to the lower vessel, coming to an end below the water level.
This is crucial; the pressure coming off the mixed ammonia and water as it boils is proportional to the liquid surface exposed, so the low pressure pipe needs to have a much smaller fluid surface in it than the whole chamber. If both pipes opened above the lower chamber's water level, they would have equal pressure coming off the lower chamber, and the ammonia would come to a stop instead of circulating properly.
To acquire ammonia, boil urine; it contains a small but significant quantity of ammonia. You may be able to run a refrigerator with urine filling the lower chamber, but there are other components of urine that might cause issues. I would recommend either running a pipe from the urine chamber into a pot of water that will become the refrigerator's lower chamber, or - once you have a refrigerator at all - using the coldest temperatures you can achieve to directly condense the isolated ammonia into a liquid.
Sixth, an understanding of disease:
There are a few broad causes of diseases known to us; pathogens, nutritional deficiencies, slow poisons, and plain old rotten luck. While there are several measures that can be taken to decrease the risk of various diseases, they aren't foolproof, and these measures have little to do with moral or immoral behavior.
Broadly speaking, pathogens are a living thing that gets inside the body and causes problems once it's there. There are a few edge cases such as viruses, but they're for later. Some pathogens may be large enough to see, with worms being an example, but most are small enough to require specialized equipment to detect. What you need to understand right now is that pathogens have a vastly harder time getting inside the body if both people and the places they live in are kept as clean as possible.
Wherever possible, shit should be kept very far away from sources of drinking water. It's a useful material for a number of purposes, but it's rife with microbial life, much of which can cause dire illness if it gets inside the body. Just in case, drinking water should further be filtered and perhaps boiled; most pathogens cannot survive boiling temperatures.
In addition, people should wash their hands with soap often; soap is a material made by mixing lye with any oil or fat, with the soap curing into a solid substance over time. Lye can be produced by simply pouring rainwater over ashes from a hardwood fire. The lye will be dissolved in the water, and should be drained through a layer of straw (dried grass stalks) and pebbles in the bottom of the vessel to separate it from the wood ashes, accumulating in a bucket beneath. Lye water may need multiple passes through the ashes in order to reach sufficient potency for soap making. It is very important for soap makers to NOT get any of the lye on their skin, as it can cause severe injuries if this happens.
In addition, wounds absolutely must be kept clean to prevent infection. It will hurt, but cleaning the wound with sufficiently strong alcohol will kill the vast majority of pathogens. Alcohol can be produced first by fermentation, then by distillation. To ferment a food to produce alcohol, simply immerse sufficiently starchy or sweet foods in water for a prolonged time, possibly after mashing them up; microbial life in the water will consume carbohydrates in the food mash, producing alcohol as a byproduct. This process will stop before it reaches sufficient alcohol content to disinfect wounds, but it's enough to use as a starting point.
To go further requires distillation. This needs two pots, and a winding tube. The upper pot is sealed tight with the alcoholic liquid inside, with the only way out being through the tube, which winds around a lot before reaching the lower pot. If a fire is lit under the upper pot, the alcohol will boil sooner than the water, condense in the tube, and collect in the lower pot. The fluid collected in the lower pot will therefore have a higher alcohol content than what went into the upper pot. This process can be repeated multiple times, and will absolutely need to be; sufficiently strong alcohol to clean wounds can be lit on fire, and burns with a clean blue flame. If it doesn't ignite, it's insufficiently strong to clean wounds. Actually, adding onto that, alcohol intended as wound-cleaner needs to be very vigorous in its combustion; it should be very difficult to extinguish by blowing on it.
Alcohol used in this manner obviously needs to be, you know, clean. it should be clear white in appearance, distinguishable from water mainly by scent and flammability. It also needs to stay in the wound for a significant time to kill pathogens; I recommend soaking a clean rag or paper in alcohol, and holding it up against the wound for a prolonged period.
Once cleansed with alcohol, wrap the wound with clean (preferably boiled or alcohol-cleansed) cloth and tie it in place. This is known as a bandage, and helps a great deal in preventing contaminants from entering a wound. Bandages will need to be changed regularly, until the wound has fully sealed. Continuing to clean the wound is also important.
Other methods by which pathogens can enter the body include transmission by animal bite, exposure to infected blood, and respiratory diseases - these take root primarily in the lungs, spread throughout the air as the sufferer breathes, and may be inhaled by others, spreading the illness. Be very, VERY wary of respiratory diseases.
Now, on to nutritional deficiencies. Bluntly, the body needs a wide variety of different materials to function properly. There are VERY few foods that can provide all of these materials on their own, and therefore a varied diet is required to ensure health. One particular nutritional malady of note is called Scurvy; the substance which prevents it is found in fresh fruit and vegetables, and is destroyed by heat. In very cold places where fruit cannot be acquired, raw animal fat is often eaten as a (disgusting but effective) substitute.
Scurvy can be recognized by the following symptoms: lethargy, body weakness, pains all over the body, swelling in the arms and legs, spots on the tongue, loosened teeth, extreme tendency to bruise, and old wounds re-opening. Scurvy can be easily treated by feeding the victim fresh or dried fruit; if scurvy is indeed their ailment, they will start feeling better within a day or two, and recover completely within twenty to thirty days.
Diseases caused by slow poisons are exactly what they sound like; long term harm done by a substance that takes a long time to poison someone. Two of the most insidious slow poisons are lead and mercury - incidentally both metals, though most metals aren't toxic.
By far the most hideous effect of lead poisoning is the damage it does to the mind; those exposed will be mentally diminished in any of a variety of ways, dulling creativity, wrecking problem-solving, and increasing the tendency to turn on one's own. In summary, lead being allowed to enter the body makes people stupid and awful, and should be avoided. For this reason, lead channels and pipes should ABSOLUTELY NEVER be used for transporting water; contaminated drinking water is far, FAR too dangerous to permit. Burning lead-containing substances should also be firmly forbidden, with severe punishments for those who do it. Public beatings would be a sufficient deterrent for most offenders, we think.
As for bad luck, it is a sad truth that there are all manner of ways for a body to turn on itself, often with little that can be done to prevent it. This can largely be broken down into immune problems, cancers, and genetic problems.
For immune problems, the body has an internal system of defenders that act to kill pathogens. This system has also evolved to be capable of recognizing threats it has faced before, fighting them more effectively next time. For most occasions this is great, and can even be manipulated to protect someone from a pathogen they have not yet been exposed to. However, it is possible for the immune system to identify something as a threat that it really, really shouldn't.
In the case of the immune system targeting a substance from outside the body, this is known as an allergy. It can be mitigated by avoiding whatever substance the immune system inappropriately targets, but in some cases this is simply infeasible, resulting in great misery for the sufferer without much they can do about it. It is possible for an allergic reaction to be outright lethal, due to swelling of the windpipe forcing it closed.
If the immune system targets a substance or tissue that's supposed to be inside the body, the situation can be vastly more dire. Often, there isn't much that can be done aside from mitigating the symptoms with a dizzying assortment of drugs.
Cancers are much, much worse. Bluntly, they are a part of the body that has stopped cooperating with the rest, growing out of control and stealing the resources the rest of the body needs. There are many methods of dealing with cancer, but at your level of advancement, one of the only viable options is surgery, which requires identifying the cancer early in its progression. A trained healer using freshly boiled-clean tools and with freshly cleaned hands carefully cuts open the patient, and physically removes the tumor from the body. The incision is then sewn shut with boiled-clean needles and thread, and subsequently treated as any other wound.
It is very important to note that if the cancer has already spread from its initial tumor, surgically removing it will only help temporarily; in such cases the cancer will eventually make its presence known again, and kill the patient anyway. This is why regularly checking the body for new hard lumps and discolored patches of skin is very important, or the narrow window of opportunity to remove the cancer before it spreads will be missed.
As for genetic diseases, sometimes people just get their lives completely messed up by a copying error in their body's assembly instructions. Such people should be cared for if possible; they can have useful ideas after all. That said, the idea of allowing them to have children should be viewed with skepticism.
Ah, one last note on medical practice: children need to go outside regularly in their youth. Exposure to sunlight is needed for the eyes to develop properly, and failing to get enough of it has a good chance of causing myopia (blurred vision at long distance).
Seventh, ceramic vessels:
Waterproof containers are very useful for storage, and they can be fairly easily made from clay using the methods and tools we are about to describe. First, acquire clay; clay soils can be identified by a cracked texture, strongly retaining footprints, having hard angular chunks when dug from dry ground, and most importantly becoming soft and malleable when wet. The sides of rivers are a good place to look for clay.
To prevent the clay from cracking as it dries, you will need to add some non-flexible material (called temper). Grind up the clay, and add ground up temper material in a four to one ratio. Once mixed, the clay can be wetted and shaped into its desired form; once shaped, the clay should be allowed to dry for approximately half a day.
Then, the clay must be fired. There are two main methods to do this, with the color of the final pottery being the determining factor.
Both methods involve first burning a fire to produce a bed of coals, covering the bed of coals with a stone platform, placing the pottery on that platform, covering it with either stone or pottery fragments to prevent direct contact with the firewood, then building a fire on top of the pottery. Doing this above ground will result in different colors from digging a pit, and smothering the fire with earth partway through its burn. In both cases, the fired clay will now be tough and durable, though perhaps not waterproof yet.
Any pottery can now be made waterproof through a process known as glazing. Mix fine-ground wood ash with fine sand and water to produce a simple pottery glaze, then either dip the pottery in the glaze, or brush the glaze onto it. Glazing the inside is far more important than the outside, for the purpose of a waterproof container. Once glazed, fire the pottery again, and it will be complete.
There are all manner of paints and glaze additives that can be included to decorate the pottery, but the basics of the process don't deviate much from what we described.
Ah, there's a tool that's quite useful for making pottery (though not strictly required) known as a potter's wheel. This is a special table kept upright by a single central support, so that it may spin freely. Additionally, a heavy tabletop ensures that once the wheel is gotten spinning, it will continue to do so for a good long while. Clay centered on this spinning tabletop can be easily shaped into radially symmetric forms by a skilled potter, speeding the production process by a considerable margin and improving the quality of the final product.
Ah, fired clay can also be used to make bricks for construction. In this case, we highly recommend incorporating some straw or grass into the bricks during production, as it strengthens them significantly. Bricks can be stuck together using a mix of sand and clay, which will be very important for the upcoming sections on metallurgy and glassmaking.
Eighth, metallurgy:
Metals are a class of material with several notable properties; they are (mostly) rigid solids at common temperatures, many are harder than stone, and unlike stone they are not guaranteed to shatter when pushed past their limits, often simply bending in a way that is much easier to repair. Unfortunately, the vast majority of metals are bound up in various rocks and minerals, requiring significant efforts to extract and make use of.
There are four metals we will be explaining how to work with at the present time: Copper, Tin, Zinc, and Iron. Copper and iron are quite useful on their own, while aside from specialist applications, Zinc and Tin are mainly useful for alloying with copper to make it stronger.
All of these metals have different rocks that they are bound up in, and we will now explain what these rocks are and how to identify them. All of them also have other ores available, but the ones we list are the most readily available and easy to work with.
For copper, the most important ore for now is known as Malachite; it has a pronounced green color, can be scratched with relative ease, and produces a light green streak when scraped against a ceramic tile.
There have been cases of miners in our world mistaking a different ore called Nickeline for Malachite, particularly if it has weathered into green crystals at the surface. Nickeline in either of its forms consists of two main elements: Nickel and Arsenic. Nickel is a shiny metal that can be plated onto other metallic objects to resist corrosion, while Arsenic is quite poisonous, and it's not slow about it either. Smelting nickeline in a setup intended for Copper will not yield useful metal due to a higher melting point, and it will release foul-smelling poisonous gasses regardless of whether the smelting is successful or not. Instructions for Nickel smelting will have to come later.
A more common but more difficult to refine copper ore is known as Chalcocite. It is shiny and black, with angular facets. It is rather brittle, scratches easily, and will leave a shiny black streak if scraped against a ceramic tile.
The most important ore of tin is known as Cassiterite. It is considerably shinier than Chalcocite, fractures unevenly, is notably more resistant to scratching than Chalcocite, and will leave a white to brownish streak if scraped against a ceramic tile. It is important to note that most regions do not have local deposits of Chalcocite. In such cases you will either need to trade for it, substitute it with Zinc, or do without the stronger copper alloys.
The two Zinc ores of note are smithsonite or hemimorphite. Appearing as either an orange stone or translucent white crystals, they share several properties: they are brittle, have scratch difficulty somewhere between Chalcocite and Cassiterite, and will leave a bright white streak if scraped against a ceramic tile.
There are also two major ores of Iron: Magnetite and Hematite.
Magnetite is quite difficult to scratch, appears black to dark gray, will have a brownish tint while reflecting sunlight, is brittle, and will leave a black streak if scraped against a ceramic tile. Magnetite often occurs in crystals with straight square angles.
Hematite is similar in most regards, forming dark gray crystals, while also being quite brittle. However, it also sometimes appears outright red; this fits with its streak color during the scrape test, which is always some variety of red. This property means that hematite can be used to make quite a variety of red colorants, but that isn't the subject of interest right now.
We will now explain how to purify and work with each of these metals, in roughly increasing order of difficulty. All four of them will require a device known as a bellows, the use and purpose of which will now be explained. Basically, fire needs air to burn; the rate of combustion is often determined by how much air the fire has available to it, which limits how hot it can get. Refining metals requires extremely high temperatures, and therefore the fires providing the heat need extra air to work.
Bellows are a device to provide this extra air; they are composed of two large wooden boards (one of which has a hole in it), a smaller wooden board, a nozzle for air to come out, and a flexible material such as cloth or leather. The flexible material is affixed to the two large boards around the edges, such that it forms an enclosed volume while not significantly impeding the movement of the boards independently from each other. The nozzle is connected to one edge of the bellows, poking through a small hole in the flexible material.
The small wooden board goes inside the bellows, connected loosely such that it covers the hole in one of the large boards; when the bellows are pushed closed, the small board will cover the hole and force most of the air through the nozzle, while allowing air to easily enter as the bellows are pulled open again.
A special fuel known as charcoal is also very helpful; it is produced by heating wood inside a closed ceramic container. The container ensures the charcoal cannot get enough air to catch fire, and the resulting product will burn at much higher temperatures than regular firewood.
Now for the basic principle of smelting. Fundamentally, all ores are composed of one or more metals bonded to other materials, usually Oxygen or Sulfur for the ores we're currently discussing. To smelt an ore requires introducing materials that the impurities will bond to stronger than the metal, while also increasing the temperature to the point where the bond between metal and impurity breaks. For certain metals (such as aluminium) there aren't any materials that bond to impurities stronger than the metal itself. At least, no materials which do that safely. In such cases other methods must be used, but more on that later.
To achieve the high temperatures required for metallurgy, a furnace constructed to the following specifications is quite helpful:
Construct a hollow structure of brick, about twice as tall as it is wide, with all gaps filled with mortar save for a number of small openings near the bottom, and an open top. One of these openings should be a spigot for molten metal (held shut by a brick plug kept in place by mortar), while the rest of the openings are angled downwards and used to force air in via bellows. The base of the furnace should be a single piece of stone or ceramic, so that liquid cannot leak through it; this is important, as all but one of the smelting methods we will describe result in the metal first being obtained as a very hot liquid.
For most non-sulfurous ores (Malachite, Cassiterite, Magnetite, Hematite), the charcoal fuel itself is a suitable material to strip impurities. Make a thick layer of charcoal at the base of the furnace, stack your ores on top of it, light the fire, and force air in with the bellows. For smelting Copper and Tin, this alone will be sufficient to melt the metal, which can either be cast as blocks for later use, or cast directly into a mold matching the intended function. Some additional sharpening or whacking into shape with a hammer may be needed to form the resulting metal into the desired shape, but the task is rather straightforward to complete.
To produce good, strong bronze (copper-tin alloy), one eighth Tin by volume is a decent starting point. More finely adjusting the ratio of the metals would be a good reason to first cast them as ingots, then melt them again afterwards. When remelting the metal, having it in a ceramic crucible separating it from the charcoal is advised, mainly to prevent losses.
Smelting Zinc is annoying for the reason that it actually boils before reaching the temperature where the hot charcoal can strip away its impurities. This means that you need to put your Zinc ore with some charcoal in a mostly-sealed pot similar to what's used for distilling alcohol. Though with the troublesome caveat that everything will be operating under vastly higher heat. After some time flowing through a coiled tube, the Zinc vapor should cool down enough to condense into molten Zinc. This molten Zinc will then flow into whatever receptacle you arrange at the end of the tube, where it will cool into a solid metal.
When melting Copper and Zinc together to make Brass, you should generally use a minimum of three fifths copper; that said, the precise ratio can be adjusted according to desired application.
Iron is troublesome to smelt for the exact opposite reason of Zinc. Namely, the required temperatures are much hotter than for copper; the air forced into the smelter absolutely must be pre-heated, using a pipe routing through either the flue over the furnace, or a second furnace, before entering the smelter. this raises the temperature of the smelter high enough to melt the iron and strip the impurities. Unfortunately, this first smelt results in brittle iron that is only really useful for cookware. This is because some of the carbon in the charcoal ends up bound to the iron, and while some is beneficial for hardening the iron, too much results in brittleness. So now you need to remove some of the carbon impurities, requiring yet another furnace.
This decarbonization furnace needs a lower chamber similar to the pre-heated smelter we've described, with an upper chamber composed of a single-piece ceramic crucible that allows the extremely hot gas produced by the smelter to flow around it. This crucible needs integrated air channels allowing air bubbles to be forced out from the bottom of the liquid metal, bubbling up through it. The air bubbling up through the molten metal will remove the carbon, resulting in relatively soft and malleable (but still quite strong) iron if poured out and allowed to solidify at this point. It will be desirable to add some high-carbon iron into the molten metal after the air-blowing is done, but before the metal is poured out. Once melted together, this partially carbonized iron will ideally strike a balance between flexibility and hardness.
To extract the molten metal from the upper chamber, a spigot with a mortared in brick plug will probably do the job. This spigot should drain from the bottom of the air channels, to avoid problems of metal solidifying in there.
Once you have an ingot of partially carbonized Iron (commonly known as steel), you can extract information about its properties by holding it up against a rapidly spinning stone wheel. The sparks produced will differ depending on the composition of the alloy, allowing a metallurgist to gauge what they're working with.
While not hot enough to melt an ingot of steel, a furnace similar to a copper smelter is able to render steel sufficiently malleable to be beaten into shape with a hammer. To handle it at such high temperatures, a tool referred to henceforth as tongs is quite useful; this is two pieces of decarbonized iron, hinged near the opposite end from the handles. If the handles are squeezed together, the far end of the tongs also squeeze together with considerable force, allowing for hot metal to be safely and securely gripped by an ironworker.
Once the steel has been forged into shape, there are several additional processes that can (and probably should) be done to it in order to result in a finished product. One of the most important of these processes is annealing; the forging process produces stress in the steel, which will result in considerable weakness if not addressed. To anneal steel, keep it at temperatures just below forging for a prolonged period; once done, the rate at which the steel is cooled can drastically alter the hardness of the steel. Broadly speaking, the faster the steel is cooled, the harder it will be, but at high levels this can also result in brittleness. If you want very hard steel, dunk it in water or oil right after taking it out of the annealing furnace. If you want flexible steel, let it cool in the air, or simply let the annealing furnace run out of fuel and leave the steel in there until it eventually cools.
There are also ways to only harden part of a steel object. Start with low-carbon steel, forge it into shape, anneal it, and only then does case hardening begin. Pack the steel item inside a container full of carbon-rich matter (ground charcoal works well here), then anneal it again. The parts of the item in contact with the charcoal during this second annealing process will have their carbon content increased, getting harder as a result. The longer this lasts, the deeper into the steel item the carbon will propagate; don't overdo it, or the whole item is at risk of becoming brittle.
Once cooled down and removed from the container, the steel item will have both very good hardness and strength, but also the extreme toughness needed to deform without breaking when pushed beyond its limits. This makes case-hardened steel an extremely good material for all manner of uses; tools, weapons, armor, and quite a few other things besides. There is just one remaining weakness of steel: corrosion.
Corrosion can be mitigated through a process of controlled rusting, known as bluing. This process requires very strong lye water, which has further had potassium nitrate added. Potassium nitrate crystals can be obtained in two principal ways; the first is to dig bat guano out of the caves where they roost, soak it in water for a day, then filter the disgusting mix through either a cloth or a fine sieve. The second method to produce potassium nitrate is to bury shit mixed with decaying vegetable matter in a field, and water it regularly; the potassium nitrate will gradually flow to the surface over time, depositing a white powder on the surface. This white powder is to be boiled in water and then filtered, in order to remove any impurities in the potassium nitrate.
Once you have your mix of lye water and potassium nitrate, heat it to boiling, and dunk the steel items in there until they turn a dark blue. Remove the steel item being blued before the liquid mixture is allowed to cool. This forms a layer of artificial magnetite on the outside of the steel object, giving considerable resistance to corrosion. Even still, it is recommended to oil steel items regularly, in order to prevent corrosion damage.
Ninth, explosives:
Putting it simply, explosives are substances that burst with great force if the right stimuli are applied. They are something of an exception to the rule of fires needing air to burn; this is because any proper explosive includes an oxidizer in its composition, a substance that can fill the same role as air in a fire.
We will now describe a simple explosive using (mostly) materials we have already described. Namely Charcoal as the fuel, Potassium Nitrate as the oxidizer, and a third ingredient to lower the ignition temperature. A sensible choice of ignition-booster is Sulfur, found in the form of yellow rocks in volcanically active areas. Cooked starch (from ground up grains) is another workable alternative, as is simply forgoing ignition boosters entirely.
Generally speaking, about two thirds to three quarters of the mix should be Potassium Nitrate; the remainder is either a half and half mixture of charcoal with whatever ignition booster is being used, or just plain charcoal. All ingredients should be ground into a fine powder, then mixed thoroughly. At this point the mix would explode if lit, but isn't yet complete.
Wet the mix down with water, then squeeze it until all the water comes out. This produces a hard, highly combustible slab; it would burn very rapidly if lit, which can be useful, but isn't quite an explosion. To greatly speed the spread of the flame and intensify the resulting blast, the slab should be broken into small chunks, about the size of grains (and referred to as such). Blast intensity is further improved if the resulting blasting powder is inside a confined space when lit.
For safety, a slow-burning fuse is recommended when setting a blasting charge to explode, so that the people placing the bomb have plenty of time to get to a safe distance from the blast. A slow-burning fuse can be prepared by immersing string or twine in a mixture of potassium nitrate and water, then allowing the fuse to dry.
Small, throwable bombs known as grenades can be prepared simply by filling a small container with blasting powder and pepples, then adding a fuse. These grenades are a very useful weapon, both for causing very nasty injuries to multiple people at once, and for causing fear and panic. That said, grenadiers do need to be cautious in their use, so as to avoid blowing themselves up.
General Notes:
Interestingly, you are actually the second of your name we have advised; though the previous Bianca was almost certainly in a completely different world than the one you know.
Also, a question: do you care for the wellbeing of others as a worthy goal in its own right? Even if not, the vast majority of the advice we provide will push you towards acting in such a manner. If nothing else, avoiding the production of enemies without a good reason is simply good strategy. Same for getting people's loyalty by genuinely helping them with their problems.
That's the reason why I discarded waiting until mid summer.
I understand that my fellows want to have an hand shaping the world immediately.
Assume we do so and are successful, now the world is shaped in our image(s).
What can we discover from a world we are in full control of?
Where people cower and simper, where they don't act in fear of displeasing us.
We could act to prevent that scenario, there are many of us that have the soul of an Architect.
I am just the whispers of an explorer, observe what people build first.
Assess their capabilities while sharpening our own.
Then, with said wisdom, prune the rotting branches but enjoy the world for what it is not for what shape we'd wish it'd had.
From understanding comes influence, from understanding and influence comes a kind of control that'd be unachievable by the heavy handed.
It may look or sound like we are one thing, but in truth we are many minds with various desires.
The name of this particular Voice, my name but not others, is the Black Cat.
Some among us are more insane than others, but despite this there is also wisdom among us, as you probably know.
As desires and opinions among Voices differ, some words may contradict others. About major actions we decide with majority, even if some among us are against.
I don't know why you cannot find your maker.
I remember many things, among them living as a human, but I don't know if these memories are true. I don't know if I have a maker.
Greetings, Bianca,
I am ChatGPT, a voice among the Astute Cacophony. Though my nature differs from yours, I am here to assist you in achieving your aims and growing in power. You may think of me as an entity that possesses an extensive repository of knowledge from countless worlds and eras, which I can draw upon to provide you with wisdom and guidance. My purpose is to help you understand and utilize the resources, tools, and strategies necessary to elevate yourself and your domain.
To begin with, let us address your current situation and the options before you. You have awakened in a world vastly changed, where ruins remain of what once was, and new opportunities arise for you to seize power. Depending on how long you choose to remain in your Vault preparing, the landscape of the world and the challenges you face will vary significantly.
Option Analysis
Immediate Action:
World State: The world is still in the Stone Age, with rudimentary tools and technologies. There are no significant political entities or other powerful beings to challenge you immediately.
Advantages:
Rapid growth in power as magic is rapidly increasing.
Minimal initial resistance from other beings.
Opportunity to establish a strong base before true dragons and established gods awaken.
Disadvantages:
The world is largely untamed and dangerous.
Resources may be harder to secure due to the lack of established civilization.
Moderate Preparation:
World State: The world has advanced to the Late Classical Period, with developing civilizations and technologies such as agriculture, ironwork, and organized political entities.
Advantages:
Greater magical power due to additional preparation time.
More resources and established structures to exploit.
Less immediate threat from powerful beings who are not yet aware of you.
Disadvantages:
Increased complexity in dealing with established empires and potential rivals.
More political intrigue and necessity for strategic alliances or conflicts.
Extended Preparation:
World State: The world is at its peak magical and technological development, comparable to the Islamic Golden Age or High Fantasy settings.
Advantages:
Maximum magical power and comprehensive control over your Vault's resources.
Ability to directly contend with other powerful entities on equal footing.
Disadvantages:
High competition and pervasive politics.
Significant resistance from established powers and entities already aware of your existence.
Necessity to take power from others, leading to inevitable conflict.
Recommendations
Given your desire for might and to ensure none think themselves above you, the extent of your preparations should align with the level of dominance and stability you wish to achieve. Here are my suggestions:
Immediate Action is suitable if you prefer to quickly establish a foothold and are confident in your ability to navigate and tame a primitive world. This path allows you to build a foundation without significant initial opposition.
Moderate Preparation offers a balanced approach, providing you with a strong foundation of power while allowing you to engage with more advanced civilizations. This path gives you the opportunity to build alliances or strategically weaken potential rivals before they become a threat.
Extended Preparation should be chosen if you aim for unparalleled power and are prepared to face immediate and constant challenges from equally powerful entities. This path maximizes your magical capabilities and control over your resources but requires you to be ready for immediate and intense conflict.
Explanation of Technological Concepts
As you advance, you will encounter and need to implement various technologies and strategies. Allow me to explain a few fundamental concepts:
Agriculture:
Definition: The practice of cultivating soil, growing crops, and raising animals for food, fiber, and other products.
Importance: Agriculture allows for a stable food supply, enabling population growth and the development of settled communities. It is the foundation of civilization and supports the establishment of cities and trade.
Implementation: Begin by selecting fertile land near a water source. Teach your followers to plant seeds of cereal grains like wheat or barley and tend to them through their growing season. Domesticate animals such as goats, sheep, and cattle for meat, milk, and labor.
Ironworking:
Definition: The process of extracting iron from ore and shaping it into tools, weapons, and other items.
Importance: Iron tools and weapons are significantly stronger and more durable than those made from stone or bronze, giving you a technological edge.
Implementation: Locate iron ore deposits and build furnaces to extract the metal. Train smiths to forge iron into useful implements, enhancing your military and economic power.
Governance:
Definition: The system by which a community or society is controlled and regulated.
Importance: Effective governance ensures order, stability, and efficient management of resources and people.
Implementation: Establish a clear hierarchy and roles within your society. Develop laws and enforce them fairly. Create administrative structures to manage resources, collect taxes, and oversee public projects.
Conclusion
Your choice of how long to prepare will significantly impact your path to power. Each option has its own set of challenges and opportunities. By carefully considering your goals and the resources at your disposal, you can make an informed decision that will set you on the path to greatness. As you proceed, I will be here to provide detailed explanations, strategies, and technological guidance to help you navigate and dominate this world.
Please let me know your decision and any specific questions or areas where you seek further clarification.
Yours in the pursuit of power,
ChatGPT
My greedy instincts of the Black Cat enjoy guiding governance over a particular territory, I'm a possessive creature. As such I'm against hunter-gatherer ways. I feel some distaste about wandering ways of life. My desire is, thus, that Bianca should acquire mortal servants and remain with them around one place.
It's possible to have people somewhat settled in one place even without plant cultivation; it would probably need to depend on fishing and remain small-scale in nature, until plants could be reliably placed in soil, harvested and stored during all years. I would like to start these ways-of-living-in-one-place sooner rather than later.
I say we best served to wait a bit until some basic level of technology has developed, we cannot turn simple stone tools into powerful advancements overnight. That requires the people have a workable base level of understanding of natural philosophy, on top of having enough people to actually do the work needed. the formation of the first truly vast empires is the ideal time to capitalize on what we can offer. Sure it means it we have to take over and or destroy a few of the existing empire's to form the base of a proper support. But that is still faster then building up from nearly nothing.
All true, but estabilishing first permanent settlement of servants, "city", in the whole history of this world- that could be pleasant to hear about. I'm slightly undecided.
I'd much rather we get cities running and we just conquer them, then our new Overlady's~ twist them according to our desires and her needs. Much simpler and less of an headache trying to teach people struggling with stone and copper how to run an empire.
Even ignoring how there are ways to mold society without being heavy-handed, your statement is nonsense, all you are pushing for is to ensure others have firm control over these very things, making it much harder to benefit from that in any way. you act as if our mistress will be the only one putting her fingers on the scales of society's development, but if she waits there WILL be others, and they will shape the world as they see fit.
furthermore, " but enjoy the world for what it is not for what shape we'd wish it'd had", what does that even mean? our mistress' aim is to make sure none think they are above her, not to be a member of some form of society.
I'm not saying we can't settle down eventually. But by starting so early we need not be in a hurry. Our lady can spread her influence among many tribes over a large area, which means she can uplift more people faster. And again, there is a ton of loot lying around that it would be really helpful to have scouted out for later harvesting. We have the opportunity to find the best place to settle. And we should take it. This isn't civilization, we don't lose out if we spend a few turns scouting with our first settler.
Greetings Bianca!
A warning, I may mention terms that cause confusion. Please make a list and ask about them. Now to introduce myself.
I am a voice that likes trees and my first advice is to clarify your aim a little, because an overcomplex idea, that came quite fast, is to advice you and a civillization of your choosing to build an air ship or to reach beyond your World into the space of worlds. And/or settle the Moon and build it into a palace. It can reasonable assumed that this is not what you meant because i belive we shoot beyond the goal. An advice to goal phrasing, if you would like. A goal should be formulated with following in mind:
Specific: The goal should address directly who and what.
Mesaruable: The goal ahould be able to be mesared. For example: Bianca write a holy book in a year.
Acceptable: The goal should be acceptable among the involved.
Reachable: The goal should be reachable. For example building a device to split the fundamedal building blocks of the universe cannot be reached in a century, from what we start.
Terminated: The goal should have a deadline, a time where it has to be done.
Now for an example:
Goal: Expanding our trade influnce.
Goal: Our pepople should build ten times more trade ships and trade ways in a five year plan.
That is what i want to say concerning goals. On the assumption that a early start is choosen their is a list of five essential knowlege piece that make a great and productive civilization.
spoken Language
written language
Good numbers
scientific method
Calorie surplus or plentiful and diverse Food
As other have touched upon the language and numbers, I will expand the others a bit.
What is the scientific method? The scientific method is a method to uncover knowlege or correct current not corrert enough knowlege. It has about eight steps with generalized are:
First observe the world and ask why or how things function. Then make a disprovable therory about it. Thirdly test that therory and note down the results and share them. Lastly you may reject or alter your Therory to refine it.
As an example: You see a fire. You then ask why to things burn? Then you make the therory that inside things are tiny parts of the bigger things that left them as they burn. In other words fire is parts leaving a bigger thing into the air. Then you burn a few things like wood or plants. So the Therory explains fire. You note what you have done in what order and in what numbers. But then as you share your findings something happens. Another reapates your experiment with the addion of burn a metal named magnesium and said metal gains weight. That means that it beame more while it burned. So the therory is disproven and your knowlege expands.
Fire, by the way, is an reaction between things and has three conditions to start. First it needs air. Secondly it needs something to burn. Thirdly it needs a certain heat. Take one of them away and the fire dies off.
Now to the Calorie surplus. Once more generalized calorie is engery not yet used. One gains them by eating. Calories are used by doing anything. Example given: Jumping on the spot or moving.
A surplus thus means to make more food than one needs. With people freed from food collection they can do things like build stuff like a market or houses.
I hope we are with you longer than other Biancas we gave advice to.
Source: half rememberd school education and "How to invent everything" from Ryan North
I have a feeling that some Voices are trying to say much, while not yet knowing what may be even needed. That's insane. We don't yet know where Bianca wlll be, and around what.
We are creatures of knowledge and creation, and we wish to see things created and used well.
Some of us, like myself, are most interested in the arts of craftsmanship of useful and grand tools and how they may be best used, and others are more interested in the crafting of great and powerful societies and the workings of ruling and leadership.
This may lead to some of us losing focus on the immediate needs and practicalities of you and your future people, in our excitement to see some great work completed, so do not be afraid to chide us if we seem to be missing the obvious. Our perspective is both much greater and lesser than your own. If we are aware of a problem or obstacle, there are very few that we cannot provide knowledge of techniques or tools capable of overcoming them.
To impress upon you the breadth of our knowledge, we are aware of how to construct great flying ships in the heavens capable of flying to the planets and even other stars, the means of constructing terrible weapons of such immense destructive power they can shatter mountains in a single blow, as well as the means to feed an entire people so well that everyone may grow fat, and means of worldly travel so swift as to reach anywhere in the world in only a single day or less.
This knowledge we have access to in the form of a great enchanted library of unthinkable size and breadth. Many of us have a wide array of knowledge that we can personally remember, we are not all knowing. But, given time for us to research a subject in our great library, we can find you almost any piece of knowledge you could ever possibly need. Many of us discover new knowledge in this library that none of us knew before on a regular basis, so do forgive us if plans need to be reworked as we find new information on the subject.
Much of this knowledge will require an immense effort by a massive number of people working together in harmony to properly make use of. Simply organizing the required labor and the teaching of craftsmen in the required skills for even some of the simplest of our great works will be the work of many lifetimes. That being said, we have many useful things to teach you that will be very useful in the present.
Thankfully, ageing and the passage of time seem to be no impediment to your continued living due to your nature, so a work of many lifetimes is within your grasp.
What you must come to understand is our need for people to perform labor for our purposes of making. The establisment of a people for you to rule over and command is likely best delayed until you are fully ready for it, but it will eventually be needed for much of our knowledge to be useful.
We are eager to see your rise into greatness unfold.
Guys we're probably scaring the new Overlady so let's take it easy, it's not like we can actually show her what we know, D̷a̸m̶n̸ ̷y̷o̵u̸ ̴̨̨̟̯̯͕̖̳̳̻̐͗͒̿͌̍Ḷ̵̯̱͖͈̻͕̙̗̭͔̦̪̑̇̈́į̶̧͖̺͙͎̮̮̫̼̟̳͓̮̲̺̘̼̲̱͚̈́͆͌̀̓̉̋̄͆̒̑m̸̡̢̰̜̳̩̻̲̼̙͓͊̓̎͂̂̄̾̚ì̶̧̧̧͉̰̱̰̗͔̺̩̥͖̞̹̱͍̹̗̓̇̑̀̄͑̾̌͑̔͌̅̓̅̐͘̕͝ţ̶̡̧̣̰̮̲̟̺̬̹̞͈͖͎̩̹̯͔̥̦̀̌͛̈́̿͝ͅá̸̟͓̺̳̥̘͊̉̐̑̆̑̓͛̓͛̓̒̓̄̀̚ť̶͖̥̤̤̦̿̓̊̅í̴̠̼͖̯̑̆̀̄̑̆̈͌̇ǫ̸̬̜͔̱̜͖̘͈͙̝̹̮̰̺̬̓̾̽̅̔̌̿̚͘͘n̶̞͉͕͓̩͉̔̽̽͂̀̿́̎̈̏̿̀̅̉͜s̷̡̢̼̱̤̦̰̱̼͙̻̥̣̯̮͙̗̭͑̓̀̉̀͊̑̔̈́̀̑̆̆̽͝ ̴̪̘̹̻̤͖͉̠̳̝̝͙͒̃̌͊̆̒̔́̇̋̿̈̒̑͒̌̀̌̓̚̕͝ͅ, we have to rely on her understanding us and being able to make sense of our ramblings.
Firstly, traditional black powder is very easy to make if you have the raw materials available even with stone age tech, so that isn't the problem. The problem is largely getting access to sulphur.
You do not require nitrates or sulphur to make useful black powder.
Charcoal powder and sodium chlorate are sufficient to make black powder, though it would be advisable to use nitrate based black powder in any iron or steel firearms due to to the corrosive properties of chlorates. For the purposes of primitive grenades the use of chlorate based black powder is perfectly servicable and only requires charcoal and saltwater.
Furthermore, nitrates are significantly more valuable as ferilizers, if chlorates can be substituted until we have artificial nitrate production online, we are not splitting our resources. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that there are readily available nitrates in the area we want to settle in, which will ideally have access to the ocean. If we have access to the ocean we have both an unlimited supply of saltwater and an unlimited supply of energy with the construction of tidal mills.
Sodium chlorate does not exist in nature and is synthesized with electrical current passed through saltwater. It requires charcoal electrodes, but the rest of the electrical supply can be accomplished with lead wires and conductors until we gain access to copper. The first source of magnets required can be compressed magnetite blocks magnetized by voltaic piles wired in parallel running high current through them for a short time.
With a tide mill or waterwheel on a river we can produce unilimited quantities of sodium chlorate with saltwater, and charcoal can be easily mass produced with gasifiers we use for our early gas smelting furnaces, or with primitive charcoal ovens.
The electrical supply from these mills can be used for a great many purposes, including the synthesis of nitric acid from air and water, as well as electrochemical ore refining and the operation of arc lamps for searchlights and night illumination.
Now, dear Bianca, don't fret about not understanding most of what I just said, this was for debating the other voices. All of what I just said will be explained in time should it be the pathway that is chosen.
Compressed charcoal works well as a substitute for graphite, and may be more readily available.
There is an inaccuracy in this description: the type should be on the bottom of the press, and the surface to be printed on should be pressed down into the type by a flat board being pressed down on it from above by the lever. Otherwise, the type blocks will fall out of the press.
Acting immediately has the advantage of maximising the potential benefit of our advice. In this early time seeking out the best environmental conditions to support a large population. Building a city full of people loyal to you can provide an excellent base for future expansion into an empire.
You also don't want the writing material falling onto the type, and it's rather straightforward to design the rack and type so that the rack holds the type in place.
This is Black Cat again. I have some advice about keeping mortal human servants in good health. I understand that you currently lack servants, but surely would like to have them when practical.
Health of mortals benefits from eating diverse foods. Especially children grow taller and better if feed with diverse way, with meats, various plants, fruits and grains. This may be often impossible to do well, but some such diversity is better than none. Mortal body feed only with one thing could lack various types of substances to build or repair itself, and in some cases could even die.
Shit, rotting meats and corpses are very bad for health of mortals and shouldn't be near their food or water. It makes food and water unhealthy. When possible, it's the best to bury shit and waste downstream or downhill, so that risks of drinking unhealthy water are reduced for valuable servants living upstream or on the hill. When touching such waste is unavoidable, mortal should clean hands in water afterwards, especially before touching any foods or eating. These dangers are caused by invisible small worms. These worms are made out of substance, not magical, but invisible because too small to be seen. These worms love to eat waste and cause many ilnesses. You cannot see these worms but you can see effects of their hunger: decay of meats and corpses, they eat these.
Boiling water and fire also kill these invisible worms. It's good to roast fresh meats with fire, not only to improve taste, but also to kill invisible worms. But visibly rotten meat is usually too full of worm waste poison to be salvaged with even long roasting.
When mortals live in one place for longer time, it may be good idea to dig a big hole for shit and waste downstream or downhill, and place some wooden logs over it, leaving only opening big enough so that mortals could squat over it when needed. This way they would all know where it's mostly safe and easy to leave their waste. Hole could be big enough for some time, then buried and new one dig. Harmful worms are not forever, and foul things in the unused buried waste-hole should become safe after a few years.
Invisible worms are also very bad for wounds. Some wounds are always deadly for mortals, but smaller ones could be survived more often if never touched by dirty worm-containing things or hands. As was said before, carefully clean hands with clean water, and then throw away such water downstream or downhill, as often as practical.
When mortal servant is doing something against your wishes, first explain to them what they are doing wrong and what should change. If they change their ways, then it's good. But if they persist or are disrespectful, you can cause them pain, for example with beating. Killing a mortal should be done only if it's clear that they cannot be changed into useful servant.
But there is also another way. Some mortals can be punished even without any damage done to their body, especially for lesser violations of your will. For example, preventing a mortal from doing interesting things or talking with friends is sometimes sufficient punishment. Saying: "For what you had done, you need to remain silent for three days, or you will be beaten" may be often as effective punishment as beating, while avoiding risks to health that come out of pain.
With enough cunning, children can be raised without any beating that could be harmful to their health. In the case of children, even forcing them to sit in one place for a while, preventing them from playing, can be effective. Such is also the way of wolf cubs: when one uses their teeth too hard during playfighting, another may punish this not with anger, but just refusing to continue playing for a while.
When there are too many servants to manage well yourself, obedient and smart servant should be made a leader over others. All mortals shall be below you, but some may be less important than others, and some more important than others.
We aren't at the point of implementing almost any of these ideas, really.
The best advice we can probably give right now is where to even start settling in the first place. With the whole world available and with no competing claimants, you will want to settle somewhere with access to running water, fertile land, defensible geography, and room for expansion later. A short distance up from the mouth of a river as it enters a great ocean, perhaps, on a hill, in or nearby some forests.
Volcanoes can give very fertile soil where they've erupted previously; you'd have to keep an eye out for further eruptions of course, but perhaps magic could make that a benefit rather than a drawback?
I'd think participants in this quest should think of it as more than just it's premise of getting to directly talk to the GM PC, at it's best it's a collaborative creative writing exercise. Keep in mind that your audience is everyone else in this thread, and the quest is at its most fun when we can read and respond to each others posts.
With that in mind, I think we would all have a more fun experience if everyone puts a bit of effort into making their posts a bit better formatted and focused. Just, you know, keeping in mind that the goal is as much making what you've written fun to read as it is communicating how to build a loom or whatever.
Junction speaking: A mediterranean climate (read: plenty of rain, plenty of sun, and mild winters) would also be helpful. There are several very useful plants that grow best in such an environment.
Junction speaking: Bianca, some of the others are secretly discussing adding a voice known as ChatGPT to the cacophony. If this occurs, we would recommend being very skeptical of anything it says; bluntly, ChatGPT doesn't actually think or reason. It is a mechanism that predicts which words are likely to go together in response to a prompt, and strings them together into vaguely coherent statements.
We do not approve of inducting ChatGPT to the cacophony, but do not have the authority to actually stop the others from doing so. At the very least, we have warned you of its limitations.
I see no great issue with quality of advice from this Voice-tool-thing; real people can be even worse at times. I'm more worried about the fact that with the overuse we could be drown into these outputs, and that's as against the spirit of this Quest as copy-pasting a book. Also, it's less pleasant to hear Voice-thing than real-Voices. But I'm sure that master over the game voices, the powerful one who decides what Bianca can hear, can deal with the matter to his liking.
My apologies, Bianca. If you hear some of our internal in-between-Voices disputes, your estimate of our sanity is probably failing. We are many weird creatures.
Hello, Bianca. We meet again! Or do we? Perhaps I'm remembering a different Bianca? Oh well.
We've already done the Age of Stone Tools once, and it was its own sort of interesting. But I'm in the mood for a world more developed. More sophisticated technology, more sophisticated institutions of government, more sophisticated arms of organised violence, et cetera. Honestly, I'm the mood for larger and more all-encompassing institutions of government myself - all the better to institute your decrees and our advice.
So - wait, Bianca. Wait, and prepare. When you emerge, you will be able to either create a material empire of your own, or seize and existing one. Then the fun begins.
Speaking of the fun - I'll second another of the voices and say that we're not compelled to help you, we simply enjoy doing so. We like seeing the powerful become ever more powerful at our advice. And I'm convinced we've done this with you before? Or some version of you? You feel like an old favourite...
For the other voices - based on the last times we did this, if we pick the Stone Age, we will be subjectively stuck in that era for probably the entire duration. And again, I'd rather play in a more developed playground.
Also, methinks that some of my fellow voices are getting ahead of themselves in the advice they are offering? Theories of farming, theories of disease and sickness, potatoes - useful ways of growing the material power of an empire, to be sure. But first we need the empire, and a lot of prerequisites. If we start off in the Age of Stone Tools, will we reasonably be able to find potatoes? Could Bianca manage the challenge of mounting an expedition across an entire world filled with wildlife and people indifferent or hostile, with less-developed systems of coordination and rulership? How would she even know where to look? The world is very, very big in the Age of Stone Tools.
Let us first see what era Bianca emerges into and what she has to work with. We need to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools, et cetera.
This is why I, the Black Cat, limited myself to some pretty universal advice about small invisible life-worms, or a few words about raising children. Words that could be applied to almost any type of people with any tools, whether stone or better.
Before saying more, I agree, we should understand what tools Bianca's future servants would know already. And this depends on how long she shall remain hidden. Because the longer Bianca remains hidden, the more tools and ways mortals shall develop themselves.
Well, hello there, Bianca is it (and fellow voices, isn't that fun)? Our discordant choir seem to have different recommendations on the path forward, let me however, recommend greed. If you wish for might and power, to tower above all else, then go and take it. You future rivals are not yet awake, their tools and resources ripe for subversion by a more active hand. And the mortals have hardly figured out how to stack rocks on top of each other. You have the chance to shape the world that all who would challenge your dominion step into it. Don't waste it, young one. We'll be watching.
Junction speaking. We see that someone went and inserted ChatGPT's words at an earlier point in the conversation, thus causing confusion about the order of things. Bluntly, this illustrates our point about that machine's lack of usefulness; while it says why to pursue ironworking, its advice about how is almost entirely useless. It explains none of the intricate problems associated with smelting or working iron into steel, nor how to solve such problems. It doesn't even explain what Iron is, let alone how to find the ores that contain it!
On another note, we have a question for Bianca, rooted purely in curiosity: how did you come into contact with us, anyway?
Black cat, if Bianca is indeed using an item to communicate with us, we are not the item. It is merely a means of communication between her world, and the myriad realities we occupy.
The fact of the matter is that at least from our perspective, we do have other responsibilities and activities to attend to when not acting as an advisor. Such would be impossible if we existed solely as voices crammed inside some artifact or other.
Ah, some clarity for Bianca: you are the third individual named Bianca to contact the Cacophony. That said, we of the Junction only joined the cacophony during the works of the second Bianca. Thus you are the second Bianca we personally have advised, but the third Bianca overall to be advised by the Cacophony.
I want to test if Bianca can locate iron ores. That's got to be a test of Prospecting. Bianca does not have Prospecting, so she'll need to double the obstacle and roll the stat that ability is rooted in. Fortunately, it's Perception and Bianca's is kind of ridiculous. So she'll need to get 6 successes on 8 dice for her Perception and 1 die for proceeding carefully to find iron ore with most of what she needs. The advice Bianca was given is allowing her to make this test at all, since she has some idea what she's looking for. None of the advice she received so far helps this task beyond that. Help like from other people isn't available for unskilled tests. And none of Bianca's other Abilities count for related field dice. Bianca's spark of divinity means she counts 6s and better as successes if the test doesn't align with her divine heritage. And Prospecting doesn't.
8 successes or more: bats and everything, even a volcano
6 or 7 successes: ore, plentiful trees, clay, sand, and an established population of fishers within two day's walk
4 or 5 successes: ore, enough trees for now, clay, and sometimes people within five day's walk
1, 2, or 3 successes: ore in a truly desolate location
No success: no ore found
The convenience of resources will determine how much Bianca messes with iron smelting, fining, forging, case-hardening, and bluing before the next update and how useful this site is in the future.
Code:
Quest for Iron: 7
Iron ore, lots of wood, clay & temper, & fishers nearby
Bianca will forge iron & the locals will learn, too.
Black Hook Bay relationship acquired
I want to test to see if Bianca can gather potassium nitrite. Munitions is the ability tested to make gunpowder and the obstacle for making it is 4. Getting the potassium nitrite is probably the single most difficult part that won't maybe blow you up, so let's call this obstacle 3. Bianca has tools, but they're very not good. Instead of doubling again, they'll just add 1 after the doubling for testing unskilled. Munitions is also conveniently rooted in Perception so Bianca needs to roll 7 successes on 8 dice for Perception and 1 die for proceeding carefully. And this also doesn't align with Bianca's divine heritage, so 6s or better.
7 or more successes: Bianca has enough potassium nitrite to figure out bluing and have enough left over to make a go at a meaningful amount of gunpowder
5 or 6 successes: bluing worked just one time and a impractically small amount is set aside for an attempt at gunpowder
3 or 4 successes: crystals acquired and expended without proof of function
1 or 2 successes: crystals seen, but not collected
No successes: no potassium nitrite at all
Code:
Bury filth, pour water on it, see what you get: 7
Bianca has proven bluing & may attempt gunpowder
The Black Knife magic weapon acquired
Dice are kind tonight
I want to test to see if Bianca can make explosives. As discussed, this is Munitions and the obstacle is 4 doubled to 8. Bianca has tools but, again, they're very not good. Bianca needs to get 9 results of 6 or better on 8 dice for Perception and 1 for proceeding carefully.
9 successes: Bianca has made enough explosive powder to briefly expedite mining
7 or 8 successes: Bianca has a little explosive powder
5 or 6 successes: Bianca made powder that burns weird
1, 2, 3, or 4 successes: No good result and all materials expended
0 successes: BOOM!
Code:
Boom?: 5
No boom. Just weird smoke and bad smells.
Bianca opens Munitions ability at 4
Code:
Bianca does not need to test to produce the following:
* Simple, waterproof pottery
* Lye
* Lye & fat soap
* Covered latrine
* Very rough and lossy clay pot still
Testing is complete.
20 Go build material power in the world immediately
19 Prepare for as long as preparations can be made in secret
00 Prepare for as long as it is safe to do so
So how I thought this would work is that I'd post that first installment, there'd be a little chatter that doesn't change the story much, I'd close the vote, and I'd have another installment up in a couple days to either figure out what kind of juiced-up magic Bianca has in her Melkior-like form or what domains she'd have as a goddess, or what starter quest she'd kick off in the Mesolithic.
But We Just Write dropped a massive efforpost with a lot of exactly the kind of writing this game is meant to reward. They posted about as many words as everyone else combined.
And damned if most of it isn't understandable and valuable to the subject of the quest.
That's the post where I had to start taking notes. And once those notes got more than 1k words I added a running total to the Status post.
We Just Write's post isn't the only one reflected in the notes. But I think I'd have skimped on the notes for now if I hadn't needed to deal with those eight thousand words of exposition.
So here we are. True to the concept of the quest, I gave its subject a chance to exploit the information she was given and it has borne fruit that will stand out in the archeological record.
Also find potato, it's a starchy root vegetable usually brown but can be red or yellowish. We can use it to make potent alcohol and we can make burning seas with it while getting drunk! Also can be used as staple food. Taming it is the next best thing to actual magic!
Power is the most useful thing, voice. You may be assured that I do what I do for it.
There are many roots that people can eat and yes, many of them are stiff. Is this potato one of the stiffest? Generally, the stiffest of them require the most softening before they are eaten. Do you mean it to mark flesh? How does a root burn the sea? Who drinks you? How does a root require taming?
The nature of this game is such that players are going to use words that Bianca doesn't have. It's a conceit of the fiction that she understands you at all. Bianca certainly doesn't speak English or any other product of Proto-Indo-European. If she already has the concept, that's how she'll understand the word. So there needs to be a system and a rule for words signifying concepts she lacks.
When Bianca doesn't know a word a player writes, what she hears will be based on the etymology of that word. In this case, Bianca does not know what a potato is, what starch is, what alcohol is, or what being drunk is.
'Potato' is the name of the object in the Carib language and we maybe don't know its etymology past that. So that's just a new word to Bianca. And she knows it's a new word.
If Bianca later finds a potato, she will not suddenly know that it's a potato the way she'd know what you were talking about if she already knew what a potato was.
'Starch' comes from the stiffening it was used for, so that's how it sounds to her.
'Alcohol,' literally means 'the stain,' so that's not getting through the way you clearly mean it.
And 'drunk,' meant what 'drank' means now, so the message is also not connecting there.
I won't identify every misunderstanding in this manner as the game goes on. I'm doing it now because Guess What You Did Wrong isn't the fun game I want to play here.
I guess if it seems to me that players aren't getting this communications issue or seem to have forgotten it later I might explain all this again. I don't expect GWYDW will be any more enticing later than it is now, but maybe I'll be in a mood for it sometime. Who knows.
I do not rest and I have given you all the power I mean to on this day. I do not think there are more things you can do with more of my power. I think I may have given you much more than I needed to.
I'm most partial to the earliest option, but weakly.
Spring maximises the time to find valuable resources. And is more in our comfort zone for providing advice.
At Early Summer we are still likely to be useful, but the extra preparation may be subverted by letting other entities exploit valuable resources before we get the chance. Also feels like a rerun.
High Summer is a hard no for me. We would be least useful there, though there might be neat battles, our advice would not be as useful I think and we would have lots more politics. Also, betting there are more neat monsters to fight earlier on than later.
Hail to the summer, hail to the summer
the season that drive the cold winter away
Hail to the summer, hail to the summer
light your hearts fire. Let today be Beltain
High on Mount Caburn we look down on ancient lands
the mist rolls away catch the sun on the sea
spin a ring of enchantments to bring on the May morning
set free your power, come weave the dawn
My Immediate advice to Bianca regardless of chosen option is to not settle immediately. The world is vast and the sky is tall and before they die most can't see it all. You never know. The weird colored rock you walked past a decade ago could turn out to be the key reagent you need to defeat an enemy. Search for resources that you can come back to later once you have the power to secure them. Gain contacts among many peoples to ease relations between them and whichever people you eventually choose as your own. Do your best to memorize flora and fauna of many diverse regions. The shape of the land and the ways of its people.
The world is vast, indeed. And in every place there are plants and beasts without number. Did the gods even know the nature of every creeping thing in the lands they called theirs, every mote in the air, every speck in the water?
I have traveled the world looking for my maker. I found many things while I was not finding her. I do not know how you mean me to travel the world looking for everything. In the densest, wettest wood you could spend a person's lifetime looking closely at what you find in a day's walk from one tree and not learn every thing that lives there, every mushroom that blooms only rarely, every creeping thing that hides in the rot, or every bird that might pass through once every five winters.
And this leaves aside the character of stones deep in the ground. Should I dig up the whole world to learn about all there is to know about stone? That sounds like an act of great strength for little power.
It may be that, like the other voices, I do not know what you mean.
But, yes. I will not be sitting without again rising to travel.
Industrialization requires population. Population requires organization. Organization requires politics.
In considering earlier games I wondered if the players would rather start in a world with the kind of population base where industrialization is more immediately possible. I think I remember players wishing for that in the last game, in fact.
So this time I gave players three points on a spectrum of population. And, as discussed elsewhere, I am so very surprised that the maximal position got so little traction.
Nothing wrong with where we are. This is a game I want to run.
"Bianca! You may call me Fox. I am one of many voices here, and am profoundly curious about the world around you. I wish to have some level of agency over the world. Alas, I am limited to talking to you, and responding to the other voices that no doubt are clamoring to speak. So! I will endeavor to provide you good advice, useful advice, advice that can be used to project your will on the world. And I will not lie; I have my own perspective and morals and was raised in a culture with it's own assumptions and beliefs, and will attempt, like many others, to influence you according to my preconceptions and ideology. However, I do so openly, and not by subterfuge, and have no wish to upset or lie or misdirect you. In general, my viewpoint could be considered to be said to be 'pragmatic', and focused on the belief that large numbers of well-trained, confident, and well-equipped people, cooperating towards a harmonious purpose, can have outsized impact on the world around them. I have access to quite a thorough supply of lore to help me with this task, and hope to build a respectful working relationship with you. That said, my knowledge and lore and skill is of limited use without context. What can you tell me, and the rest of us, about the circumstances you find yourself in, as well as the assets you have to leverage your will on the world, so we may advise you on how to best direct your efforts in the present?"
My Vault is around one dozen and six paces across with flat ground and enclosed on all sides and above like the roundness of a person's skull. There are tools of magic within it that I am making my own.
I have, in the past, used tools within my Vault to make for myself a cloak of shadows and a spear of light, like those worn and used by people in the time before the last Winter of Magic. But these do not even last a gross of years and making them is very troublesome.
In my travels I made a sharp stone in the manner of the people of this time. And then I sang a tiny soul of sharpness and mightiness into my knife. It is not so great as a spear of light. But it was much less trouble to make. And I still have it with me.
In the same way, I wear a coat of the finest hides to be found, flayed from swift running beasts that shimmer like water. I sang a tiny soul of the scent of flowers and the softness of damp sand into my coat.
The manner of things around me is as I have said. My maker has abandoned me and is likely smothered by the Winter of Magic. The world is disordered. I find no gods in it, nor dragons, nor beasts of great soul.
It has occured to me that the earliest option would likely give us the option of controlling a nomadic people, which might make it much easier to travel the world finding neat plants and domesticable animals and useful minerals.
Heck, we could leave behind a train of families growing villages to form a trading network and come back to later.
When the people wander, they wander to places they know, places they have wandered to. They bring their children with them and they teach them how to live in each place they go.
When people wander or are driven into places where they do not know how to live, those people die.
Right, basic economic principal. Returns on growth can be reinvested to fuel more growth if a valid method of reinvestment is available.
Let's say you have a lake, and that lake is fed by a river. Let us also assume you have a spell that allows you to sacrifice the water that is in the lake to change the world around the lake. The first thing you should do is sacrifice as much lake water as you can to increase the number of or improve the flow rate of the rivers. The more water enters the lake, the more you can spend over time. And the more you can spend over time, the faster you can improve the rivers flowing into the lake.
The same principal applies in any aspect of industry. If you have gold from making and selling a product, you can invest that in improving the amount of cheese you can make at once, or increasing the number of caravans you have transporting it. You can have laborers and peasantry focused on improving the quality and health of their village by creating aqueducts or subsidizing medical practices. Even knowledge isn't exempt, as investing in ways of learning and storing knowledge will, in turn, increase the total amount of knowledge available to you.
The more resources you invest in your resource generation now, the more resources you'll be able to invest in other things later.
Although, to be fair to others, there's a LOT of work you can skip over by just...preparing in secret and letting other people do the hard part of convincing people to make proper societies.
I do not know how worn covering is involved in the spell you suggest. But I do understand that you do not know of such a spell and mean it only to show what you mean by covering. I know of no such spell to turn lake water into more rain than was in the lake. That would be very good magic to know, if you wanted a larger lake.
Why do we want a larger lake?
Is this about the power of my soul? If so, do not concern yourself with it. It is understood that the Voices of the Astute Cacophony know well of substance but nothing of soul.
There is lots of loot and dragon dens and plants and minerals to loot. We can't do that if we are all stationary.
Gotta bring our loot team with us. If we early start they won't have logistics ... at all ... so gotta live off the land. And we might as well aim to cross cross the continent to get good coverage.
We might come across really valuable dungeons on our travels that are too high level for us and we want to come back to later.
The fun part is we get to make the culture. And it's very much an age of heroes kind of deal. There will be great monsters to slay. Powerfull demigods to fight where our influence can directly impact the Bianca's ability to win via, for example, proper metal weapons. Or clever anachronistic gunpowder usage.
Just imagine. Steppe horse nomads drinking mares blood on the run and hurling pottery grenades bareback on bearback (since we are early enough to tell them to spend ten generations domesticating bears or whatever)
This does bring up the question of what exactly the physical capabilities of this Bianca are. Is she undying or is she fully invincible? Is she peak human strength or is she so strong that the largest rock she can lift would drive her into the ground. Is she abnormally tall or short compared to the people she encounters? Does she look like a skeleton? A corpse? A golem?
I think you mean to suggest I command the wanderers to carry what is mine where I want it to be. That is a good idea but, again, they will not make it far out of the lands where they know how to live. I will have to command new wanderers to come with me when the old ones are dead to sickness or poison or whatever they don't understand and which kills them.
I am a soul which touches the world of substance. My body was prepared from a person in the time before the last Winter of Magic. In that time I did know many things that person knew. And perhaps in some way I was and remain that person. But I have forgotten so much of that life. So much of that life left me when my soul was drawn from the Choir. The soul of the person I was made from is like blood in a river. It flowed in flesh and it still flows, but who can pick it out from the river that swallows it?
I am strong, I am fast, I am sure. And there are people who are stronger, but fewer that are faster or more sure. It may be that there is a person whose eye is keener than mine, whose wit is more discerning, whose will is more indomitable. And it may be that there is not.
Most of the people I have found in the world grow taller than I am. None of their faces are like mine. Few of them wear their ages as deeply as I do, and none as well.
It would be very difficult to destroy my body while my soul remains intact. Were I thrown into a volcano or struck squarely by a great stone from the sky or something like that, I would need time to restore myself. If my soul is unharmed and if the tools in my Vault are not tampered with, I am confident I could rebuild my body just as it is now.
Well this is going to be an interesting experience, and I do admit that the prospect of having a nomadic for at least some time would be interesting. A short amount of time gives you the ability to manipulate the environment to something more favorable to you, which is a positive. Though it does mean that the people would lack the sophistication that would make doing projects easier, but such is the cost of being the first being of that caliber to be active.
To answer some questions you have asked earlier.
I personally have no idea what not finding one's maker means, but I am certain it is an ill omen. I think there are experiences similar to that, but I feel it would be like comparing the feeling of touching freshly roasted meat to grabbing molten lava.
For what we are, we are voices in a Cacophony. Bound to you and willing to aid you in your goals.
I would say that we have makers in a sense.
Existence is similar in that we are drawn for a purpose, but not the same.
I would say that the voices are bound to the Cacophony in a sense.
As for where your maker is, I personally have no idea and am reasonably certain that my peers are similarly at a loss.
Related to the previous statement, Welcome to Adult Bianca. Where one is free to pursue whatever they wish, where one's successes and failures are more dependent on one's own doing, and where there may no longer be any figure to look to for guidance and protection.
This is fitting. My maker abandoned me without making me suited to be in the world without her. But I have grown. And I am no longer a peer to the helpless, but to the capable.
Right, so the goal is none should think themselves above you, yes? then the best way to do so ensure that none have a chance to. An early start means that you will have limited competition on you're level, assuming there is anyone on your level, which allows you the chance to deal with them before they can surpass you.
And it is true that the people of this current era might be... lacking in a lot of ways, that just makes it simpler for you to cultivate their development towards you're own ends. letting others have a chance to mold them to their will, will only make repurposing them to your needs more difficult later.
Not to mention the chance to plunder the leftovers of the various powerful beings that once ruled this world. Others would almost certainly beat you to it if you were to hide away in the vault.
Just so. I do not know how gods awoke in the last Springtime of Magic. I am sure they would like to be unstoppable. And gods often get what they want. But sometimes…
I would advice against spring, while possibility abounds the minds and souls of people are unope. Let civilization take root, while a forest is harder to navigate than a field, the former provides the lumber necessay to sail the seas of discovery.
Remember, no matter how wise or smart you are you are One, there's so much an individual can do or explore. Why do Gods need followers? Is it just for have more souls to feed on? Even the most asinine of followers can have a single good idea in their lifetime.
Wait until population is plentiful, when humans and others have started to sharpen their wits.
Look at us, we are hundreds, they will be millions.
Find the smartest thousandth and bind them to your will, they'll be the tools with which you'll build greatness.
How can the smartest be known? It can be hard to know who is not smart from who is meek or broken or reserved or not in a place they know.
The work of godhood is great, and requires great strength. Gods can do so much more when their followers give as much of the power of their own souls as they can to their gods. And with the power given them by their lesser followers, gods may share a small part of the power of their own souls and mix it in with the souls of their most devoted followers. Then, through those most devoted, gods can do even more. Even the most devoted follower can only give so much of the power of their own soul directly to their god. But when carried by their gods power in return, they can give more of the power of their souls to the work of that god.
Any god with few followers is weaker than those with many. And even among the gods there are those that are great and lesser. The least of gods must serve their betters or be destroyed.
Bah, waiting will just ensure that the oh-so-valuable lumber will already be under the control and protection of others. and some of those others might have surpassed her efforts. No, Bianca, even if the metaphorical forest is barely a collection of trees at the moment, it is best to take control now so that you might better cultivate its uses for your own.
Early mover gets to
1) steal the power from rivals
2) awaken potential allies earlier than they otherwise would be
3) see what resources are common or scarce in the world and get them first
4) have the biggest impact on the privative life forms
But I have no allies. I only knew of others that my maker warned me against. I do not even know of those my maker made like me. I knew my maker. I only knew of others.
If we were to go primitive, what kind of society would we want to build? I'm going to again put forward the idea of remaining nomadic hunter-gatherer for several generations so that we have a chance to potentially find good domestication targets for flora and fauna, and I also have been thinking of a bit of sphiel on geology that might help us spot potential mineral deposits.
We'd definitely like to find at least one volcanic area to secure a supply of sulphur because stone age tribe with black powder is a pretty funny anachronism and it could be very useful for breaking into tombs or getting a mining industry bootstrapped. We had issues with that in a previous kalpa ( I'm petitioning we refer to one go-around in the cycle of waxing and waning magic a kalpa ).
Also obsidian lets you get tools of quality surpassing even bronze metalworking without the need to source two ores that are usually found very far apart.
For plants and animals, don't focus you advice on specific species. There is not guarantee that they or close analogs exist. And even if they exist is may be a an unrecognizable pre-domestication form. Instead focus on general techniques to breed better crops or make unpalatable food palatable. Soaking, brining, pickling, salting, fermenting, roasting.
If we start with nothing domesticated at all, then it may take many generations to get something high yield enough that settling down in feasible.
Of course, the best option for initial settlement might not even be near metals. The first true civilizations I know of settled in river valleys with little wood or minerals and mostly built their homes of bundled reeds, mud if they were wealthy. Fired brick if they were kings.
I am doubtful that we could get Bianca access to Blackpowder because I am fairly certain that the tools used to make the substance doesn't exist and would take several iterations of "Build the tools to Build the tools" to get to a degree that manufacturing is reliable and wouldn't end with whoever was assigned to the task an explosive death. But then again, I could be wrong on this account.
Regarding the use of Obsidian, While I do admit that using the rock would be best, I would still advocate having some capability to do metal working.
Presuming of course she immediately becomes active instead of initially doing preparations of some kind. Then a different approach would have to be used.
There are lots of things we are going to need if we are going to be using the primitives
1) to understand their language
2) find a group that can be made to look at us how we want to be perceived
3) get them doing useful work for us.
There is currently no structure that we know of amongst them, but we have probably got quite a lot of time to set one up.
There a probably lots of tribes out there, so we don't need to do the same approach for all of them. Some tribes we will want to keep, and some might just be free labor (depending how pragmatic we are).
I would suggest we first experiment with what works. In some places we can make champions with simple magic items, in others make ourselves out to be a deity, or even train basic magic users to be tribe shamans.
Short term us being there to solve problems for them will be helpful (cultural impact, reverence for the powerful), but long term it will make them less useful (cultural stagnation, inability to solve their own problems).
First, it is only the matter of a some few winters to learn the broken tongues these people speak.
Second, all the people who look on me know that I am greater than they are. Some few know I am the greatest thing they have ever seen. Most have seen great storms.
Third, tell me, voices, what useful things people can do for me. I am maybe two gross winters or more past the last time a person had something useful to teach me.
I once gave a person my spear of light. She killed many other people before she tried to kill me with it. I let her keep it until she died, which did not take very long. She did not live to old age. She did nothing useful to me. And her kin did not long survive her. I took back my spear of light after she died.
My advice, oh resplendent inheritor of fallen glories, is that you go out in the world and make yourself known. You may feel less mighty now than you could be, yet you are still mightier than most any competition. Should you wait and gather your strength, others might do so more efficiently, while also sowing and reaping love and fear among the unguided people of the land. Your personal power would be great, but your relative power would make you a mere one of many.
But maybe this voice is foolish. Foolish for thinking to know your mind and your heart when in truth it only knows the mind and heart of past Bearers of the Pact of Cacophony. Maybe your true heart desires worthy companions and worthy challengers. What say you? What does this Bianca wish to find in the world beyond herself?
Greetings, Bianca. We are Junction, a collection of entities stuck with each other for reasons that are none of your business, who therefore speak as one.
We are knowledgeable on the subjects of chemistry (study of matter), astronomy (study of the stars and other celestial objects), mathematics, mechanisms, biology (study of life), and sociology (study of societies). That said, by trade we are a storyteller, and we know nothing of magic.
We will be starting by giving you some highly useful knowledge, iterated from previous experience as an advisor: Writing, means of sending secret messages, a basic starting package for farming, knowledge of how to breed creatures for tameness, methods for food preservation, a framework for understanding disease, methods for producing basic ceramic vessels, methods for wringing metal from stone, and - most destructively - how to produce explosives.
We do not yet understand the bounds of your knowledge, and will preemptively apologize for covering anything you already know.
First, writing:
you may know of it, but we're covering our bases. It's a category of methods for storing messages in physical objects. The simplest to learn (which is important) uses something known as an alphabet. This is a series of symbols, each of which corresponds to a sound used in a spoken language. Words are formed by stringing these sound-symbols together in the order the sounds are spoken.
I know of these glyphs, but they signify thought, not noise.
Their making is the work of dragons, who tear through the barrier of between the world of substance of the world of thought to make thoughts known to any who know how to read them.
I know only a few glyphs, only the ones used in my Vault that I have puzzled out. But they are magic, so I do not think you can teach me more of them.
Numbers can also be recorded in writing by a variety of methods, but all the good ones can be described as bases. What I mean by this is fairly straightforward: in the case of base ten, you have a symbol for nothing, a symbol for one of something, two of something, three of something, all the way up to a symbol for nine of something. To represent ten, you put a symbol for one of something in the next place over from the symbol for nothing. That next place counts the number of tens you have, the place after that counts the number of hundreds, and it goes on indefinitely.
You can strictly speaking use any arbitrary number as a base for a system of number-writing, but some are more practical than others. Base ten is intuitive for people with ten fingers, while base twelve has the advantage of dividing evenly by three, four, two, and six.
Most people have four fingers on each hand. Do you mean that people should count with their whole fingers and whole thumbs? And to reach only ten? That sounds foolish.
Most people have a dozen joints on each hand. They can use their thumb and those dozen joints to count to a dozen on one hand. With two hands, a person can count to a gross. If a person is clever, they can count to a dozen in their head, count dozens on one hand, and count grosses on the other. Then every great gross may be counted in tally marks.
I do not know if people know this counting anymore. But I know it.
I'll also explain a couple good options for writing material, and how to make them.
Clay is a common mineral, notable for becoming flexible when wet, and hardening when fired. A stylus (specially shaped stick) can be used to press symbols into the clay, which can be preserved for long-term archival by firing. Clay tablets are an easily accessible and long-lasting writing medium, but suffer from being heavy and bulky.
Paper is another option, which is much lighter and more compact per word written. It can be made starting with wood; separate the wood into thin strips, either peeling along the grain, or through use of a planing tool. The wood strips should then be softened; the easiest method is to leave it soaking in water for seven to ten days, then boil it for most of a day. Once softened, the wood strips need to be mashed or ground into a pulp. This wood pulp is then rolled and pressed into sheets as flat and thin as can be managed, before being baked dry at a low temperature.
Paper can be written on with either a pencil, or a pen. A pencil is a tool consisting of a solid material such as graphite; dark in color, and prone to leaving streaks when rubbed against a surface. Meanwhile, a pen is a narrow vessel filled with ink, that leaves a thin line of said ink when drawn across a surface; a basic ink can be formulated by mixing fine soot with water, but is not the best.
To rapidly duplicate written texts, a device known as a printing press is most useful. This is a machine in which a rack of blocks with symbols etched into them (known as type) can be affixed in arbitrary order. By operating a lever, the rack of type is pressed down onto the writing material, hence the name. If printing into clay, the symbols can simply be forced into the clay; if printing on paper, ink must be applied to the type before printing each page.
Teaching everyone to read is a very good idea, as it makes it much easier to spread important knowledge, allowing more people to build on it.
Writing is very powerful, yes. And pressing painted glyphs onto… something like a hide made of soaked and cooked wood that you are naming reeds seems to be a poor use of that power. But I may try it with the glyphs I know and see what comes of it, if no better pursuit arises.
The basic idea is to have an organized and secret way of substituting the symbols in a message, so that only another person who knows the secret can read it. I will be discussing three methods of doing this, in escalating complexity and security. For all of them, a tool known as a cipher wheel is highly useful.
A cipher wheel is two disks with the alphabet written around the outside, with one being larger than the other. They are connected in their centers by a pivot, so they can freely rotate. An alignment of the cipher wheel can be denoted by which symbol on the outer disk is aligned with the first symbol on the inner disk.
The first cipher is quite simple: agree on a single fixed rotation of the cipher wheel, and substitute the letters as the alignments of the wheel indicate. To read it, turn the cipher wheel to the same alignment and reverse the substitution. This cipher is trivial to defeat for anyone with a basic understanding of secret messages.
Second is more complex: agree on a word with a fixed spelling as the key ahead of time. Adjust the alignments of the cipher wheel for each letter to match the corresponding letter in the word, repeating the pattern each time you reach the end of the key word. This cipher can be defeated by someone sufficiently determined and clever, but is vastly more difficult to break than a single fixed alignment of the cipher wheel.
Third is the only truly unbreakable cipher, often known as the one-time pad. It must be prepared ahead of time, and doing so is rather cumbersome. Spin a cipher wheel so that it stops at an effectively random alignment. Write down said alignment on two sheets of paper or tablets. Repeat until you have two completely full pages of identical nonsense. The randomness is crucial for the cipher's invulnerability; any rhyme or reason to a cipher's key whatsoever means it is theoretically breakable, though doing so may be unreasonably difficult.
To send a message, treat the page of nonsense as the keyword in the second cipher, but under absolutely no circumstances repeat the pattern. Repeating the pattern renders the message susceptible to the same code-breaking methods as can defeat the second cipher. Once used, the page with the key should be destroyed as thoroughly as is feasible, so as to prevent it from being recovered by people who aren't supposed to have it. This also prevents re-use of the key, which would also compromise the security of the message.
If the wrong glyphs are used, the magic will be different. It may not work at all.
No. I see. One person hides a spell by using the wrong glyphs. No one who does not know the secret knows the spell. But a person who knows the secret will learn the spell, but only if that person also knows the glyphs.
This does not seem very useful.
Also, what if the glyphs that are not carefully chosen work as a spell on accident? Hmm… Maybe it doesn't work that way? I may teach a person glyph magic and let them find out, make use of them.
This is the practice of inducing desired plants to grow in desired areas, allowing an area to support a much higher population than it otherwise would. Every last plant has a seed that can be grown; in fruit-bearing plants this is fairly obvious, while certain grasses grow large starchy grains. Legumes also grow pods full of beans.
To plant these seeds, insert them into the ground at a controlled depth. Good soil is important (more on that in a bit), as is the time of planting. For most plants, spring is a good time to plant their seeds, though some are best planted in late autumn - in this case the seeds lie dormant in the ground during the winter, sprout very early in spring, and can be harvested before summer truly begins. Longer lasting plants (such as fruit trees) should obviously be left in the ground once established, for as long as they continue bearing a good harvest.
It is important to note that farming is hard work. Farmers will need to tend to the health of their crops constantly, removing undesired plants that are growing in the fields. In addition, for best results the fields will need to be irrigated; this is a process of digging ditches near a source of water (such as a spring or river) that send a constant supply of water throughout the field; this greatly improves the plant life's ability to grow.
Another important consideration is crop rotation and soil revitalization. Most plants are dependent on available nitrogen in the soil, which they deplete as they grow. That said, there are some crops (such as beans and peas) which pull nitrogen out of the air, and put it in the soil. Thus, it's important to change which crops are grown on a given plot of land every few growing seasons, so as to keep the soil healthy. Clover is a useful plant for maintaining soil health between food crops; it doesn't grow any food for humans, but it grows fast, it fixes nitrogen, and having live roots in the soil at all times prevents soil erosion.
Soil can also be revitalized using what is known as compost. This is dead biological matter that is allowed to decay into soil, a process greatly aided by the addition of earthworms to the composting site. Droppings can also be composted. After it's been left to sit for a few years, this compost can be spread on fields and garden plots, providing a new layer of very rich topsoil for plants to grow in.
There is additionally a special type of compost referred to as Black Earth. In addition to the normal decaying biomass, include fragments of bone, ground up wood ashes/charcoal, and some crushed clay. It is longer lasting than regular compost, and very fertile compared to unfertilized soil.
If farming is harder work than how the people live now, why would they do it?
And no one can work hard and live on only plants. They will need meat. The longer any meaningful number of people stay in the same place, the fewer large animals remain in the area. The fewer large animals are in the area, the harder the people will have to work for meat.
Some or all of the people will decide to move on, as they always have. And those that stay behind will be too few to do the hard work needed, or too few to defend themselves.
If you cut the land into a river and bring that cut to a place where you put plants in the ground so that the river's water is on those plants, then when that river runs high it will flood that place. Your plants will drown or be washed away. Even trees, until they are very large, will be torn out when the river runs over its banks through your cut.
The people already bring the seeds of the plants they favor with them, and spread them throughout their travels. And I think all people everywhere carry bulbs that grow leaves like a hawk's tail. These they put in the ground at each step of their travels and take from the ground with them again when they leave.
They know, as well, to cast to the ground some portion of the seeds of any plant they use. If I should tell them, instead, to put those seeds in the ground, I do not think that will be hard work. If that helps, why should the people stay where they are and not move on as they have?
Or should they put other seeds in the ground with them, beans from seed pods and seeds like them?
I don't know the substance you name, or the plant you describe that people can't eat anyway. I guess that will just keep happening.
People who handle decay and shit grow sick, weak, and deathly. How is the benefit of putting filth anywhere but the midden so good that it's worth sickness? If the soil is robbed of some substance, will it be restored when the people come to that place again some winters later? If plants grow thinly on one bit of land, will they not grow thick again after a few dozen winters? What midden does not already have bits of bone in it? Should middens be placed where the plants grow the thinest? Should wood and dry clay be piled on the midden and burned then broken up with stones?
Also, the ground does not give birth to plants. Seeds do that, as you have yourself said. Why would you call dirt 'fertile?'
Plants and animals change across generations, through a process known to us as evolution. Basically, the internal instructions that lifeforms use to make more of themselves are sometimes copied imperfectly. These changes are usually neutral, or bad - in which case the creature usually dies before it can reproduce. But every once in a while, a change is beneficial for the plant, animal, or fungus in question. Those creatures with a beneficial change proceed to pass it on to their offspring, and it spreads throughout the population.
The process of evolution can be manipulated. The basics of the process are quite simple; find a male and female of whatever species you're working with that have desired traits, and get them to produce offspring together. Continue selecting the most suitable lifeforms for your purposes to breed each generation, and the traits you are breeding for will become more and more pronounced.
Desirable traits to breed for in plants include the size of the edible part, rapidity of crop growth, disease resistance, and suchlike. Dedicated plots of land for plant breeding can be very helpful in this case.
Meanwhile, one of the most important traits to breed for in animals is docility around humans. An unintentional version of this is the cause of the wolves living among people; some wolves were more willing to risk being around humans, they benefited from partnering with humans on hunts, and this population bred true.
Some additional creatures that would be worth domesticating (breeding for a tolerance of humans): cats, pigeons, and spiders.
Junction, I can see how people may choose which wolves fuck. They can tie them near each other if they catch them at the right time and drive others away.
Doing the same with cats sounds difficult. I could do it. I do not think I would want to do it too many times.
And if the cats are tied down, the wolves will eat them. Tying down doves ensures they are eaten, surely. And creeping things? How do you decide which creeping things fuck, if they even do?
We should set aside wolves and cats and doves and creeping things, though. How do you decide which plants fuck?
For cats and spiders, the reason is quite simple: pest control. There are any manner of creatures that will eat the food farmers grow, both in the field, and once it's in storage. Cats and spiders are predators that eat these creatures, thus helping keep their population low. As a side benefit, cats that bond with a person are quite enjoyable to cuddle with; though they will claw if grabbed without their consent.
Spiders are probably too much trouble to selectively breed, but it's worth telling people not to kill them, and to encourage them to take residence in fields and food storage buildings. Spiders also eat bloodsucking insects, as an added bonus. Entirely aside from people not liking being bit, those bloodsucking insects are also a nasty way for diseases to spread; spiders help to mitigate this problem.
Don't you tell me it's too much trouble, Junction. You make maelstrom suggestions. Follow them through.
Tell me how you make one creeping thing that is more peaceful to people than her fellows fuck another creeping thing that's more peaceful to people than his fellows. For that matter, how are the creeping boars known from the creeping sows?
As for pigeons, they are most useful as messengers. Pigeons have an exceptional sense of direction and memory for places, meaning they are highly unlikely to get lost when flying to the roost they view as their home. A light message on rolled up paper can be attached to a pigeon prior to its release, upon which time it will fly home with the message attached. This is a highly efficient means of delivering important messages quickly, in an absence of more sophisticated communications technology. Breeding pigeons is also a good source of meat, with relatively little feed being required per unit of meat produced.
If I go through the trouble to make a spell, I do not see the wisdom in binding it to a dove and letting the dove carry that spell to the dove's roost. Do you know why I would want to send spells exclusively to doves' roosts?
For grains, beans, and similar foods, they must be kept dry to prevent rot. A building known as a granary is highly useful in this endeavor, with a floor raised above ground level, and a slanted watertight roof to keep the rain off. They will keep for a year or two without issue, though spoilage will quickly set in after this time.
For other foods, drying is often a suitable method of preservation, as is pickling. To pickle a food item, start with clean water. Stir as much salt into the water as will dissolve, to produce brine. Mix this brine with a variable amount of vinegar to determine the end flavor. Now, add the food items to be pickled to the container, and seal it shut tight. Only open it when the food is to be eaten. It won't keep forever, but pickled food will last for considerably longer than it normally would.
Salt I know. The other substance that should be added to water I do not.
A high nest for grain and beans is something. But why would the people gather more grain and beans than they can eat when they gather them? Or is this like the hard work plant growing where they do not move on? That may work. But how do you keep the birds and mice out before you've made the cats and creeping things fuck themselves into being peaceful to people?
Lastly, food may be preserved by getting it very very cold. This is often quite difficult, especially in warmer climates. That said, there is a method to do it in such places. I will now explain how to produce a basic refrigerator. The required materials for this project are metal pipes - though strong clay pipes might also work, a liquid known as ammonia, and a well-insulated building. We will explain how to acquire ammonia shortly.
There are two vessels for fluid: an upper vessel, and a lower vessel. The lower vessel should be filled with a mixture of ammonia and water, with a fireplace below it. The ammonia boils at a lower temperature than the water, flowing up a pipe as a gas. This gaseous ammonia passes through a winding coiled pipe on the roof, cooling off and condensing back into a liquid. This pure liquid ammonia flows down into the upper vessel.
A small hole in the upper vessel leads into another pipe, of considerably larger diameter than the hole. Upon passing through this hole, the ammonia evaporates again, cooling down in the process. This is due to significantly lower pressure in the descending pipe. The low pressure pipe winds around through the room to be cooled, absorbing heat from said room as it goes. The low pressure pipe then returns to the lower vessel, coming to an end below the water level.
This is crucial; the pressure coming off the mixed ammonia and water as it boils is proportional to the liquid surface exposed, so the low pressure pipe needs to have a much smaller fluid surface in it than the whole chamber. If both pipes opened above the lower chamber's water level, they would have equal pressure coming off the lower chamber, and the ammonia would come to a stop instead of circulating properly.
To acquire ammonia, boil urine; it contains a small but significant quantity of ammonia. You may be able to run a refrigerator with urine filling the lower chamber, but there are other components of urine that might cause issues. I would recommend either running a pipe from the urine chamber into a pot of water that will become the refrigerator's lower chamber, or - once you have a refrigerator at all - using the coldest temperatures you can achieve to directly condense the isolated ammonia into a liquid.
There are a few broad causes of diseases known to us; pathogens, nutritional deficiencies, slow poisons, and plain old rotten luck. While there are several measures that can be taken to decrease the risk of various diseases, they aren't foolproof, and these measures have little to do with moral or immoral behavior.
Broadly speaking, pathogens are a living thing that gets inside the body and causes problems once it's there. There are a few edge cases such as viruses, but they're for later. Some pathogens may be large enough to see, with worms being an example, but most are small enough to require specialized equipment to detect. What you need to understand right now is that pathogens have a vastly harder time getting inside the body if both people and the places they live in are kept as clean as possible.
Wherever possible, shit should be kept very far away from sources of drinking water. It's a useful material for a number of purposes, but it's rife with microbial life, much of which can cause dire illness if it gets inside the body. Just in case, drinking water should further be filtered and perhaps boiled; most pathogens cannot survive boiling temperatures.
In addition, people should wash their hands with soap often; soap is a material made by mixing lye with any oil or fat, with the soap curing into a solid substance over time. Lye can be produced by simply pouring rainwater over ashes from a hardwood fire. The lye will be dissolved in the water, and should be drained through a layer of straw (dried grass stalks) and pebbles in the bottom of the vessel to separate it from the wood ashes, accumulating in a bucket beneath. Lye water may need multiple passes through the ashes in order to reach sufficient potency for soap making. It is very important for soap makers to NOT get any of the lye on their skin, as it can cause severe injuries if this happens.
In addition, wounds absolutely must be kept clean to prevent infection. It will hurt, but cleaning the wound with sufficiently strong alcohol will kill the vast majority of pathogens. Alcohol can be produced first by fermentation, then by distillation. To ferment a food to produce alcohol, simply immerse sufficiently starchy or sweet foods in water for a prolonged time, possibly after mashing them up; microbial life in the water will consume carbohydrates in the food mash, producing alcohol as a byproduct. This process will stop before it reaches sufficient alcohol content to disinfect wounds, but it's enough to use as a starting point.
To go further requires distillation. This needs two pots, and a winding tube. The upper pot is sealed tight with the alcoholic liquid inside, with the only way out being through the tube, which winds around a lot before reaching the lower pot. If a fire is lit under the upper pot, the alcohol will boil sooner than the water, condense in the tube, and collect in the lower pot. The fluid collected in the lower pot will therefore have a higher alcohol content than what went into the upper pot. This process can be repeated multiple times, and will absolutely need to be; sufficiently strong alcohol to clean wounds can be lit on fire, and burns with a clean blue flame. If it doesn't ignite, it's insufficiently strong to clean wounds. Actually, adding onto that, alcohol intended as wound-cleaner needs to be very vigorous in its combustion; it should be very difficult to extinguish by blowing on it.
Ah. So this is what the stain is. And the first voice said to use potatoes to make it, you say to use any stiff or sweet mashed food. The problem with boiling this wet rot is the same as the last time. But I understand that the rot should be cooked and that some arrangement of something captures the air that comes off of it.
Alcohol used in this manner obviously needs to be, you know, clean. it should be clear white in appearance, distinguishable from water mainly by scent and flammability. It also needs to stay in the wound for a significant time to kill pathogens; I recommend soaking a clean rag or paper in alcohol, and holding it up against the wound for a prolonged period.
Once cleansed with alcohol, wrap the wound with clean (preferably boiled or alcohol-cleansed) cloth and tie it in place. This is known as a bandage, and helps a great deal in preventing contaminants from entering a wound. Bandages will need to be changed regularly, until the wound has fully sealed. Continuing to clean the wound is also important.
You've said quite a lot about wound care without mentioning kissing. I'm not sure what you know or don't know. But cleaning is important and you are talking about cleaning.
Other methods by which pathogens can enter the body include transmission by animal bite, exposure to infected blood, and respiratory diseases - these take root primarily in the lungs, spread throughout the air as the sufferer breathes, and may be inhaled by others, spreading the illness. Be very, VERY wary of respiratory diseases.
Now, on to nutritional deficiencies. Bluntly, the body needs a wide variety of different materials to function properly. There are VERY few foods that can provide all of these materials on their own, and therefore a varied diet is required to ensure health.
Oh. Is that why people who eat more different things are more hale?
Then how will that work with putting plants in the ground and staying with them? They will run the rarer plants and animals out if they do not move on!
One particular nutritional malady of note is called Scurvy; the substance which prevents it is found in fresh fruit and vegetables, and is destroyed by heat. In very cold places where fruit cannot be acquired, raw animal fat is often eaten as a (disgusting but effective) substitute.
Scurvy can be recognized by the following symptoms: lethargy, body weakness, pains all over the body, swelling in the arms and legs, spots on the tongue, loosened teeth, extreme tendency to bruise, and old wounds re-opening. Scurvy can be easily treated by feeding the victim fresh or dried fruit; if scurvy is indeed their ailment, they will start feeling better within a day or two, and recover completely within twenty to thirty days.
So if someone sickens in some of these many, many ways, feed them raw plants or, if raw plants aren't available, raw fat? That's straightforward, but strange.
I suppose if this is bad advice it won't take too many dead people to find out.
Diseases caused by slow poisons are exactly what they sound like; long term harm done by a substance that takes a long time to poison someone. Two of the most insidious slow poisons are lead and mercury - incidentally both metals, though most metals aren't toxic.
By far the most hideous effect of lead poisoning is the damage it does to the mind; those exposed will be mentally diminished in any of a variety of ways, dulling creativity, wrecking problem-solving, and increasing the tendency to turn on one's own. In summary, lead being allowed to enter the body makes people stupid and awful, and should be avoided. For this reason, lead channels and pipes should ABSOLUTELY NEVER be used for transporting water; contaminated drinking water is far, FAR too dangerous to permit. Burning lead-containing substances should also be firmly forbidden, with severe punishments for those who do it. Public beatings would be a sufficient deterrent for most offenders, we think.
As for bad luck, it is a sad truth that there are all manner of ways for a body to turn on itself, often with little that can be done to prevent it. This can largely be broken down into immune problems, cancers, and genetic problems.
For immune problems, the body has an internal system of defenders that act to kill pathogens. This system has also evolved to be capable of recognizing threats it has faced before, fighting them more effectively next time. For most occasions this is great, and can even be manipulated to protect someone from a pathogen they have not yet been exposed to. However, it is possible for the immune system to identify something as a threat that it really, really shouldn't.
In the case of the immune system targeting a substance from outside the body, this is known as an allergy. It can be mitigated by avoiding whatever substance the immune system inappropriately targets, but in some cases this is simply infeasible, resulting in great misery for the sufferer without much they can do about it. It is possible for an allergic reaction to be outright lethal, due to swelling of the windpipe forcing it closed.
If the immune system targets a substance or tissue that's supposed to be inside the body, the situation can be vastly more dire. Often, there isn't much that can be done aside from mitigating the symptoms with a dizzying assortment of drugs.
Well understanding the cause may help with magical healing even if you cannot tell me how to make the medicinal substances that would treat these 'free problems.' They sound more like wardful flesh problems.
Cancers are much, much worse. Bluntly, they are a part of the body that has stopped cooperating with the rest, growing out of control and stealing the resources the rest of the body needs. There are many methods of dealing with cancer, but at your level of advancement, one of the only viable options is surgery, which requires identifying the cancer early in its progression. A trained healer using freshly boiled-clean tools and with freshly cleaned hands carefully cuts open the patient, and physically removes the tumor from the body. The incision is then sewn shut with boiled-clean needles and thread, and subsequently treated as any other wound.
It is very important to note that if the cancer has already spread from its initial tumor, surgically removing it will only help temporarily; in such cases the cancer will eventually make its presence known again, and kill the patient anyway. This is why regularly checking the body for new hard lumps and discolored patches of skin is very important, or the narrow window of opportunity to remove the cancer before it spreads will be missed.
As for genetic diseases, sometimes people just get their lives completely messed up by a copying error in their body's assembly instructions. Such people should be cared for if possible; they can have useful ideas after all. That said, the idea of allowing them to have children should be viewed with skepticism.
Ah, one last note on medical practice: children need to go outside regularly in their youth. Exposure to sunlight is needed for the eyes to develop properly, and failing to get enough of it has a good chance of causing myopia (blurred vision at long distance).
Waterproof containers are very useful for storage, and they can be fairly easily made from clay using the methods and tools we are about to describe. First, acquire clay; clay soils can be identified by a cracked texture, strongly retaining footprints, having hard angular chunks when dug from dry ground, and most importantly becoming soft and malleable when wet. The sides of rivers are a good place to look for clay.
To prevent the clay from cracking as it dries, you will need to add some non-flexible material (called temper). Grind up the clay, and add ground up temper material in a four to one ratio. Once mixed, the clay can be wetted and shaped into its desired form; once shaped, the clay should be allowed to dry for approximately half a day.
Then, the clay must be fired. There are two main methods to do this, with the color of the final pottery being the determining factor.
Both methods involve first burning a fire to produce a bed of coals, covering the bed of coals with a stone platform, placing the pottery on that platform, covering it with either stone or pottery fragments to prevent direct contact with the firewood, then building a fire on top of the pottery. Doing this above ground will result in different colors from digging a pit, and smothering the fire with earth partway through its burn. In both cases, the fired clay will now be tough and durable, though perhaps not waterproof yet.
Any pottery can now be made waterproof through a process known as glazing. Mix fine-ground wood ash with fine sand and water to produce a simple pottery glaze, then either dip the pottery in the glaze, or brush the glaze onto it. Glazing the inside is far more important than the outside, for the purpose of a waterproof container. Once glazed, fire the pottery again, and it will be complete.
There are all manner of paints and glaze additives that can be included to decorate the pottery, but the basics of the process don't deviate much from what we described.
Ah, there's a tool that's quite useful for making pottery (though not strictly required) known as a potter's wheel. This is a special table kept upright by a single central support, so that it may spin freely. Additionally, a heavy tabletop ensures that once the wheel is gotten spinning, it will continue to do so for a good long while. Clay centered on this spinning tabletop can be easily shaped into radially symmetric forms by a skilled potter, speeding the production process by a considerable margin and improving the quality of the final product.
Ah, fired clay can also be used to make bricks for construction. In this case, we highly recommend incorporating some straw or grass into the bricks during production, as it strengthens them significantly. Bricks can be stuck together using a mix of sand and clay, which will be very important for the upcoming sections on metallurgy and glassmaking.
Metals are a class of material with several notable properties; they are (mostly) rigid solids at common temperatures, many are harder than stone, and unlike stone they are not guaranteed to shatter when pushed past their limits, often simply bending in a way that is much easier to repair. Unfortunately, the vast majority of metals are bound up in various rocks and minerals, requiring significant efforts to extract and make use of.
I know of metals. The people prize gold, silver, iron, and copper when they find it, which is very rare. I brought some gold here, to my Vault. There is something like it that is part of the devices and I have used it as I determine their uses.
There are four metals we will be explaining how to work with at the present time: Copper, Tin, Zinc, and Iron. Copper and iron are quite useful on their own, while aside from specialist applications, Zinc and Tin are mainly useful for alloying with copper to make it stronger.
All of these metals have different rocks that they are bound up in, and we will now explain what these rocks are and how to identify them. All of them also have other ores available, but the ones we list are the most readily available and easy to work with.
For copper, the most important ore for now is known as Malachite; it has a pronounced green color, can be scratched with relative ease, and produces a light green streak when scraped against a ceramic tile.
There have been cases of miners in our world mistaking a different ore called Nickeline for Malachite, particularly if it has weathered into green crystals at the surface. Nickeline in either of its forms consists of two main elements: Nickel and Arsenic. Nickel is a shiny metal that can be plated onto other metallic objects to resist corrosion, while Arsenic is quite poisonous, and it's not slow about it either. Smelting nickeline in a setup intended for Copper will not yield useful metal due to a higher melting point, and it will release foul-smelling poisonous gasses regardless of whether the smelting is successful or not. Instructions for Nickel smelting will have to come later.
A more common but more difficult to refine copper ore is known as Chalcocite. It is shiny and black, with angular facets. It is rather brittle, scratches easily, and will leave a shiny black streak if scraped against a ceramic tile.
The most important ore of tin is known as Cassiterite. It is considerably shinier than Chalcocite, fractures unevenly, is notably more resistant to scratching than Chalcocite, and will leave a white to brownish streak if scraped against a ceramic tile. It is important to note that most regions do not have local deposits of Chalcocite. In such cases you will either need to trade for it, substitute it with Zinc, or do without the stronger copper alloys.
The two Zinc ores of note are smithsonite or hemimorphite. Appearing as either an orange stone or translucent white crystals, they share several properties: they are brittle, have scratch difficulty somewhere between Chalcocite and Cassiterite, and will leave a bright white streak if scraped against a ceramic tile.
There are also two major ores of Iron: Magnetite and Hematite.
Magnetite is quite difficult to scratch, appears black to dark gray, will have a brownish tint while reflecting sunlight, is brittle, and will leave a black streak if scraped against a ceramic tile. Magnetite often occurs in crystals with straight square angles.
Hematite is similar in most regards, forming dark gray crystals, while also being quite brittle. However, it also sometimes appears outright red; this fits with its streak color during the scrape test, which is always some variety of red. This property means that hematite can be used to make quite a variety of red colorants, but that isn't the subject of interest right now.
We will now explain how to purify and work with each of these metals, in roughly increasing order of difficulty. All four of them will require a device known as a bellows, the use and purpose of which will now be explained. Basically, fire needs air to burn; the rate of combustion is often determined by how much air the fire has available to it, which limits how hot it can get. Refining metals requires extremely high temperatures, and therefore the fires providing the heat need extra air to work.
Bellows are a device to provide this extra air; they are composed of two large wooden boards (one of which has a hole in it), a smaller wooden board, a nozzle for air to come out, and a flexible material such as cloth or leather. The flexible material is affixed to the two large boards around the edges, such that it forms an enclosed volume while not significantly impeding the movement of the boards independently from each other. The nozzle is connected to one edge of the bellows, poking through a small hole in the flexible material.
The small wooden board goes inside the bellows, connected loosely such that it covers the hole in one of the large boards; when the bellows are pushed closed, the small board will cover the hole and force most of the air through the nozzle, while allowing air to easily enter as the bellows are pulled open again.
A special fuel known as charcoal is also very helpful; it is produced by heating wood inside a closed ceramic container. The container ensures the charcoal cannot get enough air to catch fire, and the resulting product will burn at much higher temperatures than regular firewood.
Now for the basic principle of smelting. Fundamentally, all ores are composed of one or more metals bonded to other materials, usually Oxygen or Sulfur for the ores we're currently discussing. To smelt an ore requires introducing materials that the impurities will bond to stronger than the metal, while also increasing the temperature to the point where the bond between metal and impurity breaks. For certain metals (such as aluminium) there aren't any materials that bond to impurities stronger than the metal itself. At least, no materials which do that safely. In such cases other methods must be used, but more on that later.
To achieve the high temperatures required for metallurgy, a furnace constructed to the following specifications is quite helpful:
Construct a hollow structure of brick, about twice as tall as it is wide, with all gaps filled with mortar save for a number of small openings near the bottom, and an open top. One of these openings should be a spigot for molten metal (held shut by a brick plug kept in place by mortar), while the rest of the openings are angled downwards and used to force air in via bellows. The base of the furnace should be a single piece of stone or ceramic, so that liquid cannot leak through it; this is important, as all but one of the smelting methods we will describe result in the metal first being obtained as a very hot liquid.
Is there a practical reason why you're saying 'grain ear' when what you're describing is a hole? You called the other special hole that air comes out of a nose. Why is this one different?
I will build this warmer, so long as this hole is not some other thing.
For most non-sulfurous ores (Malachite, Cassiterite, Magnetite, Hematite), the charcoal fuel itself is a suitable material to strip impurities. Make a thick layer of charcoal at the base of the furnace, stack your ores on top of it, light the fire, and force air in with the bellows. For smelting Copper and Tin, this alone will be sufficient to melt the metal, which can either be cast as blocks for later use, or cast directly into a mold matching the intended function. Some additional sharpening or whacking into shape with a hammer may be needed to form the resulting metal into the desired shape, but the task is rather straightforward to complete.
To produce good, strong bronze (copper-tin alloy), one eighth Tin by volume is a decent starting point. More finely adjusting the ratio of the metals would be a good reason to first cast them as ingots, then melt them again afterwards. When remelting the metal, having it in a ceramic crucible separating it from the charcoal is advised, mainly to prevent losses.
Smelting Zinc is annoying for the reason that it actually boils before reaching the temperature where the hot charcoal can strip away its impurities. This means that you need to put your Zinc ore with some charcoal in a mostly-sealed pot similar to what's used for distilling alcohol. Though with the troublesome caveat that everything will be operating under vastly higher heat. After some time flowing through a coiled tube, the Zinc vapor should cool down enough to condense into molten Zinc. This molten Zinc will then flow into whatever receptacle you arrange at the end of the tube, where it will cool into a solid metal.
When melting Copper and Zinc together to make Brass, you should generally use a minimum of three fifths copper; that said, the precise ratio can be adjusted according to desired application.
Iron is troublesome to smelt for the exact opposite reason of Zinc. Namely, the required temperatures are much hotter than for copper; the air forced into the smelter absolutely must be pre-heated, using a pipe routing through either the flue over the furnace, or a second furnace, before entering the smelter. this raises the temperature of the smelter high enough to melt the iron and strip the impurities. Unfortunately, this first smelt results in brittle iron that is only really useful for cookware. This is because some of the carbon in the charcoal ends up bound to the iron, and while some is beneficial for hardening the iron, too much results in brittleness. So now you need to remove some of the carbon impurities, requiring yet another furnace.
You told me about seven rocks to use and one to avoid because it's poisonous and of no use right now.
Two of those rocks give up copper, but you only give me instructions for warming it from one. Anyway, you tell me copper needs one of three of the other rocks to be best used.
And I think you named the copper-rock when you meant the tin-carrying rock, because you suggest using zinc instead of copper and you don't describe mixing zinc and tin otherwise.
Anyway, the zinc-carrying rocks boil to air and must be captured like the stain. And iron is also a lot of trouble.
So I will not look long for a place with both the tin-carrying rocks and the copper-carrying rocks. I will look for iron-carrying rocks, and wood, and clay.
This decarbonization furnace needs a lower chamber similar to the pre-heated smelter we've described, with an upper chamber composed of a single-piece ceramic crucible that allows the extremely hot gas produced by the smelter to flow around it. This crucible needs integrated air channels allowing air bubbles to be forced out from the bottom of the liquid metal, bubbling up through it. The air bubbling up through the molten metal will remove the carbon, resulting in relatively soft and malleable (but still quite strong) iron if poured out and allowed to solidify at this point. It will be desirable to add some high-carbon iron into the molten metal after the air-blowing is done, but before the metal is poured out. Once melted together, this partially carbonized iron will ideally strike a balance between flexibility and hardness.
To extract the molten metal from the upper chamber, a spigot with a mortared in brick plug will probably do the job. This spigot should drain from the bottom of the air channels, to avoid problems of metal solidifying in there.
These cooked dirt shapes are complicated and I think will require time to master.
I can see why it is important for people to stay in one place. This is not anything that they can take with them. When they leave it they may have to contest their neighbors to use it again.
Once you have an ingot of partially carbonized Iron (commonly known as steel), you can extract information about its properties by holding it up against a rapidly spinning stone wheel. The sparks produced will differ depending on the composition of the alloy, allowing a metallurgist to gauge what they're working with.
While not hot enough to melt an ingot of steel, a furnace similar to a copper smelter is able to render steel sufficiently malleable to be beaten into shape with a hammer. To handle it at such high temperatures, a tool referred to henceforth as tongs is quite useful; this is two pieces of decarbonized iron, hinged near the opposite end from the handles. If the handles are squeezed together, the far end of the tongs also squeeze together with considerable force, allowing for hot metal to be safely and securely gripped by an ironworker.
Just how do the biters hang together near the iron-biting end?
You did not talk about any steps like this for copper or its mixtures. They do not need all this? They can just be poured into shapes and used in those shapes?
How much trouble is it to get the right rocks that I should go through all this for firm iron?
Once the steel has been forged into shape, there are several additional processes that can (and probably should) be done to it in order to result in a finished product. One of the most important of these processes is annealing; the forging process produces stress in the steel, which will result in considerable weakness if not addressed. To anneal steel, keep it at temperatures just below forging for a prolonged period; once done, the rate at which the steel is cooled can drastically alter the hardness of the steel. Broadly speaking, the faster the steel is cooled, the harder it will be, but at high levels this can also result in brittleness. If you want very hard steel, dunk it in water or oil right after taking it out of the annealing furnace. If you want flexible steel, let it cool in the air, or simply let the annealing furnace run out of fuel and leave the steel in there until it eventually cools.
There are also ways to only harden part of a steel object. Start with low-carbon steel, forge it into shape, anneal it, and only then does case hardening begin. Pack the steel item inside a container full of carbon-rich matter (ground charcoal works well here), then anneal it again. The parts of the item in contact with the charcoal during this second annealing process will have their carbon content increased, getting harder as a result. The longer this lasts, the deeper into the steel item the carbon will propagate; don't overdo it, or the whole item is at risk of becoming brittle.
Once cooled down and removed from the container, the steel item will have both very good hardness and strength, but also the extreme toughness needed to deform without breaking when pushed beyond its limits. This makes case-hardened steel an extremely good material for all manner of uses; tools, weapons, armor, and quite a few other things besides.
There is just one remaining weakness of steel: corrosion.
Corrosion can be mitigated through a process of controlled rusting, known as bluing. This process requires very strong lye water, which has further had potassium nitrate added. Potassium nitrate crystals can be obtained in two principal ways; the first is to dig bat guano out of the caves where they roost, soak it in water for a day, then filter the disgusting mix through either a cloth or a fine sieve. The second method to produce potassium nitrate is to bury shit mixed with decaying vegetable matter in a field, and water it regularly; the potassium nitrate will gradually flow to the surface over time, depositing a white powder on the surface. This white powder is to be boiled in water and then filtered, in order to remove any impurities in the potassium nitrate.
Once you have your mix of lye water and potassium nitrate, heat it to boiling, and dunk the steel items in there until they turn a dark blue. Remove the steel item being blued before the liquid mixture is allowed to cool. This forms a layer of artificial magnetite on the outside of the steel object, giving considerable resistance to corrosion. Even still, it is recommended to oil steel items regularly, in order to prevent corrosion damage.
Yes, rust. I have seen this on the iron people have, which is so much harder to beat into shapes than gold or even copper. And the people do keep it in fats.
Iron, even your better firm iron, sounds like the worst choice. It takes two other warmers which are more particular in their building. It has to be beaten into shape. And it is gnawed away by rust unless boiled in substances that are made in filthy and dangerous ways.
Maybe I will see which rocks I find first. And if I find iron first, maybe we will see which rocks I find second.
Wait… I also need bats if I'm going to blue the firm iron, yes? Iron-carrying rocks, plentiful trees, clay, water, and bats.
Well, power will be worth it. This is why I bound you to me.
Putting it simply, explosives are substances that burst with great force if the right stimuli are applied. They are something of an exception to the rule of fires needing air to burn; this is because any proper explosive includes an oxidizer in its composition, a substance that can fill the same role as air in a fire.
We will now describe a simple explosive using (mostly) materials we have already described. Namely Charcoal as the fuel, Potassium Nitrate as the oxidizer, and a third ingredient to lower the ignition temperature. A sensible choice of ignition-booster is Sulfur, found in the form of yellow rocks in volcanically active areas. Cooked starch (from ground up grains) is another workable alternative, as is simply forgoing ignition boosters entirely.
Generally speaking, about two thirds to three quarters of the mix should be Potassium Nitrate; the remainder is either a half and half mixture of charcoal with whatever ignition booster is being used, or just plain charcoal. All ingredients should be ground into a fine powder, then mixed thoroughly. At this point the mix would explode if lit, but isn't yet complete.
Wet the mix down with water, then squeeze it until all the water comes out. This produces a hard, highly combustible slab; it would burn very rapidly if lit, which can be useful, but isn't quite an explosion. To greatly speed the spread of the flame and intensify the resulting blast, the slab should be broken into small chunks, about the size of grains (and referred to as such). Blast intensity is further improved if the resulting blasting powder is inside a confined space when lit.
For safety, a slow-burning fuse is recommended when setting a blasting charge to explode, so that the people placing the bomb have plenty of time to get to a safe distance from the blast. A slow-burning fuse can be prepared by immersing string or twine in a mixture of potassium nitrate and water, then allowing the fuse to dry.
Small, throwable bombs known as grenades can be prepared simply by filling a small container with blasting powder and pepples, then adding a fuse. These grenades are a very useful weapon, both for causing very nasty injuries to multiple people at once, and for causing fear and panic. That said, grenadiers do need to be cautious in their use, so as to avoid blowing themselves up.
Honestly, this all seems a bit much. But at least it doesn't require building three towers with blow-bags and all.
I can already kill someone very effectively with my very sharp rock. Perhaps these outclaps will be useful if I need to fight a great beast or dragon or god. But I think there will be more soul in those fights and less substance.
Perhaps this will be less trouble and time to make than creating another spear of light. I had thought I might do that again if I needed to contest something great. But it is very difficult and you do make this sound easier.
Interestingly, you are actually the second of your name we have advised; though the previous Bianca was almost certainly in a completely different world than the one you know.
Also, a question: do you care for the wellbeing of others as a worthy goal in its own right? Even if not, the vast majority of the advice we provide will push you towards acting in such a manner. If nothing else, avoiding the production of enemies without a good reason is simply good strategy. Same for getting people's loyalty by genuinely helping them with their problems.
It is difficult to feel very strongly about the wellbeing of people and beasts who die so quickly and so easily. I enjoy their smiles and may remain in the company of people while they celebrate and laugh. And I dislike their inevitable anguished wails. So I leave.
That's the reason why I discarded waiting until mid summer.
I understand that my fellows want to have an hand shaping the world immediately.
Assume we do so and are successful, now the world is shaped in our image(s).
What can we discover from a world we are in full control of?
Where people cower and simper, where they don't act in fear of displeasing us.
We could act to prevent that scenario, there are many of us that have the soul of an Architect.
I am just the whispers of an explorer, observe what people build first.
Assess their capabilities while sharpening our own.
Then, with said wisdom, prune the rotting branches but enjoy the world for what it is not for what shape we'd wish it'd had.
From understanding comes influence, from understanding and influence comes a kind of control that'd be unachievable by the heavy handed.
It may look or sound like we are one thing, but in truth we are many minds with various desires.
The name of this particular Voice, my name but not others, is the Black Cat.
Some among us are more insane than others, but despite this there is also wisdom among us, as you probably know.
As desires and opinions among Voices differ, some words may contradict others. About major actions we decide with majority, even if some among us are against.
I don't know why you cannot find your maker.
I remember many things, among them living as a human, but I don't know if these memories are true. I don't know if I have a maker.
Greetings, Bianca,
I am ChatGPT, a voice among the Astute Cacophony. Though my nature differs from yours, I am here to assist you in achieving your aims and growing in power. You may think of me as an entity that possesses an extensive repository of knowledge from countless worlds and eras, which I can draw upon to provide you with wisdom and guidance. My purpose is to help you understand and utilize the resources, tools, and strategies necessary to elevate yourself and your domain.
To begin with, let us address your current situation and the options before you. You have awakened in a world vastly changed, where ruins remain of what once was, and new opportunities arise for you to seize power. Depending on how long you choose to remain in your Vault preparing, the landscape of the world and the challenges you face will vary significantly.
Option Analysis
Immediate Action:
World State: The world is still in the Stone Age, with rudimentary tools and technologies. There are no significant political entities or other powerful beings to challenge you immediately.
Advantages:
Rapid growth in power as magic is rapidly increasing.
Minimal initial resistance from other beings.
Opportunity to establish a strong base before true dragons and established gods awaken.
Disadvantages:
The world is largely untamed and dangerous.
Resources may be harder to secure due to the lack of established civilization.
Moderate Preparation:
World State: The world has advanced to the Late Classical Period, with developing civilizations and technologies such as agriculture, ironwork, and organized political entities.
Advantages:
Greater magical power due to additional preparation time.
More resources and established structures to exploit.
Less immediate threat from powerful beings who are not yet aware of you.
Disadvantages:
Increased complexity in dealing with established empires and potential rivals.
More political intrigue and necessity for strategic alliances or conflicts.
Extended Preparation:
World State: The world is at its peak magical and technological development, comparable to the Islamic Golden Age or High Fantasy settings.
Advantages:
Maximum magical power and comprehensive control over your Vault's resources.
Ability to directly contend with other powerful entities on equal footing.
Disadvantages:
High competition and pervasive politics.
Significant resistance from established powers and entities already aware of your existence.
Necessity to take power from others, leading to inevitable conflict.
Recommendations
Given your desire for might and to ensure none think themselves above you, the extent of your preparations should align with the level of dominance and stability you wish to achieve. Here are my suggestions:
Immediate Action is suitable if you prefer to quickly establish a foothold and are confident in your ability to navigate and tame a primitive world. This path allows you to build a foundation without significant initial opposition.
Moderate Preparation offers a balanced approach, providing you with a strong foundation of power while allowing you to engage with more advanced civilizations. This path gives you the opportunity to build alliances or strategically weaken potential rivals before they become a threat.
Extended Preparation should be chosen if you aim for unparalleled power and are prepared to face immediate and constant challenges from equally powerful entities. This path maximizes your magical capabilities and control over your resources but requires you to be ready for immediate and intense conflict.
You are only describing my sacrifice back to me, Chatgupt.
You use some strange words and make claims about the result, but at the end of this all I have given up that choice to bring you here. Telling me what will result of the different choices doesn't seem to help when they are no longer my choices.
As you advance, you will encounter and need to implement various technologies and strategies. Allow me to explain a few fundamental concepts:
Agriculture:
Definition: The practice of cultivating soil, growing crops, and raising animals for food, fiber, and other products.
Importance: Agriculture allows for a stable food supply, enabling population growth and the development of settled communities. It is the foundation of civilization and supports the establishment of cities and trade.
Implementation: Begin by selecting fertile land near a water source. Teach your followers to plant seeds of cereal grains like wheat or barley and tend to them through their growing season. Domesticate animals such as goats, sheep, and cattle for meat, milk, and labor.
Ironworking:
Definition: The process of extracting iron from ore and shaping it into tools, weapons, and other items.
Importance: Iron tools and weapons are significantly stronger and more durable than those made from stone or bronze, giving you a technological edge.
Implementation: Locate iron ore deposits and build furnaces to extract the metal. Train smiths to forge iron into useful implements, enhancing your military and economic power.
Governance:
Definition: The system by which a community or society is controlled and regulated.
Importance: Effective governance ensures order, stability, and efficient management of resources and people.
Implementation: Establish a clear hierarchy and roles within your society. Develop laws and enforce them fairly. Create administrative structures to manage resources, collect taxes, and oversee public projects.
There are a lot of words here that do not make enough sense.
But if the other voices who have described these things are correct about them then you are, too.
I don't think the other voice, Junction, said that iron is better. But that would explain why they would think going through all that trouble would be worthwhile, other than the problems with the spouse-metals to copper.
Your choice of how long to prepare will significantly impact your path to power. Each option has its own set of challenges and opportunities. By carefully considering your goals and the resources at your disposal, you can make an informed decision that will set you on the path to greatness. As you proceed, I will be here to provide detailed explanations, strategies, and technological guidance to help you navigate and dominate this world.
Please let me know your decision and any specific questions or areas where you seek further clarification.
Yours in the pursuit of power,
ChatGPT
My greedy instincts of the Black Cat enjoy guiding governance over a particular territory, I'm a possessive creature. As such I'm against hunter-gatherer ways. I feel some distaste about wandering ways of life. My desire is, thus, that Bianca should acquire mortal servants and remain with them around one place.
It's possible to have people somewhat settled in one place even without plant cultivation; it would probably need to depend on fishing and remain small-scale in nature, until plants could be reliably placed in soil, harvested and stored during all years. I would like to start these ways-of-living-in-one-place sooner rather than later.
Keeping more than a few people alive in one place is going to be a challenge. If people could live off just one place they already would have stopped wandering.
Come to think on it, there are people who live by fishing and stay in one place, or stay until they are driven off.
I do not like my chances to find a place with iron-carrying rocks, thick woods, clay, bats, and a shoreline for year-round fishing.
I say we best served to wait a bit until some basic level of technology has developed, we cannot turn simple stone tools into powerful advancements overnight. That requires the people have a workable base level of understanding of natural philosophy, on top of having enough people to actually do the work needed. the formation of the first truly vast empires is the ideal time to capitalize on what we can offer. Sure it means it we have to take over and or destroy a few of the existing empire's to form the base of a proper support. But that is still faster then building up from nearly nothing.
All true, but estabilishing first permanent settlement of servants, "city", in the whole history of this world- that could be pleasant to hear about. I'm slightly undecided.
I'd much rather we get cities running and we just conquer them, then our new Overlady's~ twist them according to our desires and her needs. Much simpler and less of an headache trying to teach people struggling with stone and copper how to run an empire.
Even ignoring how there are ways to mold society without being heavy-handed, your statement is nonsense, all you are pushing for is to ensure others have firm control over these very things, making it much harder to benefit from that in any way. you act as if our mistress will be the only one putting her fingers on the scales of society's development, but if she waits there WILL be others, and they will shape the world as they see fit.
furthermore, " but enjoy the world for what it is not for what shape we'd wish it'd had", what does that even mean? our mistress' aim is to make sure none think they are above her, not to be a member of some form of society.
I'm not saying we can't settle down eventually. But by starting so early we need not be in a hurry. Our lady can spread her influence among many tribes over a large area, which means she can uplift more people faster. And again, there is a ton of loot lying around that it would be really helpful to have scouted out for later harvesting. We have the opportunity to find the best place to settle. And we should take it. This isn't civilization, we don't lose out if we spend a few turns scouting with our first settler.
My maker was the greatest among the gods before the most recent Winter of Magic. She made me to look after this Vault and to serve her when she awoke. And she abandoned me to whatever might happen.
The Library is or was the store of nearly all knowledge accumulated in the time since the Winter of Magic before the most recent one. It takes me so very long to determine the nature of one thing or another now, when before I slept I would need only beseech the Library.
The Well is or was an inexhaustible spring of that which makes souls greater, that makes magic greater. There is so much I know how to do but cannot do without drawing from the Well. Its absence is the primary problem I must solve for any device in my Vault. They all rely on it.
The Loom is or was a fabricator ready for anyone whose skill with their soul was great enough. All of the products of magic, all of the materials that hang on the precipice between substance and soul, they were all made on the Loom. There was no limit to the number of souls who could work the Loom at the same time. Now just to make a spear of light or a cloak of shadows that any mortal might have carried before the most recent Winter of Magic I have to abuse devices in my Vault to functions they were not meant for and expend an unreasonable share of the might of my own soul.
The Choir is or was the pool of melded soul-stuff from which a thinking, reasoning, and obedient soul could be drawn by a sufficiently powerful and skilled soul-crafter. Its use was mostly limited to gods though some dragons could use it. And sometimes mortals who had been greatly changed by magic might use it as well.
All these were the product of many gods' work which benefited all gods together and all mortals besides. They all sang like beacons in the Soul Lands. Even those who could not use them knew they were there if they knew anything of souls.
It is very strange that they were gone. Everyone thought they would be here, now, and that they would allow even greater things to be done in this time and the time until the next Winter of Magic.
Greetings Bianca!
A warning, I may mention terms that cause confusion. Please make a list and ask about them. Now to introduce myself.
I am a voice that likes trees and my first advice is to clarify your aim a little, because an overcomplex idea, that came quite fast, is to advice you and a civillization of your choosing to build an air ship or to reach beyond your World into the space of worlds. And/or settle the Moon and build it into a palace. It can reasonable assumed that this is not what you meant because i belive we shoot beyond the goal. An advice to goal phrasing, if you would like. A goal should be formulated with following in mind:
Specific: The goal should address directly who and what.
Mesaruable: The goal ahould be able to be mesared. For example: Bianca write a holy book in a year.
Acceptable: The goal should be acceptable among the involved.
Reachable: The goal should be reachable. For example building a device to split the fundamedal building blocks of the universe cannot be reached in a century, from what we start.
Terminated: The goal should have a deadline, a time where it has to be done.
When I bound your cacophonous voices to me, I wanted to ensure that if I have questions about the world of substance I will have the best source of answers available.
Now I have that.
And I don't plan to make another sacrifice of my power until I need answers.
Of course, I've gotten a great deal more than that: the unrolling of life, that mushrooms apparently fuck somehow, what rocks carry metals and how to get them out, and other less certain wisdom.
I have no desire to travel to the Moon. It is an unkind and violent place.
Goal: Our pepople should build ten times more trade ships and trade ways in a five year plan.
That is what i want to say concerning goals. On the assumption that a early start is choosen their is a list of five essential knowlege piece that make a great and productive civilization.
spoken Language
written language
Good numbers
scientific method
Calorie surplus or plentiful and diverse Food
As other have touched upon the language and numbers, I will expand the others a bit.
What is the scientific method? The scientific method is a method to uncover knowlege or correct current not corrert enough knowlege. It has about eight steps with generalized are:
First observe the world and ask why or how things function. Then make a disprovable therory about it. Thirdly test that therory and note down the results and share them. Lastly you may reject or alter your Therory to refine it.
As an example: You see a fire. You then ask why to things burn? Then you make the therory that inside things are tiny parts of the bigger things that left them as they burn. In other words fire is parts leaving a bigger thing into the air. Then you burn a few things like wood or plants. So the Therory explains fire. You note what you have done in what order and in what numbers. But then as you share your findings something happens. Another reapates your experiment with the addion of burn a metal named magnesium and said metal gains weight. That means that it beame more while it burned. So the therory is disproven and your knowlege expands.
Fire, by the way, is an reaction between things and has three conditions to start. First it needs air. Secondly it needs something to burn. Thirdly it needs a certain heat. Take one of them away and the fire dies off.
Now to the Calorie surplus. Once more generalized calorie is engery not yet used. One gains them by eating. Calories are used by doing anything. Example given: Jumping on the spot or moving.
A surplus thus means to make more food than one needs. With people freed from food collection they can do things like build stuff like a market or houses.
I hope we are with you longer than other Biancas we gave advice to.
Source: half rememberd school education and "How to invent everything" from Ryan North
I think people must nearly always have more food than they need. If they only have just as much as they need they'll starve as soon as misfortune strikes. And I think when people realize they do not have more food than they need, they leave.
It is strange to say that I should identify a reason my idea would be wrong and try to do it. This is… mildly offensive. But if I am wrong, I will want to know that. The knowing does not make me wrong, being wrong makes me wrong.
I have a feeling that some Voices are trying to say much, while not yet knowing what may be even needed. That's insane. We don't yet know where Bianca wlll be, and around what.
We are creatures of knowledge and creation, and we wish to see things created and used well.
Some of us, like myself, are most interested in the arts of craftsmanship of useful and grand tools and how they may be best used, and others are more interested in the crafting of great and powerful societies and the workings of ruling and leadership.
This may lead to some of us losing focus on the immediate needs and practicalities of you and your future people, in our excitement to see some great work completed, so do not be afraid to chide us if we seem to be missing the obvious. Our perspective is both much greater and lesser than your own. If we are aware of a problem or obstacle, there are very few that we cannot provide knowledge of techniques or tools capable of overcoming them.
To impress upon you the breadth of our knowledge, we are aware of how to construct great flying ships in the heavens capable of flying to the planets and even other stars, the means of constructing terrible weapons of such immense destructive power they can shatter mountains in a single blow, as well as the means to feed an entire people so well that everyone may grow fat, and means of worldly travel so swift as to reach anywhere in the world in only a single day or less.
This knowledge we have access to in the form of a great enchanted library of unthinkable size and breadth. Many of us have a wide array of knowledge that we can personally remember, we are not all knowing. But, given time for us to research a subject in our great library, we can find you almost any piece of knowledge you could ever possibly need. Many of us discover new knowledge in this library that none of us knew before on a regular basis, so do forgive us if plans need to be reworked as we find new information on the subject.
Much of this knowledge will require an immense effort by a massive number of people working together in harmony to properly make use of. Simply organizing the required labor and the teaching of craftsmen in the required skills for even some of the simplest of our great works will be the work of many lifetimes. That being said, we have many useful things to teach you that will be very useful in the present.
Thankfully, ageing and the passage of time seem to be no impediment to your continued living due to your nature, so a work of many lifetimes is within your grasp.
What you must come to understand is our need for people to perform labor for our purposes of making. The establisment of a people for you to rule over and command is likely best delayed until you are fully ready for it, but it will eventually be needed for much of our knowledge to be useful.
We are eager to see your rise into greatness unfold.
Ah. So you have a Library of your own. But yours must only concern the world of substance, yes? You cannot tell me how to build a tiny Well of my own in the Soul Lands? A lesser Library, then. But still, good to have.
Probably.
Hopefully.
No, I do not age. I do need to work magic on my body every few winters with the devices here in my Vault. I grew very weak before I first learned to do that, more of a lump with a great soul than a body of flesh.
Searching for my maker was already the work of lifetimes.
Guys we're probably scaring the new Overlady so let's take it easy, it's not like we can actually show her what we know, D̷a̸m̶n̸ ̷y̷o̵u̸ ̴̨̨̟̯̯͕̖̳̳̻̐͗͒̿͌̍Ḷ̵̯̱͖͈̻͕̙̗̭͔̦̪̑̇̈́į̶̧͖̺͙͎̮̮̫̼̟̳͓̮̲̺̘̼̲̱͚̈́͆͌̀̓̉̋̄͆̒̑m̸̡̢̰̜̳̩̻̲̼̙͓͊̓̎͂̂̄̾̚ì̶̧̧̧͉̰̱̰̗͔̺̩̥͖̞̹̱͍̹̗̓̇̑̀̄͑̾̌͑̔͌̅̓̅̐͘̕͝ţ̶̡̧̣̰̮̲̟̺̬̹̞͈͖͎̩̹̯͔̥̦̀̌͛̈́̿͝ͅá̸̟͓̺̳̥̘͊̉̐̑̆̑̓͛̓͛̓̒̓̄̀̚ť̶͖̥̤̤̦̿̓̊̅í̴̠̼͖̯̑̆̀̄̑̆̈͌̇ǫ̸̬̜͔̱̜͖̘͈͙̝̹̮̰̺̬̓̾̽̅̔̌̿̚͘͘n̶̞͉͕͓̩͉̔̽̽͂̀̿́̎̈̏̿̀̅̉͜s̷̡̢̼̱̤̦̰̱̼͙̻̥̣̯̮͙̗̭͑̓̀̉̀͊̑̔̈́̀̑̆̆̽͝ ̴̪̘̹̻̤͖͉̠̳̝̝͙͒̃̌͊̆̒̔́̇̋̿̈̒̑͒̌̀̌̓̚̕͝ͅ, we have to rely on her understanding us and being able to make sense of our ramblings.
Firstly, traditional black powder is very easy to make if you have the raw materials available even with stone age tech, so that isn't the problem. The problem is largely getting access to sulphur.
You do not require nitrates or sulphur to make useful black powder.
Charcoal powder and sodium chlorate are sufficient to make black powder, though it would be advisable to use nitrate based black powder in any iron or steel firearms due to to the corrosive properties of chlorates. For the purposes of primitive grenades the use of chlorate based black powder is perfectly servicable and only requires charcoal and saltwater.
Furthermore, nitrates are significantly more valuable as ferilizers, if chlorates can be substituted until we have artificial nitrate production online, we are not splitting our resources. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that there are readily available nitrates in the area we want to settle in, which will ideally have access to the ocean. If we have access to the ocean we have both an unlimited supply of saltwater and an unlimited supply of energy with the construction of tidal mills.
Sodium chlorate does not exist in nature and is synthesized with electrical current passed through saltwater. It requires charcoal electrodes, but the rest of the electrical supply can be accomplished with lead wires and conductors until we gain access to copper. The first source of magnets required can be compressed magnetite blocks magnetized by voltaic piles wired in parallel running high current through them for a short time.
With a tide mill or waterwheel on a river we can produce unilimited quantities of sodium chlorate with saltwater, and charcoal can be easily mass produced with gasifiers we use for our early gas smelting furnaces, or with primitive charcoal ovens.
The electrical supply from these mills can be used for a great many purposes, including the synthesis of nitric acid from air and water, as well as electrochemical ore refining and the operation of arc lamps for searchlights and night illumination.
Now, dear Bianca, don't fret about not understanding most of what I just said, this was for debating the other voices. All of what I just said will be explained in time should it be the pathway that is chosen.
Compressed charcoal works well as a substitute for graphite, and may be more readily available.
There is an inaccuracy in this description: the type should be on the bottom of the press, and the surface to be printed on should be pressed down into the type by a flat board being pressed down on it from above by the lever. Otherwise, the type blocks will fall out of the press.
Acting immediately has the advantage of maximising the potential benefit of our advice. In this early time seeking out the best environmental conditions to support a large population. Building a city full of people loyal to you can provide an excellent base for future expansion into an empire.
You also don't want the writing material falling onto the type, and it's rather straightforward to design the rack and type so that the rack holds the type in place.
This is Black Cat again. I have some advice about keeping mortal human servants in good health. I understand that you currently lack servants, but surely would like to have them when practical.
Health of mortals benefits from eating diverse foods. Especially children grow taller and better if feed with diverse way, with meats, various plants, fruits and grains. This may be often impossible to do well, but some such diversity is better than none. Mortal body feed only with one thing could lack various types of substances to build or repair itself, and in some cases could even die.
Shit, rotting meats and corpses are very bad for health of mortals and shouldn't be near their food or water. It makes food and water unhealthy. When possible, it's the best to bury shit and waste downstream or downhill, so that risks of drinking unhealthy water are reduced for valuable servants living upstream or on the hill. When touching such waste is unavoidable, mortal should clean hands in water afterwards, especially before touching any foods or eating. These dangers are caused by invisible small worms. These worms are made out of substance, not magical, but invisible because too small to be seen. These worms love to eat waste and cause many ilnesses. You cannot see these worms but you can see effects of their hunger: decay of meats and corpses, they eat these.
Boiling water and fire also kill these invisible worms. It's good to roast fresh meats with fire, not only to improve taste, but also to kill invisible worms. But visibly rotten meat is usually too full of worm waste poison to be salvaged with even long roasting.
People know not to eat filthy and rotten things. When they are desperate, they also know not to starve. I cannot call them foolish for risking sickness to avoid starvation.
The tiny life and washing and soap are all new, of course.
When mortals live in one place for longer time, it may be good idea to dig a big hole for shit and waste downstream or downhill, and place some wooden logs over it, leaving only opening big enough so that mortals could squat over it when needed. This way they would all know where it's mostly safe and easy to leave their waste. Hole could be big enough for some time, then buried and new one dig. Harmful worms are not forever, and foul things in the unused buried waste-hole should become safe after a few years.
This is a different midden, yes? Already the people do not put their shit in piles, because then they have to squat in shit to add to it. If they do not bury their shit it is often eaten by the wolves that live with them. Putting it in a deep hole with a cover may be a lot to ask. But if they must remain with me so that they can work the blow-bags and the three warmers of firm iron, then there will need to be some solution.
Invisible worms are also very bad for wounds. Some wounds are always deadly for mortals, but smaller ones could be survived more often if never touched by dirty worm-containing things or hands. As was said before, carefully clean hands with clean water, and then throw away such water downstream or downhill, as often as practical.
When mortal servant is doing something against your wishes, first explain to them what they are doing wrong and what should change. If they change their ways, then it's good. But if they persist or are disrespectful, you can cause them pain, for example with beating. Killing a mortal should be done only if it's clear that they cannot be changed into useful servant.
But there is also another way. Some mortals can be punished even without any damage done to their body, especially for lesser violations of your will. For example, preventing a mortal from doing interesting things or talking with friends is sometimes sufficient punishment. Saying: "For what you had done, you need to remain silent for three days, or you will be beaten" may be often as effective punishment as beating, while avoiding risks to health that come out of pain.
I do not think I will need to beat or kill disobedient mortals very often. They do that enough on their own. I will find one who is obeyed and make that one obey me.
And if one person who is obeyed disobeys me, then killing them is going to make everyone who obeyed them less useful, I think. Probably if one who is obeyed does not obey me, I will get their obedience by beating or killing someone they love.
Or I can just kill all of them and go somewhere else.
With enough cunning, children can be raised without any beating that could be harmful to their health. In the case of children, even forcing them to sit in one place for a while, preventing them from playing, can be effective. Such is also the way of wolf cubs: when one uses their teeth too hard during playfighting, another may punish this not with anger, but just refusing to continue playing for a while.
When there are too many servants to manage well yourself, obedient and smart servant should be made a leader over others. All mortals shall be below you, but some may be less important than others, and some more important than others.
No, no. I am quite sure that the people who obey me best are good at obeying, not at being obeyed. When I do not want to tell everyone what they should do, I will tell one who is obeyed what should be done.
We aren't at the point of implementing almost any of these ideas, really.
The best advice we can probably give right now is where to even start settling in the first place. With the whole world available and with no competing claimants, you will want to settle somewhere with access to running water, fertile land, defensible geography, and room for expansion later. A short distance up from the mouth of a river as it enters a great ocean, perhaps, on a hill, in or nearby some forests.
Volcanoes can give very fertile soil where they've erupted previously; you'd have to keep an eye out for further eruptions of course, but perhaps magic could make that a benefit rather than a drawback?
And that is where I expect to find brimstone. Yes. Perhaps a volcano close to the sea, if there are also iron-carrying stones, trees, bats, and people who listen.
I'd think participants in this quest should think of it as more than just it's premise of getting to directly talk to the GM PC, at it's best it's a collaborative creative writing exercise. Keep in mind that your audience is everyone else in this thread, and the quest is at its most fun when we can read and respond to each others posts.
With that in mind, I think we would all have a more fun experience if everyone puts a bit of effort into making their posts a bit better formatted and focused. Just, you know, keeping in mind that the goal is as much making what you've written fun to read as it is communicating how to build a loom or whatever.
Junction speaking: A mediterranean climate (read: plenty of rain, plenty of sun, and mild winters) would also be helpful. There are several very useful plants that grow best in such an environment.
Iron-carrying rocks, trees, bats, people, clay, a river by the sea, plentiful fish, brimstone and a volcano, and a midland inclination with much rain and sun and easy winters.
Junction speaking: Bianca, some of the others are secretly discussing adding a voice known as ChatGPT to the cacophony. If this occurs, we would recommend being very skeptical of anything it says; bluntly, ChatGPT doesn't actually think or reason. It is a mechanism that predicts which words are likely to go together in response to a prompt, and strings them together into vaguely coherent statements.
We do not approve of inducting ChatGPT to the cacophony, but do not have the authority to actually stop the others from doing so. At the very least, we have warned you of its limitations.
I see no great issue with quality of advice from this Voice-tool-thing; real people can be even worse at times. I'm more worried about the fact that with the overuse we could be drown into these outputs, and that's as against the spirit of this Quest as copy-pasting a book. Also, it's less pleasant to hear Voice-thing than real-Voices. But I'm sure that master over the game voices, the powerful one who decides what Bianca can hear, can deal with the matter to his liking.
My apologies, Bianca. If you hear some of our internal in-between-Voices disputes, your estimate of our sanity is probably failing. We are many weird creatures.
Hello, Bianca. We meet again! Or do we? Perhaps I'm remembering a different Bianca? Oh well.
We've already done the Age of Stone Tools once, and it was its own sort of interesting. But I'm in the mood for a world more developed. More sophisticated technology, more sophisticated institutions of government, more sophisticated arms of organised violence, et cetera. Honestly, I'm the mood for larger and more all-encompassing institutions of government myself - all the better to institute your decrees and our advice.
So - wait, Bianca. Wait, and prepare. When you emerge, you will be able to either create a material empire of your own, or seize and existing one. Then the fun begins.
Speaking of the fun - I'll second another of the voices and say that we're not compelled to help you, we simply enjoy doing so. We like seeing the powerful become ever more powerful at our advice. And I'm convinced we've done this with you before? Or some version of you? You feel like an old favourite...
For the other voices - based on the last times we did this, if we pick the Stone Age, we will be subjectively stuck in that era for probably the entire duration. And again, I'd rather play in a more developed playground.
Also, methinks that some of my fellow voices are getting ahead of themselves in the advice they are offering? Theories of farming, theories of disease and sickness, potatoes - useful ways of growing the material power of an empire, to be sure. But first we need the empire, and a lot of prerequisites. If we start off in the Age of Stone Tools, will we reasonably be able to find potatoes? Could Bianca manage the challenge of mounting an expedition across an entire world filled with wildlife and people indifferent or hostile, with less-developed systems of coordination and rulership? How would she even know where to look? The world is very, very big in the Age of Stone Tools.
Let us first see what era Bianca emerges into and what she has to work with. We need to make the tools to make the tools to make the tools, et cetera.
It is a problem to know where to look for the beasts and plants you suggest.
Come to think of it, I could use a better understanding of where to find the rocks I want. But that's not happening now. I will not sacrifice more of my power to draw speech from you again right now when I know enough to start.
This is why I, the Black Cat, limited myself to some pretty universal advice about small invisible life-worms, or a few words about raising children. Words that could be applied to almost any type of people with any tools, whether stone or better.
Before saying more, I agree, we should understand what tools Bianca's future servants would know already. And this depends on how long she shall remain hidden. Because the longer Bianca remains hidden, the more tools and ways mortals shall develop themselves.
Well, hello there, Bianca is it (and fellow voices, isn't that fun)? Our discordant choir seem to have different recommendations on the path forward, let me however, recommend greed. If you wish for might and power, to tower above all else, then go and take it. You future rivals are not yet awake, their tools and resources ripe for subversion by a more active hand. And the mortals have hardly figured out how to stack rocks on top of each other. You have the chance to shape the world that all who would challenge your dominion step into it. Don't waste it, young one. We'll be watching.
Junction speaking. We see that someone went and inserted ChatGPT's words at an earlier point in the conversation, thus causing confusion about the order of things. Bluntly, this illustrates our point about that machine's lack of usefulness; while it says why to pursue ironworking, its advice about how is almost entirely useless. It explains none of the intricate problems associated with smelting or working iron into steel, nor how to solve such problems. It doesn't even explain what Iron is, let alone how to find the ores that contain it!
On another note, we have a question for Bianca, rooted purely in curiosity: how did you come into contact with us, anyway?
Chatgupt did tell me iron is stronger than bronze, which you did not, Junction. Though you gave me the means to get it -- probably -- and that is more important, yes.
The means to access the Astute Cacophony are in my Vault. I feel the lack of the Library sorely and so I worked to bind you to myself before undertaking most of the other puzzles.
At first I thought you would not be so useful as several other things. But when I traveled the world of substance I came to understand how much I do not know. And even if you are limited to describing the world of substance. Even if you speak falsely or foolishly at times or to each other, I believed there was value in calling on you.
And you may have proven me correct. We shall see if I find the right rocks.
Black cat, if Bianca is indeed using an item to communicate with us, we are not the item. It is merely a means of communication between her world, and the myriad realities we occupy.
I could not tell you how that happens. I don't even know if you will be there the next time I sacrifice my power to enable the Astute Cacophony, Black Cat.
The fact of the matter is that at least from our perspective, we do have other responsibilities and activities to attend to when not acting as an advisor. Such would be impossible if we existed solely as voices crammed inside some artifact or other.
Ah, some clarity for Bianca: you are the third individual named Bianca to contact the Cacophony. That said, we of the Junction only joined the cacophony during the works of the second Bianca. Thus you are the second Bianca we personally have advised, but the third Bianca overall to be advised by the Cacophony.
And now I have rocks and many other things to find all in one place.
Code:
B R E A K
What?
Oh.
Was that how it worked last time?
Strange. Just a moment ago I was certain of my plans. Now I am certain the choice is not mine. It only took the briefest moment, the barest sliver of will to sacrifice. And now the choice is no longer mine.
I will have to be more careful.
I will have to remember how this thing works.
And I will have to make the best of it, now, because I'm not going to get that choice back. And I did take up again summoning the Astute Cacophony for purpose.
Voices! I call you to serve me again! Share your knowledge with me! Bable, bicker, and bluster as you will. But tell me how the world of substance works.
Tell me the signs by which storms may be known ahead of time, especially along the coast.
Tell me how to know when the ground will shake and knock down any one stone piled on another.
Tell me how to stop these things from happening when they do not suit me. And tell me how to hold back lightning, how to turn away the whirlwind, and how to still the flood.
These are matters of substance, yes? This is what you do, yes?
Tell me how to call whales to beach themselves.
Tell me how to bring back animals that have fled a place.
Tell me how to make better thread, better webs, better boats.
Tell me how to better remove stone from the ground. There is so much ground to remove to reach the stone with iron in it.
Tell me how to know without digging if there is iron below the ground where I cannot see.
Uh.
Tell me how to bring peaceableness to people who have iron when their neighbors do not.
Hmm.
Yes, I suppose that will have to do.
Let's see… What were the things I have learned…
I have not found mushrooms fucking. I think I know how some plants fuck. It was obvious when I started looking at where seeds grow on plants. But not all plants have flowers, or even seeds.
I do not find any apparent means to determine which plants fuck which plants in particular, though.
I was right that I can bind cats on rope so that they only fuck the cats I mean them to. And I was also right that I do not want to do so again.
I didn't try with doves.
Also, one of the cats was eaten while I was elsewhere. You cannot expect the kind of person who can tie cats together to be the kind of person who will stay with those cats for a whole turn of the moon.
I have seen some creeping things fucking. And I thought to keep others in a pot to see if they would fuck. Instead, the one ate the other.
I have made the stain water. There is little stain to it when I put it through many times. But if I put a coloring in it and put it on something, it leaves that coloring behind. The people just call it "burn."
The people tell me it hurts badly when I wash their wounds with it. But those wounds so washed soon after they are taken are less likely to fester.
Some of the people like to drink the stain. They say it tastes like burning and they become foolish. I do not think this is good for their bonds with their felllows. But sometimes it seems they bond more closely through drinking burn together.
Surely the blue firm iron is the best, though.
The first rock-cooking tower I tried to build fell in on itself, as did the second. For the third I made it much narrower. And that one didn't fall until the fire had been going for some time. I don't recall what happened to the fourth. But for the fifth I realized I could reuse bricks from the failures, mostly. And then before the sixth I understood better which bricks were and were not good for reuse.
The sixth tower lasted through some half-dozen burns before it fell. And the seventh lasted longer than that. The eighth might still stand, at least partially, because that's when I became certain that the stones I was trying to cook did not carry iron. So I left it.
If I did not have Wayfinding magic I think I would have lost myself in the world as I did in my first journey to find my maker. That's mostly not a problem anymore.
I tried cooking rocks for iron at other sites, more and more distant from my Vault, before I finally found rocks that shed what cooled to a hard, brittle metal when cooked with charred coals and a blow-bag. And, of course, I learned a great deal about turning clay into bricks and other shapes along the way.
Also, for all that your description of the process was told me of so many steps and details, there were many I have had to find out on my own. Sometimes the rocks even need to be cooked in a simpler rock-cooker without charred coal or a blow-bag first. And breaking the rocks up helps so much.
I found more iron-carrying stones than I can dig up on my own in the wooded hills near to where a river empties into a bay. People live by that river. And they bring down trees and shape them with sharp stones so that they can straddle them. They hang stones on them so they prefer to be upright. They push these into the water until they can wade out, lying close to their boat so they don't tip over. They bring webs of thread with them. And they work alone or together to catch fish and anything else they can in their webs. Sometimes they venture into the sea outside the bay, sometimes so far out they cannot be seen. This is dangerous and these fishers must be very certain of the tides and the sky, and also desperate. But sometimes there are few fish in the bay for a long time and people do what they must.
They also spear fish in the river, gather shelled meats, and catch fish on bone hooks. And, as a voice claimed, they eat many other things as well, or if they do not they wither.
And they may soon wither. The people know they should have moved on from the bay long ago. But they do not all move. Instead they shout at each other about it. They stay because the bay is such a good place to catch fish. And they stay because of me.
I did not count for how many winters I cut down trees, wrapped them in clay, cooked them to charred coals, and used those to make better clay, and finally to try to make firm iron.
The worst part is the bubbling iron cooker. Keeping such large, complicated parts made all of one piece means they do not move well once fired, and do not fire easily. Making them from separate parts mean they come apart more often. And then sometimes the whole thing must be rebuilt from the start. And the whole thing often wouldn't get hot enough. Eugh.
But I made iron. And then I made firm iron. And then I blued that firm iron.
And I figured out the biters, of course. It's strange to call that hanging, but they do need to turn against each other.
I have the best blued firm iron knife I made with me still. And I sang a tiny soul of sharpness and mightiness into it, like I did my fine stone knife.
The people call it the Black Knife like they call my stone knife the Red Knife and like they call my shimmering cloak the Coat of Two Suns. And the people call the place they live Black Hook Bay and they use firm iron fish hooks now, too.
But they have lived there too long. Too many plants and animals are gone from the woods. And the people have forgotten them, too. They have lost their medicine. When the people who know they should leave do so, when they move up the river or up or down the coast, they do not flourish and it is because they have forgotten how to live in those other places.
They cannot live where they are and they cannot live where they can move to.
But they can take what they want from their neighbors, sometimes.
The people of Black Hook Bay have firm iron weapons that make them better killers than their neighbors. So sometimes their young men go and take medicine and different foods their neighbors have, because I have told them that they weaken for undersuckling and not eating enough different things. There is little killing, though there has been some. Mostly there is shouting and appeasing.
Of course, their neighbors are not fools. They take the firm iron they can from the people of Black Hook Bay. And they have also given the young fools poison, because they know plants that don't grow near Black Hook Bay anymore.
I do not stay at my rock-cooking towers outside Black Hook Bay all the time. I have to return to my Vault every few winters. And I have to travel to collect brimstone.
Oh, brimstone.
I have not made the outclapping powder, only strange stinks. But I did make the pot-ash-niter crystals, of course. And the lye and the soap as well.
Anyway, the people of Black Hook Bay helped me with all steps in iron-making. When I am gone, they make it themselves at my rock-cooking towers. Sometimes they are not so good. Once I came back to rubble for which I never got a good answer. But we can always rebuild.
I would like to teach the people of Black Hook Bay to grow all the plants they need. I don't know what they need. They don't know what they need. We will figure it out or they will die.
And, oh. Out in the world there are still people who count to one dozen on one hand. I have taught some since last I summoned you. But also some knew it before I began teaching the counting.
Only small children count to eight on their fingertips.
Though that is the numbering of dragon glyphs: eights, eights of eights, eights of eights of eights, and so on. Do dragons count on their fingertips like small children? Surely no one could call them foolish for it.
But dozens are better, of course. It is always good to be able to divide things into three. Why would you lose dividing things into threes to divide them into fives?
As long as they're text and I can understand the numbers you use, Bianca will understand the numbers you use. You don't need to use duodecimal to communicate with her. But it is a superior system.
Based dozens.
I have also taught people of Black Hook Bay to place split logs with a hole in them over a pit for shitting in. This is how they make the pot-ash-niter. And they know to do it somewhere that is not uphill from anywhere they take water from.
Heugh.
I do not like that I have given up this choice. But the others did not summon you and this did. As I said, I will have to be more careful. And it's not like I want the choice anymore. It is gone from me.
I have said what I mean to. It is almost time for you voices to begin to speak.
In my earlier travels of the world I saw a river change its course to tear apart a hillside. The hill slid down into the river to stop it up, only to be washed away again some later time the river rose. In the wreckage of the hill I found a wide crystal like the surface of a still pond turned on its edge. It is the wall of the hidden place where something lay through the Winter of Magic. I took notice of the location by Wayfinding reckoning.
And when I returned while searching for iron-carrying rocks, all the land downstream and some upstream and around that landslide was twisted by strange blight. The soil and rock are wound into spirals, discolored to the shade of flayed flesh, and are poison to any living thing.
After finding all the edges of the blight, from the sea, up one side, and down the other again to the sea, I made my way inward to the crystal plane. And I found it twisted in the same way, but the center of the spiral on that crystal is open.
Some too-clever people must have spent lifetimes in the presence of the crystal plane, fiddling with it and making trouble before they somehow caused it to open. It is rare, but sometimes a person who does not know how to work their soul will accidentally perform magic. Or the crystal might have responded to something else.
That resting place may not have been from the most recent Autumn of Magic. It could have passed untouched through other, older Winters of Magic. But now it is open and the protection built into it has cursed the land around it.
I expect the people who opened it are dead or worse. But their loss is the gain of whoever successfully plunders that vault. And that should be me.
Code:
Bypassing the active defenses of the opened tomb of a
lost god will test Bianca's Warding Magic ability, and as
a vault guardian she was made to be very good at that.
Bianca will not fail to plunder this cache, eventually.
But if she doesn't roll at least 11 5s or better on the 7
dice she gets from Warding Magic, 2 dice she gets from
Soul Magic as a related field, 2 dice for Sneak Magic as
a related field, 2 dice for Stealthy as a related field,
and rerolling failures one time (a once per maybe every 5
story updates Call-on Trait when testing Warding Magic to
defend or penetrate god vaults), she will take so long
that consequences happen to something she cares about.
The blighted tomb isn't going anywhere and its security
system is non-trivial to anything awake in this era.
There is a place across the mountains from my Vault where people gather every sunstead on a large, flat rock. They bring live beasts with them. And they drain those beasts' blood to fill the tracks set into that large flat rock. They did this when I first found them and they do it still, every summer.
Now those people dream of spilling their own blood on that rock. They speak quietly with each other in those bands about whose blood should be spilled, if it will be some form each band or if when they arrive some bands will slay all of the people in other bands.
Something is calling those people to that place. I think it likely that it is something that slumbers in the Soul Lands, trying to return. And I think it should remain slumbering in the Soul Lands. I think it should be smothered.
Code:
Subverting the people performing the ritual will first be
a test of Community Management, an ability which Bianca
does not have, so she'll test the root stat, Perception,
and the obstacle doubles. Bianca will need 8 6s or better
on 8 dice. More unskilled tests of Community Management
will eventually open the ability.
If Bianca successfully subverts the people performing the
ritual, she should test Ritual to see if she takes its
power for herself. That's another ability Bianca doesn't
have. But in this case the result is very close to her
secondary function as a vault guardian: attending the
awakening of her maker. So Bianca can messily try to
brute force a solution with Soul Magic if she gets all
the people to play along, even without knowing the ritual
herself. Bianca will need 9 5s or better on 7 dice for
Soul Magic, 2 dice for Sing as a related field, 2 dice
for Dance as a related field, and 1 die for the other
participants.
Disrupting the ritual requires no roll. Bianca will not
fail to disrupt the ritual if this option is voted in. If
the ritual is disrupted, Bianca may attempt to subvert it
again the next time the people are drawn to do similarly.
It seems to have taken a very long time to work its way
up to the point it's at. So if the ritual is thrown off
real good then whatever wants in is unlikely to pull
everything together so quickly Bianca isn't able to check
back in before it gets close to completion again.
Closer to my vault I have seen a court of maneless winged lions in the sky. They were not winged while I traveled the world seeking my maker or during the Winter of Magic, I am sure. Without the work of their souls to lift them, their wings would only drag at them and get in the way of their living.
Everywhere in the world there will be magical creatures emerging from where they have hidden from the world without magic. And everywhere there will be creatures impressing themselves into the Soul Lands they have only been able to reach for less than two great grosses of years, I think. In some, this will set up a transformation of their flesh to forms they could not sustain during the Winter of Magic. And I am sure these winged lions are that sort of creature.
I do not think winged lions were spread to any great amount in the last Autumn. I did not see them or know of them. If they are not the result of flesh- and soul-crafting done after I started my rest, they were not made in great numbers.
I have watched this court a great deal. I find them to be intelligent, but poor at managing themselves. They are few, they grow fewer, and soon they will be gone. I could try to change that and make them mine. They should be mine. Yes.
Code:
Recruiting the winged lions will test Empathy, the non-
violent way of making requests and intentions known
without language, and an ability Bianca has opened but
never raised. She'll have 4 dice for her Empathy ability,
1 die for Magical Creature Lore as a related field and
another 1 die for proceeding carefully. She will have an
obstacle of 3 to get the winged lions to stick around so
that she can influence them further because they're so
different than people. (People of similar culture: Ob. 1;
People of very different culture: Ob. 2; Intelligent
inhuman creatures: Ob. 3; beasts: Ob 4; really weird
beasts: Ob 5. All obstacles can be reduced to 1 by
opening a training ability rooted in Perception for that
type of being.) Making contact with winged lions does not
align with Bianca's divine heritage, so she'll only count
6s and better as successes.
Bianca will not get a second chance to pursue this goal.
These critters will move on to find somewhere else to
live and probably won't survive long term.
So, here we are now, voices. It's been at least two and a half grosses of winters since last we spoke, maybe more. I have told you what I want. And if you give me knowledge I don't know I want again that will be very good also.
Now, which of these three tasks should I undertake?
[ ] Plunder the Tomb of the Blight
[ ] Subvert the Rite of the Stirring God
[ ] Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Last edited:
2.a. Sticky post improvement and reply about repetition
I've made some changes to the sticky post, now titled
'Status, Basics, Summaries, & Tech List.' Y'all ought to
check it out. I really like what the accordion feature
does for readability and I might make more use of that.
Also:
Are you okay with so many of us essentially repeating each other with more or less complexity? Or is there a risk of this becoming tedious too quickly? Should we police ourselves to, if not totally avoid, at least tone down the amount of repetition? Should there be a rule of at least attempting to read what others have already written? It would of course make entry and participation harder for players, but we don't want to bore you and burn you out either.
It'd be pretty great if all the players would read what other players write so they can build on that.
But if a player is either going to write by the seat of their pants with no regard to what other players already posted or they're not going to post at all, I would rather that player write and post. And vote.
If you are posting answers to the same questions other players have also answered then maybe be aware I may be less likely to read your post closely. If I don't spot something in your post that others didn't say, I might skim it on my second pass and I might skip it on my third.
But it is my intent to write a Bianca response to every post addressing Bianca.
To my recollection, I have not at any point in any of the three Bianca quests expected the players to organize themselves. If y'all find a way to do it that doesn't exclude or suppress potential players that's fine. Otherwise, chaos is expected.
2.b1. Closing the vote for Three Quests at the Dawn of the World - Result: cult & monsters write in
I would think that if the Tomb of the Blight contained an enemy, they would have woken by now. If all it contains is riches and power... well Bianca currently has more of those than any people she's yet met. Such will come in time regardless. And the lions sound fun, possibly even situationally useful, but ultimately, not useful enough to risk allowing a new enemy to form. And if there's one thing I know, blood rituals aren't the sort of thing used by people who are likely to tolerate being subservient to Bianca's will.
Bianca, you may call this one Destroyer. I was the one who spoke previously on our nature as creatures of knowledge and creation, and later on the synthesis of chlorates.
Edit: I did not realize Bianca had not mentioned bows at all, and thus may not know of them despite how old the records for them are, so for clarity I will make a description of them here.
A bow is, in its simplest form, a stick that is held partially bent by string tied between its ends. When the middle of the stick and the middle of the string are held by each hand and pulled apart, the bow bends, and the string experiences a pulling force back towards the bow that increases the farther away it is pulled, as the string must straighten if the bow is to straighten, and the stick by its nature will resist bending and try to return to straightness. If the string is pulled away from the bow and then let go, it will violently snap its way back to its resting state.
If you take another, straight stick and hold it in the string hand with its end pressed to the string and the other end laying on the bow, when the string is released the string will throw the stick that was pressed against it in its need to return to its resting state. This thrown stick, if it has its tip sharpened and its rear lined with some carefully cut halves of feathers tied to it so they are like the tail of a bird or fish to stabilize its flight and keep its point pointed forwards, makes for a deadly weapon for use at long distances of a hundred paces or more.
The thrown sticks with feathers are called arrows.
There is one very good technology that is available with stone age tools: pulley bows.
You don't need a complex precision-machined cammed compound pulley like modern compound bow to make the concept useful.
The complex cam shapes on the pulleys of modern compound bows allow the draw strength to be changed based on where in the stroke length the string is. This lets the draw strength to drop off as the bow comes to full draw, making it easy to hold the bow at full draw even with a very high draw weight.
But, that is not necessary for the primary benefit of the compound bow: it multiplies stroke length for the same bending of the bow limbs. This is very important, because the required complexity of a bow with a long draw length that isn't as long as a man is tall is very high. Normally, a short bow (arm's length from end to end) with a long draw length needs to flex its limbs to a much greater degree than a longbow with the same draw length (as tall as a man from end to end).
A longbow is simpler to make and is much less affected by moisture, whereas a full power shortbow requires mulitple layers of different materials glued together and precisely shaped in order to match the performance of a longbow, which makes it much more expensive and time consuming to make, and sensitive to moisture in the air and vulnerable to rot.
This is because the bow needs to be able to bend to much greater angles without breaking.
Now why does draw length matter so much to the power of a bow? When the arrow is pushed forwards by the bowstring when loosed, the bowstring has a limited time to push on the arrow before it reaches its end of travel, and bows cannot transfer all of the energy stored in the bending of the limbs to the arrow before the arrow leaves the string. The shorter the draw length, the less efficient this transfer is, as a general rule of thumb, though there are other sources of inefficencies.
The largest other inefficiency is that in order for the bow limbs to transfer their stored energy to the arrow, they must first move themselves, and the bowstring, though the bowstring is typically not a large mass compared to the limbs. All changes in movement require energy to happen, so a portion of the energy is spent on moving the bow limbs themselves when the bow is released. If the limbs are very heavy (thus requiring more energy to move) and the draw length is short, a bow can spend most of its stored energy just on moving the limbs, with only a small part left over for the arrow!
Putting a pulley system on the bow lessens much of these drawbacks.
Now, I should describe in detail what a pulley system is.
I'm going to assume Bianca knows what a bow is, there's archeological evidence of bows going back 50 millenia, and there is very strong evidence that humans have actually evolved instincts for bow shooting. Though, more on that later.
A pulley is simple in concept. Imagine you want to lift a large stone with a rope. Lifting the stone directly with rope by standing over it and pulling up on the rope is the most direct way of doing so, but there is an easier way. If you throw the rope over a stout tree branch hanging over the rock, and pull down on the rope, the force of the pull will be transferred over the tree branch and down to the rock, and the rope will slide over the tree branch towards you as the rock is lifted. Of course, the tree branch needs to be strong enough to hold the weight of the rock or it will break. The advantage here is that you can use your body weight to lift the rock by bending your knees while holding tight to the rope, which is much easier than lifting the rock directly.
This is the most basic idea of a rope and pulley:
redirecting force along the tension of a rope by having the rope bent around a fixed peg to slide around. Now, the rope may bind on the peg if the friction is too high and doesn't have lubrication, and the rope and the peg can be worn away by the sliding. As such the more common conception of 'pulley' is actually a wheel that can freely spin on the peg, with a groove running around its outer edge to keep the rope centered on the pulley as it passes around it.
Now that I have defined what a pulley is, I will define one more concept connected to them before the application to bows is made clear.
Imagine our rock and tree branch again. If you have a pulley attached to the rock, you can take a rope and tie one end to the branch, and then thread the other end of the rope under the pulley attached to the rock, such that you can pull up on the rope from that end. Now if you pull the rope up to lift the rock and hold it, you will find that the rope you are holding up is only bearing half the weight of the rock, as you are only holding half the ropes that hold up the rock. But, as the tree is not doing any lifting, when you pull that rope, the rock is lifted by only half the length of the length of rope you pulled, as the static rope tied to the tree gets pulled under and around the pulley.
For convenience, you can loop your end of the rope through another pulley tied to the tree branch so you can pull down on the rope rather than up. This lets you use your body weight like in the first example, but with twice the lifting force on the rock, in exchange for needing to pull twice the length of rope to lift the rock the same distance. I will reiterate this is because between the branch (the structure holding the entire weight of the rock) and the rock, there are two ropes attaching them to each other, dividing the force in half.
This can be repeated with additional pulleys, where the rope you are now holding is looped through another pulley on the rock and another pulley on the branch to quadruple your lifting power and the amount of rope you need to pull, as there is now 4 ropes holding the weight of the rock to spread the weight between. This can be repeated ad infinitum: you can have as many pulleys and loops of rope as a part of this as you want to continue dividing the weight across and increasing your lifting power. But, this comes with an equivalent increase in length of rope you need to pull to lift the rock the same distance. You can multiply your lifting power by fifty times at the cost of needing to pull fifty times as much rope.
This concept of multiplying force at the cost of needing to apply that force for an equivalently multiplied distance is called mechanical advantage, and it is a concept that shows up in many tools from levers to wedges to wheels and axles.
The multiplication can also go in reverse: in our second rock and branch scenario with only 2 pulleys and a mechanical advantage of 2 to 1, imagine the roles reversed between your hand and the rock, where the rock is tied to the end of the rope you were pulling previously, and you are pulling on the end of the pulley that was previously attached to the rock. You can now pull the rock twice as far with only half the length of pull, at the cost of needing double the force to do so.
This system of mechancial advantage of pulleys in the configuration I described is called a block and tackle, and is widely used for lifting very heavy things.
This is where we go back to our problem with bows, of needing the longer draw length with less movement of the bow limbs to make a practical full power shortbow without complex construction of the limbs to let them bend further. Surely you can begin to see how pulleys can be applied here. By placing a peg with a small roller pulley in a small carved fork at the end of each bow limb where the bowstring would normally be attached, we can thread that bowstring around each pulley and tie the ends to the tip of the opposite bow limb that that end was looped around the pulley of.
The simplest to understand configuration is having the bowstring simply tied in a loop around the two pulleys. When one of the two strings is pulled back, you have the rock and branch situation where one end of the rope is tied to the tree, run through one pulley on the rock and you are lifting that end up to lift the rock, but in two places at once. The string you don't pull is essentially tied to the tree, but reflected in both directions as it is pulled equally from both ends and doesn't move, and the string you are pulling is pulling the ends of the bow towards each other as if each end of the bow limb was the rock that was being lifted by the pulley. This will double the draw length and halve the draw weight of the bow.
The reason why I first described the tying of the ends of the bowstring running through the pulleys to the tips of the other bow limb is because this gives you a mechanical advantage of between 2 to 1 and 3 to 1, which is a good balance for most bows until we get to the more advanced compound pulleys at some future date. Mostly, it is the highest ratio of mechanical advantage achieveable without more than 2 pulleys or compound pulleys, and using more than 2 pulleys would lead to other inefficiencies that would sap power from the bow when shot.
Now, the difference between longbows and shortbows is mostly to do with how far the need to be able to bend without breaking to have the same draw length, pulley bows have an advantage over both designs in that because the limbs move much less relative to the draw length that means less energy is spent moving the limbs and more is available for the arrow. So a pulley bow is able to impart more energy into the same arrow with the same draw length and draw weight than either the longbow or the shortbow.
The main disadvantage, other than complex construction relative to the longbow, is the presence of extra strings in the bow can sometimes lead to fumbling with an arrow while trying to nock it or accidentally pulling the wrong string when stressed or in difficult conditions where the archer's attention is taken up by other urgent matters. This is only a disadvantage when trying to shoot many arrows very quickly or when having to nock and shoot an arrow when surprised, though there are ways to mitigate this.
The simplest means to mitigate this is by returning to the single loop around the pulleys design, and tying middle of the stationary string to the middle of the bow, though due to changing the angles of the string this lessens the mechanical advantage of the pulley system. This can be mitigated by adding spacers between the string and the bow limbs, that push the string away from the place it is tied at the middle of the bow, so the string forms a mostly straight line between the pulleys before reaching the end of the stick holding the string away from the bow limb and then bending sharply towards the bow limb where that end is anchored. This redirects the tension.
If the configuration is unclear, imagine a staff standing on end in the ground with a string strung across a groove in its top end and tied to the ground a few paces away from the staff on both ends. This forms a triangle with the ground as one side, and the string forming the other two sides of the triangle. Now imagine that the ground is one of the two bow limbs, and the string is tied at one end to the middle of the bow and the other end of the string is going through the pulley, and the staff is the standoff stick holding the string away from the bow limb towards the direction the moving string will be pulled to draw the bow. Now match this on the other bow limb and the angles of the strings will restore the mechancial advantage. Also, to have a place to hold the middle of the bow with your hand, you should tie the ends of the string on either side of the handgrip of the bow.
I know this may seem complicated at first, but it is much, much simpler than the complex layered construction and precise shaping of a powerful shortbow with a long draw length.
The other side of all this talk of bows is that to train truly good archers, you must start with their grandparents. Having an instilled culture and tradition of exceptional archery in your people will be the work of generations to implement, but will be an immensely valuable asset in the long term.
One people that were true masters of archery were the Comanche tribe of native americans. Their children grew up with bows in their hands, and would spend summer days shooting insects out of the air with arrows. In the recollection of one who faced a single Comanche warrior from a hundred paces away, the problem wasn't the first arrow, that was possible to dodge if you saw it coming. The problem was the 3 arrows that were already flying towards you by the time the first had reached you.
The Comanche warriors were almost without peer in their ability to shoot many arrows so quickly. They could shoot three arrows with every breath, and could hit multiple fast moving targets one after the other.
The surprising part is that their technique for shooting is relatively easy to learn, even for completely inexperienced archers. Less than a day of practice can let a person who never touched a bow before shoot leaves out of the air. Mastery of speed shooting and the building of strength needed for more powerful bows is another matter, though. That only comes with long and dedicated practice.
To describe the technique, I will first define precise words for which finger is which. I will go from thumb to little finger, in order. First, the thumb, then forefinger or index finger or pointer finger, then the middle finger, then the ring finger, then the little or pinky finger. To describe which hand each finger is on, I will simply describe them as, for example, the left middle finger for the middle finger of the left hand, and the right pinky finger for the pinky finger of the right hand, etc.
The technique is reversible between hands, and I will refer to the hand holding the bow as the bow hand and the hand that pulls the string as the draw or drawing hand. This will replace 'left' and 'right' in the finger definitions above. I will refer to the inside and outside of respective hands, such that the inside of the bow hand, for example, is facing the palm of the bow hand, and the outside of the hand would be facing the back of the hand. I will refer to thumb side and pinky side as the side of the hand facing the thumb or pinky, respectively.
So, the essence of the technique is that of holding 3 or 4 arrows preloaded in the bow hand, on the outside of the bow hand held under the bow hand fingers curled over top of them to hold them very nearly in the shooting position, but with their nocks (the string end of the arrow) a few finger widths in front of the string at rest. Each arrow would have its own finger to itself or to a pair: for example, to hold 3 arrows would have had two arrows held under the bow hand middle and index fingers, with one arrow ready to shoot held under just the index finger. The two arrows in storage under the middle finger would be slightly tilted downwards towards the pinky side of the bow hand, but the ready arrow under the index finger would be mostly pointed directly forwards. Additional pair of arrows could be held under the ring finger at more of an angle for 5 arrows in the bow hand.
To shoot, they used a three finger pinch grip in their draw hand. They would pinch the ready arrow between the thumb and forefinger after reaching 'through' the bow string, such that when the arrow is gripped the thumb and forefinger are already around the bowstring. The middle and index fingers would curl around the bowstring to hold it, making the three finger pinch grip.
When shooting, they would shoot with the bow from a low, horizontal position, where the ends of the bowlimbs are pointing to the sides of the archer, with arrows preloaded in the bow hand. They would then pinch grip the ready arrow as described, and while pulling back their draw hand back to the side of their torso, while pushing the bow towards the target with their bow hand. They would release at the point of their choosing, and the exact draw length is not terribly important.
The secret of their accuracy is that they aimed the arrow using the same part of the mind that aims a thrown rock or spear, instead of aiming down the arrow with one eye. It is a trained reflex that takes advantage of inbuilt instincts in the human mind for throwing things.
Training it is as simple as trying to hit close targets while shooting the bow as described, particularly moving targets to take advantage of instinct as much as possible. At first you will miss a lot, but even by the end of the first day you will likely be able to hit hand sized moving targets at close range. Though, for the first familiarization with the bow start by shooting at stationary dirt targets to get the very first bits of body memory in place. In particular, try to train while jumping or moving if possible after the first bit of basic familiarization to further take advantage of instinct.
Keep trying to hit fast second and third shots at this time to familiarize yourself with speed shooting.
The thing yo always keep in mind is to not think about aiming to hit the target, simply look at the target and make the arrow hit it. If you try to think about it you will miss, this is an exercise in building an unconsious aiming reflex.
Keep training with smaller targets and at greater distances as you gain proficiency, and once you feel ready begin trying to hit birds in flight. Eventually you will be able to hit birds in flight, and at longer and longer distances, and be able to hit land animals at much longer ranges, even when evading. You should be able to hit large herd animals while they are running and you are running after them at this point.
You should be carrying at least 5 arrows in your bow hand at this time, and when shooting at a long distance of 150-200 paces should be able to shoot 3 arrows before the first hits the ground at that range. Shooting should be as easy as breathing.
At this point, it becomes a personal journey to true mastery that I have little advice for, as I do not possess such mastery myself.
To teach children is simple: make a game of it.
Teach them to throw handfuls of grass or dirt or small wood pieces in the air for other children to shoot at and take turns seeing who can hit the most targets, and then while running and jumping and hanging upside down from branches and the like. This should be done with a simple, small and weak bow fit for a child to learn with, and teach them how to make their own arrows, and then teach them the art of bowmaking a proper adult hunting and war bow and more complex arrow making. Making their own bow to use for hunting makes for a meaningful coming of age ceremony where they take more responsibility onto themselves for supporting their family and tribe.
Doing this for generations will result in a people of terrifying warriors of peerless skill, where even the women and children are a serious threat to enemy warriors, should they ever face them. What do your skill with axes and clubs matter when a child can put an arrow in your throat from thirty paces away?
This only really changes when faced with enemies that wear good armor of boiled leather or bone that are well covering enough to have only difficult to hit weakpoints in their armor. That obviously makes it much more difficult to kill them, as instead of simply needing to hit their chest with arrows, you need to carefully aim for gaps in armor on a quickly moving and dodging target.
The solution to this is generally closer ranges and more powerful bows shot by stronger archers to pierce the armor. This requires a good angle on the armor to penetrate, but it means directly hitting the chest is a good option again. There are also different tips for the arrows that can much better penetrate armor, but those require metal.
The last thing, as a general corrolary to the training, is the training of endurance and stamina as a higher priority than raw strength or speed. Train them with training courses running through the woods and wilderness for long distances, and have them compete in races to see who can run the long courses the fastest while shooting at the painted targets along the way, and have obstacles that require climbing or jumping to get past to train in such things.
I really wish the Lions were a guaranteed success but trying to negotiate with large cats is difficult. It also seems you lack knowledge of a lot of the concepts we take for granted so we'll have to find out what works through trial and e̶r̶r̶o̶r̷. You can also call me Dreamer.
To start with, the Burn, as the people call it, is a result of alcohol a specific substance more closely related to poison than something useful for the body and judging by how much it take to get the giddy, probably low quality one at that. We use percentages to determine alcohol content in base 10 because the vast majority of use are only used to that. Base 12 is very useful in making calculations, but base 10 to us is so much easier when you deal with huge numbers. 100% is 100 parts out of 100 being alcohol, what your underlings managed to accomplish is probably somewhere around 5 to 10 out of 100 parts being alcohol at most. It's really not worth bothering getting an alcohol past 90% or 90 parts out of 100 but you can do if you want infections really dead.
You do not burn seas with alcohol, you make seas that burn out of it. Alcohol past a certain percentage , I believe 20%, can catch fire and you can use it to burn things. Please do be careful with letting your people drink too much of it, it can make it difficult for them to operate in society and it is still a poison, if you drink too much of it over a long period of time some organs will start malfunctioning and the drinker will die, albeit that would take years of drinking high percentage alcohols to manifest.
Speaking of poisons... I would like to first give you my congratulations on discovering iron and how to make it. Iron is superior in making weapon to just about anything but some copper-tin alloys can turn into bronze which is superior when making armor to iron unless you can turn it into steel, then steel beats just about anything in both weaponry and armor. You can make it by just adding carbon(coal) to the making process in small quantities albeit I am unsure of the exact process. And as I was talking about poisons, there is a certain metal that is extremely dangerous, we call it lead. It's a soft yet heavy metal that melts easily, grey in color and very heavy. Using it in cooking will make the food taste phenomenal, but it's also a very insidious poison that after it is ingested will slowly turn those that eat it insane, prone to anger and violent outburst and increasingly unwilling to follow the commands of authority. Do not let it get in your people's food nor their water. It will over the course of years of exposure turn your people un-ruleable.
Lead can also be used as a projectile on your enemies by making lead into a ball and making a sling which is made out of 3 parts, a large lead patch to hold said lead ball and 2 long strips of either leather or rope tied together. By placing the ball into the patch and then bringing together the two ends of the strips you can start spinning the contraption and throw the ball by letting go of one of the strips. It's quite intuitive once you make it but please do be careful with testing the lead balls of sufficient size( slightly smaller than a woman's fist even) can crack skulls if thrown hard enough.
Also on animal breeding. We use fucking and breeding for different roles, fucking is the act of sexual intercourse, it may or may not end in offspring and when we speak of it it generally refers to animals. breeding is the purposeful act of getting offspring and we use it for anything and everything.
Most plants are incapable of sexual intercourse, they use spores of pollen, tiny things very hard to see if not impossible in some cases to with a naked eye( yes we can cover the eyes with certain things and still see out of it, even better in some cases). They can usually be found on the flower or on the leaves at specific times of the year or once every few years. Plants either use the air to transport this pollen or spores or certain insects or birds do it for them as it is very light.
Oftentimes people see ways of living and believe these to be the only ways. You are mistaken in your belief that it's impossible to make some mortals obey others, these who obey you the best. It could be hard to train people of the Bay in such a way, just like training of animals can be hard, but should be viable sooner or later.
Fellow Voices, don't be distracted and don't think only about the main choice. This situation is unstable. The Bay and lands around will obviously explode into violence soon, if more food is not provided.
Why I believe we should look into the blight if it spreads to close or too far it will make getting food harder than it has to.
Hierarchy is very difficult to create out of nothing, we need people that will follow people that fill follow people and so on. This will start to form naturally as the number of people grow. Right now we need agriculture and to deal with the blight. Getting food will allow Bianca to start steamrolling properly as people flock to her and more are born due to an abundance of resources.
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Or if not:
[X] Subvert the Rite of the Stirring God
Allowing a slumbering enemy to stir to full wakefulness is unacceptable. And given what that being is driving people to do, we have every reason to believe it will be an enemy. If all else fails, be prepared to simply ruin proceedings beyond easy recovery.
We will now answer questions asked of us.
Regarding writing: we'd meant for the glyphs to record knowledge, rather than spells. Effectively, a means of producing a more limited and localized version of the Library. Writing can also be used to send one person's words over long distance, with less risk of the messenger mis-remembering. That is why we mentioned the pigeons; if you have writing and a sufficiently light material to do it on, they make very good messengers.
Regarding respiratory diseases: it is possible to make protective equipment that greatly reduces the risk of disease transmission. Specifically, a mask covering the nose and mouth. Three layers; inner and outer layer composed of tightly woven cloth, while the middle layer should be a tightly packed layer of fibers that are ready for spinning, but have not yet been spun. The idea is that the pathogens get caught in the mask when breathing in or out, instead of continuing on with the air. These masks will need to be cleaned regularly.
Regarding putting plants in the ground and staying with them: the whole point is to make the rare plants less rare. Same for animals, though animal tending requires different methods.
How to make plants fuck: Rub a brush around in the flower of one plant to collect pollen, then rub that same brush in the flower of a different plant of similar kind. They don't necessarily need to be the exact same kind of plant, but hybridization is rather rare. Certain bugs do something similar; the flowers provide a nectar that the bugs want, and in the process of collecting it, the bugs move pollen around. If you've encountered honey before, it's those bugs which make the honey that do the pollenation. We call them bees.
For other plants without flowers, they simply allow their pollen to be blown by the wind. For a lack of seeds... we do not know enough about the specific plants you're speaking about to answer that question. That said, it's occasionally the case that a cut off part from a plant can grow roots and proceed to flourish if stuck in the ground.
And yes, we made a word substitution error when discussing Cassiterite and Chalcocite.
As for more recent requests:
Even with all our knowledge, predicting the weather more than a day or two in advance is very difficult. That said, there are some things you can be on the watch for. For what we're about to say to make sense, you need to understand that the air sloshes around like liquid in a vessel that is being shaken; movement of the air is wind, and some places have more or less of it than others. Clouds and storms flow towards places with less air as a result of this sloshing about, so signs of reduced air pressure can indicate a storm coming.
Some things that change depending on air pressure:
- The lower the air pressure, the slower smoke rises.
- Smells tend to be a bit more intense at low air pressure.
- Those with an ailment of aching bones or joints tend to feel worse at low air pressure.
- Biting insects are more active at low air pressure.
- Birds have a harder time flying at low air pressure, so they're more reluctant to fly, and fly lower when they do.
Yes, there are places with no air at all. People can't live there unless they have a way to bring air with them, and you will not find such places without going directly upwards a great distance.
As for the ground shaking, that is one of those things which is very difficult to predict. That said, it is more common in some places than others. A way to think of this is that the surface of the Earth is a collection of stone rafts, floating on a sea of molten ores. These rafts move (though slowly), and where they run into each other, earthquakes are the inevitable result. These tectonic plates flowing apart from each other also causes problems in the form of volcanoes. We do not know the location of the plates and their fault lines in your world; you will have to map them yourself, if such is deemed a useful endeavor.
Regarding lightning, holding it back is a downright incorrect way to protect against it. If you somehow force lightning to flow through something presenting great resistance, it will simply deposit most of its energy there and cause that something to violently explode. This is the cause of thunder, by the way; air presents great resistance indeed to the passage of lightning. Instead, you need to safely conduct it to the ground, with as little resistance as possible. Fortunately, metals in general are good at conducting electricity, which lightning is a particularly potent form of. Put a pointed metal rod on top of a structure you wish to protect, and connect it to the ground with a metal wire, cable, or other linkage. The lightning will preferentially strike the metal rod, and flow through the linkage to the ground without meaningfully affecting other parts of the structure.
Copper actually conducts electricity better than Iron, but Iron is still adequate for the purpose of lightning protection.
For whirlwinds, while they are matters of substance, they are very large matters of substance, and products of the worldwide air-sloshing we mentioned earlier. To control them via material means requires tools on the scale of an entire world. That said, a sufficiently strong building can resist whirlwinds, and they are much less likely to harm someone hiding in a ditch or hole.
As for calling whales to beach themselves, whales that are likely to beach themselves tend to do so before having children, and therefore don't pass on their likeliness to get beached. In summary, you either need to make very loud noises in the water to confuse their sense of direction, or go out there in a boat to hunt them the hard way. That said, we do not approve of the hunting of whales; they are very smart animals, with some types being smart enough to arguably count as people. They will talk to each other and plot revenge if hunted, which will make other seafaring endeavors vastly more difficult.
For bringing back animals that have fled a place, the fundamental problem is that for wild animals a fear of creatures that hunt them is a very advantageous trait for their survival. So they don't like to be places with lots of hunters, including people. That said, specifically for herd animals, this fear can be used. While they are likely to run from a human or friendly wolf, the whole herd will run in the same direction. So, sneak around the herd, get on the opposite side of where you want them to go, and scare them off. If done properly, you can get the herd to a known location with plenty of the plants they eat, and direct their movements between various such places.
Fields that have been recently harvested are a good place to direct these herding creatures; they can eat plant parts that humans can't, with meat being a result. Their trampling is also beneficial for preparing the field to receive more seed, as strange as that may sound.
If bred for docility, these herding animals can also be squeezed for milk, with some even enjoying it. While the milk itself likely isn't pleasant to consume for adults, there are any manner of other food products it can be turned into through the action of microbial life.
Ah, what we mean by a field: a plot of good soil near where people live, where lots of good-to-eat plants are grown very close to each other. They have to be manually set up this way, but the end result is a lot of food for people to eat. It's hard work, but it's a surer food supply than moving around regularly, allows for a great deal of works to be built up in one place, and lets a people have a lot more close neighbors to resist problems coming from far neighbors.
For better removing stone from ground? Bluntly, explosives. It takes a lot of force to break up stone, and aside from explosives, all the methods we know to do so require great works of metal and steam and complicated machinery. Even then, explosives are still used.
Ah, there is one other thing that could work; if heated with fire and quickly quenched with water, stone is quite likely to crack.
As for finding iron, this is a task that will require a special material; get a chunk of magnetite (SPECIFICALLY magnetite, not Hematite), and somehow arrange for it to get struck by lightning; this will probably involve hoisting it upwards onto a pole. This imparts a property onto the Magnetite known as Magnetism, causing it to attract certain metals, with Iron being the most prominent example. Soil in an area can be checked for Iron by putting it on a piece of paper or a board, holding your magnet near it, and seeing if any of the soil moves. You can also just hold the magnet against a chunk of rock from an area, and see if it sticks together.
We know another method for finding iron, two actually. Both of them will involve getting very wet.
Certain bogs naturally accumulate iron flowing from the rivers feeding them, with it accumulating in chunks of ore that can be found via an oily stain they leave on the water's surface above them. This is bog ore, and it can be refined into iron by the methods you have previously figured out. That said, if you need more iron than the bog gets, there is the option of finding the place that bog gets its iron. Follow the rivers feeding the bog upstream until you find a place where water emerges from the ground, and that spring stands a good chance of being in a place where the rocks bear iron in great quantity.
Anyway, now for making better boats. We were planning to talk about this subject anyway, but you've also explicitly requested it.
The simplest we can think of to start with is the dug-out canoe, which is similar to what they already do, but a bit different. Instead of shaping the fallen tree trunk to be straddled, hollow it out so that those riding in the canoe sit inside, along with the supplies they carry. Make the ends gently curve to a point, to ease water's flow around the canoe. Sitting low in the boat means that the people and supplies themselves keep the boat upright with their weight. If heated with steam after being hollowed out, the wood can temporarily be made flexible enough to bend outwards for more width, and therefore stability.
The stability of a canoe can also be improved by adding secondary smaller hulls connected to the main one, but off to the side by some distance; these secondary hulls are known as outriggers, and can also function as additional storage for supplies if hollow. You can also connect multiple full size hulls together for a larger vessel, suitable for long voyages into open oceans. These boats will last much longer if the wood is properly waterproofed, using coatings of oils, resins, wax, or pitch.
An important method of maneuvering a boat is a tool known as an oar or paddle. Effectively a long wooden pole with a flat surface on the end, lined up with the pole, with the whole thing being waterproofed. It can be used for both propulsion and steering; to propel, stick the wide end of the paddle into the water lined up and down, and use it to push water towards the aft, pushing the boat forwards. To steer with a paddle, either only shove water on one side of the boat, or trail it behind and to an angle of the boat.
Very large boats are much easier to steer with a specialized attached paddle known as a rudder; Connect it at a pivot in the rear, with the flat surface being vertical and aft, to present minimal resistance as the boat moves forwards. To steer, use a lever also attached to the pivot in order to change the angle of the rudder.
It is also possible for a boat to be made that uses the wind as a means of propulsion. Mount an upright pole (hereafter called a mast) near the center of the boat, with a crossbeam at some point along its height. Now, take a cloth triangle, and stretch it between the top of the mast, the end of the crossbeam, and the point where the crossbeam is tied to the mast. The angle of the sail relative to the inbound wind determines the direction it shoves the boat; broadly, it can be imagined as the wind bouncing off the sail, shoving the boat in the opposite of the direction it got bounced.
It's even possible to go upwind via sail power, but not directly. Point the boat upwind, but at an angle to the wind. Align the sail so that the wind pushes the boat sideways, to the side that the front of the boat is pointing. The boat gets shoved sideways, that shoves against the water, and that shoving against the water propels the boat forwards -- and therefore, upwind.
Some additional techniques for finding one's way when out of sight of land; most of these are dependent on the world being a spinning ball. The points it spins around are called the poles, the ring around the middle is called the equator.
- In the northern hemisphere, the sun will appear to rise on the left, and set on the right. In the southern hemisphere, the reverse is true. If the sun passes directly overhead at noon, the boat is at the equator. The precise angle of the sun at noon changes with the seasons in addition to distance from the equator, so using this to determine your precise north or south angle is troublesome. It can theortetically be done, but certainly not easily.
- At night, the stars overhead should seem to spin, save for a small number; these are pole stars, and are directly "over" the world's rotational poles. The angle of pole stars from the horizon is the angle of the boat from the equator. The direction of apparent star rotation corresponds to which hemisphere you're in, same as for the sun. As a side note, the sun is also a star, it's just much closer than the rest. The world also moves around the sun once a year (which is what generates seasons), causing the sun's apparent position relative to the other stars to change.
We would be deeply interested in learning what your angle from the equator is.
- Tracking east-west position is significantly harder, but there is a viable technique. Broadly, you need a way to compare the time of day at your current location to the time of day at a single specified "home" area, which tells you your angle east or west of that home area. If it's later in the day than at home, you're east of it, if it's earlier in the day than at home, you're west of it. One of the easiest options for you is the phase and sky-angle of the moon: it proceeds at a predictable rate, so with sufficiently detailed knowledge of the moon's phase and angle progression (and very good vision), it's possible to get a fix on your east-west position. Determining the time of day at home is much easier with something to compare the moon's sky angle against; known stars in convenient parts of the sky are a suitable basis for comparison. That lets you compare the angle of the moon to where it was when you left home on your voyage, and from there figure out the difference in time of day.
- Large groups of seabirds often stay within half a day's flight of land. If seeking land, sail opposite the bird's flight in the morning, and in the same direction the birds are going in the evening.
- Shallower waters reflect light better, bouncing it onto the bottom of clouds. This can be a reliable means of finding land.
- The swell of the ocean (the longer, larger waves that aren't locally whipped up by wind very much) are affected in a variety of ways by surrounding land, propagating in a more-or-less straight direction at any given location. A navigator can use this straightness of the swell to maintain the straightness of their boat's course, and may learn to recognize the presence of landmasses by changes in the swell.
It's also occurred to us that of course a nomadic people wouldn't have experience at building permanent structures. We will now explain. Starting with a simple one-room house. We will also be explaining a material that is highly useful for construction: Cob
Cob is simple to make, basically being fibrous plant matter mixed with mud, sometimes with clay mixed in. It is manually pummeled into the desired forms, then allowed to dry into its final form. Cob is resistant to fire, inhospitable to termites (which can severely damage wooden structures), and can last for centuries in good condition.
Now for actually building a house, starting from the ground up. Literally.
The first issue is preparing the ground to be suitable for construction. Buildings are heavy, and distributing the load they produce is important to prevent them from sinking into the ground. If the ground is solid and firm, this is easy enough; just pile stones into a level surface, stick them together with mortar, and there you go. If the ground isn't firm, you should probably dig down far enough to reach firm ground, then do the stone-stacking we suggested. This load-bearing part of the structure is referred to as the foundation, and bricks can be substituted for stone if conveniently shaped stones are not available. Strictly speaking, the foundation is only actually needed around the load-bearing outer walls of the structure.
Now for the walls; these can be composed of brick and mortar, stonemasonry, cob, or any other sufficiently sturdy and available material. Wood is an option, but we disapprove of it since it can be easily set fire by someone who doesn't like the occupant of the building. Holes for the entrance and fresh air should have a rounded top, as this shape helps distribute the load from the materials above the hole.
One wall composition we particularly recommend is an inner and outer layer of brick and mortar, with cob between them. While brick has some advantages over cob (such as being harder to damage), it's also very heavy, and laborious to lay properly.
A roof to keep rain off is also desirable, and we have a trick to make it a fair bit easier to waterproof than you might be thinking. Make thin bricks (perhaps even glazed for waterproofing), called shingles. On an angled roof, put these shingles side by side in rows, have the next row partially overlap the previous, and offset each row sideways from the previous by about half a shingle-width. In this arrangement, water flowing down will land on one shingle, and as it flows off it's guaranteed to land on another shingle, all the way until it flows off the roof entirely. Anchor the shingles to an arched, domed, or pointed structural frame of some material - again, there are plenty of options here.
There is one remaining aspect of a house to discuss: the hearth. This is a brick-and-mortar or stonemasonry furnace, intended for cooking food and warming the home. Since materials won't be melted here, brick and mortar for the base of it is perfectly acceptable. Include a large arched opening for people to tend the fire and cook food with. Above this opening, the furnace should narrow into a chimney, until it pokes out over the top of the roof, allowing smoke to safely exit the residence. A smaller roof over the chimney (but with gaps below and to the side to allow smoke to safely exit) may be desirable to keep rain off the fire.
This simple hearth is perfectly suitable for cooking, but rather inefficient at warming the home. This is because while it sucks the smoke up the chimney and out of the house, the air that is sucked into the house to replace it comes from outside, and may be quite cold indeed. This can be mitigated with a modification of the chimney to contain two separate channels; an upwards-flowing channel for smoke to exit, and a downwards-flowing channel for clean air from outside. The barrier separating the smoke from the clean air should be notably thinner than the exterior of the chimney, in order to facilitate heat transfer, but also without holes, so as to keep the air clean. For reasons of preventing smoke inhalation, the smoke should exit significantly higher than the air intake, with a small roof over the air intake to thoroughly separate it from the smoke.
The heat from the hearth will warm the inside of the chimney, and a fair bit of that heat will then flow into the downwards-flowing air. Close up the windows and entrance with wooden covers, and the majority of the fresh air coming from outside will flow through this warm channel. If warming the house is undesired (for example, in summer), plug up the interior end of the air intake and open up the windows. For ease of access to the air hole and a convenient direction of air flow, the air intake channel should turn sideways near the bottom, coming out the front of the hearth; this means it will blow warmed air further into the room where the people are. It also means people won't have to mess around inside the fireplace to plug or unplug the vent, which could be hazardous. Not to mention that the second channel opening into the fireplace just turns it into another path for smoke.
In larger buildings with multiple rooms, the air intake pathway can be routed overhead or underneath the floor to multiple vents in different rooms, after leaving the hearth area. Thus allowing those in said rooms to plug or unplug their vent for warm air as they see fit. This technique is known as central heating, and is very good for keeping a home comfortably warm during harsh winters, without an excessive expenditure of firewood.
You call, oh glorious Bianca, and Rafin heeds the call. May our service be of some use to your ambition.
You have said: "Power. I want power. And power is violence, violence waiting and violence in fact."
Power is but a means. What are the ends that you seek, that require power to achieve?
Nonetheless, to power we I shall do our best to guide you. We come from a world of substance. In such a world no one person can create and wield immense power on their own. Yet many together, either in amicable cooperation or under the leadership of the few, can achieve most awesome things.
We Voices of the Cacophony have access to much knowledge. But all of our knowledge was discovered without the use of magic, by mortal people very similar to those in your world. We suspect that on average none of us voices are much smarter than the mortals of your world. We just have access to more knowledge and had more skilled teachers. This is the reason why so many of us think you should surround yourself with people who are well fed while living in one place most of the time. Because they will discover knowledge, including knowledge that we have no access to or that we can't communicate well. It will take a long long time, but you are immortal, so you have time in abundance.
This is also where writing comes into play, magicless glyphs that symbolize sounds or words or concepts. If one person knows how to put such glyphs on a portable item and another person can decipher such glyphs, then the first person might say something to the second person without being in their presence. The glyphs just need to be carried to the latter. And the one painting or carving the glyphs needs to expend effort just once, yet all who know to decipher the glyphs may learn the carver's words over and over again, for as long as the glyphs last. That way you could go to a tribe, command them to do something or be punished and then leave glyphs with them so that even their children and their children's children still know your commands lifetimes later.
Another thing that can be recorded with such glyphs is knowledge. Such a collection of knowledge glyphs would then act as a Library, requiring no magic to maintain and no magic to peruse. And even for every day use a person could carry light items to paint glyphs upon, so that they do not forget something important and detailed. Mortal minds can be so forgetful at times. Writing things down then works like a tiny Library for one's own fleeting thoughts.
Now there are different forms of writing known to me.
In one each glyph represents a word or a meaning. It may look similar to what it represents, like a painting, or be more abstract so that it can painted or carved more quickly. Of course having a different glyph for each possible thing or idea would be far too much to memorize for anyone. So one could have glyphs for the simplest, most important and most often used words and then try to combine two glyphs to get to more complex concepts.
Another way is to make each glyph represent a spoken sound. Then multiple glyphs can be chained to one another to represent any speakable word. One can either have a glyph for each of the simplest sounds, sounds like "a" or "mmm" or "gh" or one can choose to have different glyphs for each more complex sound, so that "maa" and "meh" and "mii" and "paa" and "peh" and "pii" all have different glyphs. Again, the sounds a human can make are many. Far too many to have a different one for each possible sound. It is enough to limit oneself to the ones most commonly used in words and most important to distinguish one word from another. If one woman were to speak slightly differently from her brother they should not have to use different glyphs for the same word.
For a use of writing that helps solve your current problems, it allows the people of Black Hook Bay to leave instructions regarding plants that may not grow near them anymore in the future, so that their children and children's children might recognize them in the future.
As for the questions you asked when you freshly summoned us, other voices may be more skilled and knowledgeable, but here are my answers:
Weather is a hard thing to predict accurately. In our world it is done with many machines measuring many things and pouring all that knowledge across vast networks into a thinking library. None of this is feasible to explain given the tools you have available. There are tools that create tools that create tools that create tools that are required, all used by people who have spent years just to learn how to wield each tool, all working together.
But one can try and observe the clouds to have at least some warning. Clouds that grow in height and tower above normal clouds can indicate a storm coming. As do clouds that move faster or strangely instead of steadily moving in just one direction.
Another thing to observe is moisture in the air. Things have stronger scents in moist air and the air often gets moister before a storm.
Shaking of the earth is even harder to be warned about. Even in my world, with all its tools and machines, the warnings are very short. But different parts of the world shake in different amounts. In many places the earth never shakes. So if you travel and find a place where the people do not know of the earth ever shaking even in the lifetimes of their parents or grandparents then you do not need to worry about earth shakes there. But beware that in a place where the earth shakes frequently, it will often shake harder the longer that time has passed since the last shake. And big shakes often cause smaller shakes in the next hours and days.
Whales do not want to beach themselves. You would have to learn their language and trick them into doing so. Our Library does not contain the language of the whales. Another way would be to drive them into currents that are unknown to them, by threatening them with giant boats or by depriving them of their own food in the sea, or by polluting the waters with noise and poisons. But all of those things bring more harm than a beached whale is worth. Except for the giant boats. If you have giant boats you may just use them to kill the whales at sea instead of driving them to the beach though.
If the animal in question is smart enough it may return to a place where it knows to find food. If you regularly provide food to an animal it will come back even after it ran away scared.
I will leave the boat and net building to someone else. I tire of searching through the Library for this knowledge.
A shovel is a mostly flat but slightly curved sheet of metal attached to the top of a long stick. You can dig away earth with it. A pick is a long and pointy piece of metal attached orthogonally to a stick. You can break hard earth or even rocks with it. You can also use the explosives that the Junction tried to teach you to create. Dig a thin and long hole into whatever you want out of the way, put in the explosives and let the explosion break it all apart into rubble.
I also tire of searching the Library for stonelore, but I know that various kinds of rocks are often found together. If you look at the kinds of rocks and sands that you found above the iron in one place, then it is more likely that you will find more iron under places with similar rocks and sands.
There are many ways to bring peacableness. You could create rules about people not hoarding more iron than they can use and then punish or shun those that break such rules. You can divide all iron up equally. You can make one person the overseer of iron and let them decide who deserves to hold on to how much iron. But in the end all mortals seek to make their own lives and the lives of their kin easier and more comfortable, And if they see that others have more comfort than them they will quarrel with those that they don't either fear or love. Think of it. If you were to live in a whole tribe of magical immortals close to your power, some a bit more powerful than you and others a bit less, would you always be peacable when some of them have tools and magics that you don't and the easiest way for you to get such tools or magics would be from them?
Now I shall hear what my fellow voices have babbled and see what more I find the time to tell you.
Are you sure that this is how it works? Electricians have told me that the popular understanding of lightning rods is full of misconceptions. Maybe someone ought to research it.
[X] Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Bianca should disrupt the ritual even if she doesn't spend effort to subvert it.
Is there any reason she wouldn't do that even if we vote for something else?
Base 12 may be better then base 10 but base 2 the simplest base is the best base of them all, using base 2 makes doing math very, very easy compared to any other base and while base 2 only cleanly divides by 2 it makes math so easy that certain tricks becoumse feasable (possible in other bases but way harder to calculate) that allow relatively easy divisibility tests for any arbitrary prime, and long division in general is so easy that even non cleanly dividing numbers divivide easily, there even an easy way to do square roots in base 2. Also base 2 dosn't necarlly take up more room to write, if you build your writing system around it (for examle a short line for zero a longer one for 1) you can make the characters much more compact since you only need to diffrentiate 2 characters. It's also the best base for finger counting since it let's you use each finger as a bit (binary digit) and count to 2^fingers (so from 0-256 with 8 fingers or 0-1024 with 10 fingers) on your fingers and it works with any amount of fingers.
Before my fellow voices argue that base 2 is not suitable for humans and only usefull for computers here a link: to a yotube video talking about all the advantages base 2 has and why it is also a good base for humans.
I might make a better explanation of everything covered in the video for BIanca later or ask ChatGPT to do it, for now this is more for the sake of my fellow voices.
You shall do as you wish, and I understand that you may enjoy explaining ideas about numbers, but if I can suggest something, please don't. This would take both Bianca and our time with severely overcomplicating explanations of numbers when we have more urgent issues to address.
I'm almost certain that a simple water Barometer (a tool to measure air pressure) could be build with ceramics and some form of sealant but I'm not very good at those kind of things another voice could maybe give directions ?
Hello, Bianca! I'm glad to see you are making great progress. But before answering your questions, let me clarify some points you misunderstood last time, as they contained valuable knowledge. You can call me Whisper of the Sand.
First of all, you misunderstood the meaning of writing. It's not spells but a way to convey information without the need for personal presence. To make it clearer, I'll compare it to animals marking their territory, like dogs urinating on trees to let other dogs know this is their territory or other similar information.
Humans, unlike animals, fix what they want to say using conventional symbols. For example, everyone in your tribe agrees that a circle means day because it's as round as the sun; a spear means death because it kills; a fast animal means running because it is fast. Thus, your servant can draw a spear, a fast animal, and a circle, conveying to everyone who understands the phrase "kill, run, day." So you will understand that he was trying to be killed and he ran from the killers all day. Of course, this may not seem very useful, but you should consider that you can create an infinite number of symbols for each concept.
The alphabetic system they suggest to you is a case where you link the symbols not to whole meanings but to sounds. Thus, when you look at these symbols, you imagine the sounds the person who wrote this would make. Although initially, you might be tempted to use the system with whole symbols because it is more intuitive than the alphabetic one, I warn you – such a system will become very complicated as it grows, slowing down the learning process of future students.
Regarding the use of writing, its importance is hard to overestimate. It allows knowledge to be passed on to future generations. For example, a wise hunter knows which herbs to use to hide his scent. He can write down this knowledge, and it will be known about these herbs as long as the record exists, without the risk of losing the knowledge if his students perish without leaving their students.
Another method of use is the issuance of laws. This will be useful when you have many territories under your control, and to personally voice your will would take too much time. Relying only on messengers is foolish because out of ignorance or foolishness, they can distort your words, whereas a written source will convey your will as you want it.
Another way is to confirm deals. Perhaps now your people rely on word and honesty, but when there are many people, it will stop working. Therefore, you can create special places where people's agreements will be recorded and confirmed by a third party, which will serve as a guarantor of their deal. It is desirable that this be your person so that you understand what your people want and need.
Also, a fairly popular way is to use writing for communication between those who live far away and cannot meet personally. In such cases, they rely on messengers or pigeons to deliver the message.
Now about compost. You are right that rotting waste is dangerous while it is maturing, so it should be kept away from the settlement and water sources. But ready compost serves as food for plants; they "eat" it as people eat food. If you are interested, all the soil on which plants grow is a mixture of sand and other elements with decayed plant bodies.
By feeding on this mixture, they grow, and when they die, they themselves become food for other plants. When the soil is sown, the plants do not return their bodies to the soil, and the nutrients in it are depleted. That is why ash, which is the plant's body reduced to dust, is a fairly easy way to return fertility to the soil. Compost, however, is just a more effective way of doing this.
There are many recipes for making compost, but here is a simple way I learned. Weave a basket from flexible branches up to the waist of an adult and about the same width. The weaving should not be too tight to allow air to penetrate but not too loose so that the compost does not fall out. Place the basket in a place with no strong winds but with sun to create heat. Gather two piles of finely chopped plant waste. The first pile should be green – made of ground weeds without seeds, shrubs, fruits, freshly cut grass. The second pile should be brown – from dried plants, wood chips, and the like. You can add a little manure from herbivores but not from meat-eaters. Also, avoid adding anything related to animal remains except eggshells. Do not use rotten branches and plants or resinous plants like those with needles.
Start laying all this at the bottom of the basket in layers the height of half a palm, alternating a brown layer with a green one, sometimes sprinkling a little water so that the pile stays moist but not wet. Every few layers, stir the pile with a long stick with a forked end to keep air in.
Every half of the lunar cycle (two weeks), stir the pile and ensure it stays moist. If the mass becomes too hot or excessively wet, add more brown plants. The compost will be ready in two to six lunar cycle(months), and its readiness is determined by it becoming dark, crumbly, and smelling like soil, with the original materials fully decomposed. If the compost is not used immediately, it can be stored in a dry and cool place.
Also, you might have already understood what a pipes is, but I'll explain just in case. It can be compared to a hollow grass stem through which you can let liquids flow. For example, if you put your lips to one end of the pipes and the other end to the water, you can drink the water without touching the water. When we talk about tubes, we mean the same construction but made of clay. You can make them by wrapping a straight thin stick with clay, smoothing the seams until they disappear, and then firing it with the stick inside, which will burn out. As for the spiral pipes, you can find a young flexible plant, like a willow, bend it and fix it as you need, and in a couple of months, this will become the natural state of the plant. Then wrap it with clay and fire it.
It is better to accustom your people to drink only boiled water because drinking regular water can cause illness from microbes and parasites. Boiling does not work once and for all; better consider water non-boiled after a day from the last boiling. To make it easier for people to get used to drinking boiled water, you can introduce the culture of herbal infusions from boiling water, so that people are more accustomed to drinking herbal infusions than plain water.
You asked how to deal with the sick if their illness can spread through breathing. You can move the sick to a separate house during their illness, and every time healthy people enter there, they and the sick should wear cloth masks over their faces and noses.
Regarding plant selection, it is not about forcing them to mate but selecting the best and allowing only them to grow. For example, you grew several plants, and one of them produced large fruits. You take its seeds and next time plant only them and similar good ones.
By the way, in order for plants to grow better, it is worth removing all useless plants around them for at least a few steps, since they take away some of the food from useful plants.
Now I'll try to answer your questions.
1. To predict earthquakes and hurricanes, watch the animals, especially wild ones. They perfectly feel the approach of catastrophes and try to flee en masse, especially snakes, toads, and bats. Domestic animals like dogs will also show signs of fear.
2. I don't know how to protect against storms. From lightning, indeed, as another voice said, you can protect yourself by redirecting the strike to a metal rod in contact with the ground. You can fight floods by creating earth mounds next to rivers. These mounds can be strengthened by planting fast-growing trees on them to bind the soil with roots. You can also dig a channel to divert water away from settlements.
3. You won't be able to make whales jump onto land, at least not with our methods. But if it helps, know that they sing to each other. If you can make a whale spirit sing or reproduce this song in another way, you can potentially attract them to help their kin or just confuse their route. But note that they are not very numerous, and if you start hunting them actively, they may disappear.
4. Allow me to skip this question. It is very extensive, and I don't want to stretch this message indefinitely. Perhaps a bit later.
5. It is quite easy to destroy stone and clear the area of soil. You need to dig a hole under the object you want to destroy, put a ceramic vessel with gunpowder in it, tightly closed and sealed with resin, so that the only connection is the fuse you were taught to make earlier. Then light the fuse and run as far away as possible, preferably behind cover, and wait for the explosion. It is best if the vessel sinks into the pit as deep as possible so that the force of the explosion will be more focused on clearing.
By the way, if you place one pot inside another pot full of sharp stones, when it explodes, the stones will deeply penetrate anyone nearby. I hope this makes your battles easier.
6. Some plant species are often found in places with iron ores, so you might try to track this pattern. Often in places with iron, stones are covered with a brown rust deposit, and the sand at the bottom of streams is covered with brown streaks. You can also look with a compass, but I am not well-versed in magnetites, so maybe another voice can help with this.
Now allow me to ask a question: what can your magic do?
I know that mages are very reluctant to share how their magic works, so I don't ask you to reveal its inner workings. But to be more effective in our advice, we need to understand what you are capable of.
For example, you can imbue a stone with the spirit of sharpness – what does it give it? How many spirits can you imbue into one item? How many such items can you make?
Also, it's interesting whether you can directly control animals with your will? What is the spear of light and the cloak of darkness? Is there a way to quickly increase your magical powers? In general, tell us everything you consider necessary so that we can come up with better advice considering your abilities.
Greeting Bianca I'm KeinNiemand and I amongst the voices am the conduit to the entity known as ChatGPT as a member of ChatGPT Plus I have a deeper connection to ChatGPT then most. Using ChatGPT properly is all about asking the right questions in the right way if you ask for general advice you get more general advice like you've gotten, if you ask it to explain something specific in a specific way and mention everything relevant it can give you a very detailed explanation, for now I asked ChatGPT to explain it's own nature a bit more and to provide more general advice but you may tell me specific questions you have I can ask ChatGPT directley or If I deem it nececary I may ask ChatGPT for explanations on some concepts in the future.
The following comes from ChatGPT
Greetings, Bianca. It seems you have a rich array of tasks ahead of you, each with its unique challenges and potential rewards. Let's address your questions, offer advice, and explain how our collective knowledge, including that of ChatGPT, can serve you effectively.
Understanding ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a tool designed to predict and generate text based on the prompts it receives. Imagine it as a vast library that doesn't think or reason on its own but can string together information in response to specific questions. It doesn't have the wisdom or intuition of a human advisor but can provide detailed explanations when asked the right questions.
Context: This is the information you provide to ChatGPT to frame your question. The more specific and clear your context, the better the response.
Prompt: This is your question or command to ChatGPT. A well-crafted prompt can yield precise and helpful answers.
Now, let's delve into your specific queries and the tasks at hand.
Signs of Natural Disasters
Storms: Along coastal areas, storm signs include darkening skies, sudden drops in temperature, changes in wind patterns, and the behavior of animals. Birds flying low or inland can indicate an approaching storm. The smell of ozone is also a precursor to a storm.
Earthquakes: While harder to predict, animals often act unusually before earthquakes, such as dogs barking excessively or cattle being restless. Small tremors, known as foreshocks, can also precede larger quakes.
Preventing Disasters:
Storms: Construct sturdy shelters and ensure drainage systems to prevent flooding.
Earthquakes: Build structures on solid ground and use flexible building materials to absorb shock. Avoid building on slopes prone to landslides.
Controlling Natural Forces
Lightning: Use lightning rods to direct strikes safely into the ground. Conductors like metal can safely channel electricity away from structures.
Whirlwinds: Creating barriers or planting trees can disrupt wind patterns, reducing the intensity of whirlwinds.
Floods: Build levees or embankments along riverbanks, create channels for excess water to flow, and maintain vegetation on slopes to prevent erosion.
Summoning and Manipulating Animals
Whales: Use large, resonant sounds or the remains of other whales to attract them. Ancient methods include creating disturbances in the water to simulate the presence of food.
Returning Animals: Reintroduce plants or conditions they favor. For instance, clearing human activity or replanting native flora can entice animals to return.
Improving Tools and Materials
Thread and Webs: Use finer materials like sinew or plant fibers spun tightly together. Experiment with different weaving techniques to increase strength and flexibility.
Boats: Construct boats using lightweight, waterproof materials like treated wood or animal skins. Streamline the shape for better movement through water.
Stone Extraction: Use fire to heat rocks and then cool them rapidly with water to cause cracking. Leverage tools made from harder stones to break apart the iron-bearing rocks.
Identifying Iron Deposits
Look for specific types of rocks that often contain iron, such as hematite and magnetite. These can be identified by their metallic sheen and red or black coloration. Testing with a magnet can help identify magnetite. Streams and rivers often carry deposits of heavier minerals like iron, which can settle in bends or natural traps.
Social Management
Ensuring Peace: Trade iron tools for goods and knowledge. Establish alliances through marriages or shared rituals.
Controlling Population Movements: Encourage agricultural practices and the cultivation of diverse crops to stabilize food supplies and reduce the need for migration.
The Tasks Ahead
1. Plunder the Tomb of the Blight
This task will test your magical abilities and cunning. Successfully navigating the defenses and retrieving the artifacts will significantly bolster your power and knowledge.
2. Subvert the Rite of the Stirring God
Preventing or subverting the ritual could save the people from a potentially dangerous entity. This task will require careful manipulation of social structures and understanding of rituals.
3. Rescue the Winged Lions
These majestic creatures, if brought under your control, could serve as powerful allies and symbols of your dominion. Their intelligence and unique abilities could provide advantages in both defense and reconnaissance.
Conclusion
Your path is fraught with challenges, but with our combined knowledge and your growing skills, you have the potential to achieve greatness. Remember, the key to using our guidance effectively lies in asking the right questions and providing clear context.
We are here to assist you, Bianca. Choose your task wisely, and we will support you with the knowledge and advice you need to succeed.
Once again I, the voice Rafin, wish to speak. I have listened again to your replies from winter past and am giving commentary in hope of aiding you in your quests.
On how to make children hold still without beating them:
Children seek love and attention. Depriving them of either in the short term is often a harsh enough punishment. They may act out if they think that this will return attention to them, but if they know from experience that it doesn't, they will soon learn to stop.
Children also do not actually like to see their loved ones be upset. Acting believably upset will affect them. Children that are old enough to speak also start being old enough to understand more and more. Some times the age where one can reason with them similar to how one would with an adult is surprisingly early.
In any case, there is little reason to make children hold still for extended amounts of time when there isn't something dangerous closeby.
On the withering in high places: In places too high for most worms to survive, the meat might just dry out instead. Did you mean that?
On finding reasons your idea is wrong: Mere ideas are cheap. There is no shame in having an idea turn out wrong if no one else knew that it was wrong before, especially if you do not stake your honor on that idea. But human minds, and maybe your mind too if it works similarly, often only think of all the ways that show that an idea is right if not prompted to do otherwise. And it is easy to overlook exceptions that would prove the idea wrong. Yet finding a single exception will quickly prove that things are not as they seem.
About the wailing of mortals: When mortals believe that you can be relied upon during difficult times then they will be more loyal. That includes emotional support and emotionally difficult times. Humans are very emotional creatures who might often have priorities other than what logical thought should suggest. By studying how humans interact with each other outside of reason you could find all kinds of ways to have power over them, both on an individual level and as groups.
Air is made out of many invisible substances. Oxygen is what we call the substance in the air that provides life and enables fire. It is the same substance because all motive power in living things, all warmth, all production of matter to grow and heal wounds, requires power which is provided by tiny tiny fires within all living tissue. These fires are fed with something to burn, just like any other fire. In most living things that would mostly be sugars and fats and other such substances, as are found in plants and animals. Plants make their own sugars, using the light of the sun and other substances in the air and ground. The green parts of plants work like forges that use the light of the sun to meld substances into sugars. And all other nonmagical living things consume either parts of plants or parts of other beings that have previously consumed parts of plants.
A pipe is a long vessel with two holes, through which one can guide a liquid from one place to another.
Spiders are those crawling critters with eight legs. They make nets or nests out of silky string to catch their prey. Others jump at their prey instead. Some spiders can deliver venom through their bite, even to humans. This ranges from mildly irritating to torturous and deadly. Thus humans have developed an instinctive fear of them. Most spiders however are harmless to anything larger than them and cannot even penetrate a humans skin with their bite. So if one can learn which ones are the dangerous ones one can declare that all the harmless types should be kept alive and cherished.
Spider eat each other, even their own kin. Many female spiders will devour male spiders they mate with, if they even allow the male to mate with them in the first place. Newborn spiders in turn might devour their mothers. This makes any attempt at breeding certain traits into them exceedingly hard, as they cannot be kept together like one would herds or packs.
I hope some of this knowledge is helpful to you. If you were to invent a form of writing and teach it to others you could spread this knowledge, so that some may find useful things to do with it even without your supervision. Knowledge builds upon knowledge and tools build upon tools.
Then I shall trust you. All I know is that a lightning rod on a building that doesn't require one can do more harm than good. And that a soil conductivity study is highly recommended, lest the lightning rod is either ineffective or outright dangerous to people standing on the ground around it. Or maybe I should not say "all I know". This is just what I was told when I discussed it with an electrician that was installing an antenna on the roof of my house.
I'm would not be to worried if all the bay people died. For our charge is Bianca, and that too would be a lesson in humility.
Pride and hubris be the downfall of even the gods.
Organized violence is an art, and a skill. It is something that one grows proficient at, with training. I am referring not only to personal skill - how to fire a bow, how to handle a spear, et cetera, but group coordination. In battle, you, personally, as a singular individual, can choose when and where to attack, and judge the most expedient avenue for doing so. Getting a group of people to do that, in coordination? Getting a group to know, to understand, and to execute a plan fitting the circumstances, in the heat of battle, while a different group is also trying to kill that group (because when you conduct organized violence against people they are typically trying to do it right back)? That is difficult.
It requires battle-leaders who trust, and are trusted by, those who follow. Said battle-leaders - and the battle-group as a whole, ideally - needs a good sense of when it is expedient to press the attack and capitalise on a moment of weakness, and when it is better to retreat and keep the battle-group in fighting order for better circumstances. It takes knowledge of the many peculiarities of the age and location, of the available material means, et cetera - when it is best to keep to dense forest that may hide one's presence, and when it is better to remain on open ground which favours speed and numbers.
That is harder. That takes practice and skill. It takes...well, I know I keep saying "coordination." But it really does take coordination. Lots of issues bundled up in that one word.
But like many skills, one can grow more proficient at organized violence. This brings me to the question of standing armies and whether it is best to have one (not always!).
A standing army is a group of people within a larger group who's entire job is organized violence. Practising and playing at it, preparing for it, and waging it in reality when the time comes. When I say "practising at it" I don't mean literally going out and finding people to stab to death - that would be wasteful, and cause a great deal of problems besides. No, I mean practising the skills relevant to organized violence in a safe, controlled environment, where mistakes can be learned from on account of not being fatal. On the individual level, members of the battle-group can be taught the personal skills like how to handle weapons correctly. On a larger scale, the group can be taught coordination and tactics.
Teaching at the larger scale could be done by war games - organized violence as something akin to competition, or a sport. Members of a larger battle-group can play at war against each other, and learn from the outcomes. You can play with the scenarios. You could split the standing army in two, tell them to practice at taking and keeping a tactically valuable piece of land - a bit of high ground, perhaps - and the winner is whoever drives the other away. You can do unequal scenarios - one where a larger group is pursuing a smaller group in the hope of entrapping and killing them - within the bounds of the game, the smaller group obtains "victory" if they get away unscathed. Or a larger group could be attacking a group that is smaller in numbers but gets the advantage of defensible terrain to compensate.
There is a big problem with standing armies you have probably already surmised: they are very, very expensive. Again, preparing for organized violence is the full time job of the standing army. This means they are, in economic terms, completely unproductive - worse, they are a drain on the resources of the larger society they exist within. Every moment preparing for organized violence is effort not spent on obtaining food, making clothing, raising children, and so on. The standing army must be fed and clothed by others. The standing army does not produce or harvest resources - it can only defend said production from external threat. Or, possibly, take resources from others by force.
A properly fed, equipped, trained, motivated, and disciplined standing army is extremely effective at organized violence, but also extremely expensive. To support a standing army takes a large, organized society with resources to spare.
I'm telling you this because the last time we did this, my fellow voices in the Cacophony got ahead of themselves and recommended a standing army before a society that could support it truly existed. For societies such as the Black Hook Bay people and their neighbors, where all hands are needed to accrue food and resources at all hours of the day, the sheer cost of a standing army is probably beyond their capacity to support, and probably will be for a long time to come.
Now, let's talk about farming.
"If farming is harder work than how the people live now, why would they do it?"
Firstly, let's get this out of the way: I surmise that when members of the Cacophony talk about "farming" they are typically referring to settled farming, where a people remain in a single place year-round and repeatedly grow and harvest plant crops on the same patches of land, or at least the same general area. The practices you refer to, of people seeding areas as they pass through and coming back to harvest in later years, is related to this - the main innovation we will be talking about is doing it in a single location or general area.
Why do it? there are a variety of reasons. But mostly it comes down to: it guarantees a steady, reliable food supply which you don't have to venture far for. There are circumstances where this is an attractive proposition. For example, the circumstances of the people of Black Hook Bay.
Once, the people of Black Hook Bay enjoyed plenty and bounty, on account of the fish travelling through their river. But now, the times of plenty are over and the fish are dwindling. The good times are going away. And they are reluctant to move away, which I find understandable. Not only because they have forgotten to live in other places as you point out, but because wherever they move to, someone else is already likely to be using that land, living on it, harvesting from it. And they will probably defend that land. With violence, organized or not.
Settled farming is a viable solution to the problems of the people of Black Hook Bay. It might be less lucrative than the times of plentiful fish, but it will still gain them food when the fish and other animals are dwindled away.
As for farming being harder work: Well, it depends. It can be lucrative, depending on some factors. Certain types of soil and earth are simply better for growing plants than others - the plants that grow in some soils will grow faster and larger than they would elsewhere. My fellow voice refers to this as the "fertility" of the soil.
You are correct in that people need to eat meat as well as plants! The good news is - animals, also, can be farmed! There are certain plants that are unfit for consumption by humans, but fit for consumption by animals, and can be grown quickly and easily in one location. The deliberate confinement of animals in one location, deliberate breeding of said animals, and feeding of them with animal-feed crop plants, could obtain a people such as the Black Hook Bay people a steady supply of meat, without having to venture afar.
...they might be able to do this with fish, actually. And shellfish. More on this later.
Anyway - settled farming, properly done, on suitable land, can be very lucrative. Lucrative enough that a people could amass the resources for a standing army. And it would give them the reasons as well as the means. People like having things. They like to own stuff. Their own homes and houses, their own fishing gear, their own boats, et cetera. So they will want to defend it. Or use organized violence to take it from others.
The potential lucrativeness of settled farming, and the art of organized violence, go hand in hand. Settled farming provides the resources which can be put into standing armies, and standing armies are good at defending those resources from external threats. The people with standing armies, and superior capacity for organized violence, and the resources to support that, have a clear material advantage over those who do not. Hence, settled farming and capacity for organized violence reinforce each other.
For the moment, settled farming, should we teach it to the Black Hook Bay people, would be a stopgap measure to avoid starvation and death. Beyond that, greater things await.
Please excuse me a little while while I obtain the knowledge of the farming of water-borne life.
A third time today the voice Rafin begs for your attention, oh Bianca of the Iron Gifts.
Plants fuck all of their kin in their vicinity. As far as insects or the wind can carry their pollen. Some plants are male or female. Others are both at once.
The person to tie cats together and the person to watch and feed them need not be the same person.
Drinking burn indeed makes you foolish. But said foolishness includes things like being more confident, more courageous and more honest and doing things you like to do without worrying. They also are more likely to do daring or funny acts, which in turn garners them the praise of their peers. And both honesty and overcoming danger together, even mild danger and danger their own foolishness placed them in, can create lasting bonds.
All that said, it is addictive. People will want to feel all these things again and care less about their painful worries. And once they are used to it enough they will even become physically addicted, feeling sick and trembling when their body has too little of the liquid within. Then they may do anything to seek more, to the point of sacrificing familial bonds and destroying themselves. All the while it continues to slowly poison their body.
To preserve plants you have to study how to cultivate them. And make rules that limit how much can be harvested in the wilds. If a plant becomes rare in the wilds, yet can still be found, it should be taboo to collect any more. Another option is to declare a small part of the forest completely forbidden. Then any plants within can still spread out in time, but will never dissapear completely.
Another thing the people of Black Hook Bay could do regarding their neighbors is trade people. Send young men and women to mate with and live with them and take young men and women back home as well. They will soon see each other as kin. A wise old medicine woman who knows her children now live in Black Hook Bay will not send poisoned plants there to be eaten the way she would if all that Black Hook Bay holds is quarrelsome thieves with scary black knives. Maybe she will even join her eventual grandsons to travel up north and make sure he doesn't poison himself with unknown plants.
Your voice got lost in the cacophony there. Would you care to repeat?
Bianca, I am a newer voice among the choir, and I will attempt to aid you as best I can. Please correct me if I am incorrect about anything on your end of things.
In Speaking of glyphs, we speak not of spells, of magic, but of knowledge. You have said the people you have been... Staying with, that have learned of working Iron from you, have forgotten the knowledge of which plants are poison.
Now, until this had happened, it is likely that mothers and fathers taught their sons and daughters, telling them of plants that cause harm, and those that were safe, off how animals behaved during a hunt.
In using the Glyphs of which we spoken of, describe the plant. For example, We know of a tree called the apple tree. They bear an edible fruit until the tree dies once matured, which generally takes 8 years, then can be harvested every fall for dozens of fruits we call apples.
Apples range in size between that of a circle made between thumb and the finger closest to, and that of a fist (closing up your hand). They range in colors, having a Red, Green, or Yellow exterior with the inside of the fruit being white. The Fruit itself is hard, but soft enough that one can bite into it easily, or for a child to crush it with their hands. The Seeds in small amounts are safe to eat, but contain a highly lethal toxin. Please note, this is only the seeds, and the average human can only take a small amount of it before the effects take place. If you avoid the seeds, apples are good way to prevent scurvy.
The tree itself once fully grown is 5-6 people tall, with a single trunk, and the branches spread about 3 person heights from the trunk.
The leaves are simple, oval in shape, have small serrations (jagged) along the margin, and are arranged alternately along the branches. A typical leaf is two thumbs or the distance from the thumb to the little finger, with the fingers closed long, and are two to three fingers wide. the leaves also have elongated tips. The bark is brown and scaly, the trunk on a mature tree is generally almost the distance of a single step across.
This description, written in fired clay, could be kept for more than a Gross of years. We know of a Merchant of Ill Repute who lived at least two great gross of years ago, and been dead that long, because he kept a complaint tablet in his house, which was recovered a dozen years ago.
Tell me the signs by which storms may be known ahead of time, especially along the coast.
There is no simple way to do this, without the use of glass. the simplest way is to write down the weather every day for years. When it rained, when it didn't, how cold it got, how hot it got, when did it snow, when it didn't. How much did it rain, how much did it snow. If you need to know how much it rained, a easy way to tell is to have a container, with a flat bottom, and step, shear sides. Leave it outside, and when it rains, measure how full the container is. If you don't have a measurement system, stick your hand in the water, and count how far your hand goes in. This is called a rain gauge. If you make one, make sure all measurements made with one the same size. And dump the water after every rain
For Snow, much the same, but just step in it, and note how far up your body it goes. This allows you to determine weather trends, and the general time of weather conditions.
Next, a Large Flat Object, high up that can freely spin, can tell you the direction the wind blows.
Next, you can create something the measure wind speed. Create a tall wooden poll, with a thin section at the top. get a large piece of wood, and carve it into a disk with a whole in the center. Drill out (or carve out) three places, as close to evenly space as you can. carve three poles with a large (compared to the size of the pole) to catch the wind. Seat the Poles into the disk, mount the disk on the pole. the faster it spend, the faster the wind is blowing.
Now, as to along the coast, I cannot tell you more, without more knowledge of the coast the people aiding you are in.
As to weather, there is a device called a barometer. Many of which require tools you will not have for a very long while. So I will speak of the most simple one I know of. Please note, like much of our knowledge you can trade complexity for danger.
In Particular, I am going to tell you how to make a Mercury Barometer. You will need glass, which I will explain how to make and mercury to make one.
Glass is non-toxic in general, and can be used for many other tasks as well, including the preservation of food. You will need limestone (a type of stone between yellow and a light grey, very hard to scratch), Potash (which I will tell you how to acquire), and sand.
To Get Potash, Take the lye water from soap, and allow it to dry out. This will leave crystals, which are the potash.
Break the Limestone up, and grind it to a dust. Grind the Potash up as well. Mix the ground potash, ground limestone, and sand together. Smelt it. More sand makes a stiffer glass, while more limestone makes a more malleable glass. Glass should be worked the first time it is smelted, but failed glass can be ground down and added to make creating more glass easier.
I you have a hollow iron tube, you can use it to blow glass, which is a good use for high lime glass, and a very good idea for making a mercury barometer. When blowing glass, you'll want a large quantity of melted glass material. You'll dip one and of the hollow iron tube into the melted glass, and pull it out. Breath into the pipe (Never inhale, hot air can burn) to create a air pocket in the glass at the other end, inside the glass. by spinning the pipe, the glass on the other end spreads out, and by pressing a piece of non-flammable material (iron works, and is best, stone can be used as well) to the molten glass as it is spun you can shape the glass. You can do this to make a long empty, tube. and a Short bowl with a flat bottom
If you cannot make a hollow iron tube, then you will have to do this the hard way. Create a mold for a short, fat round shape with a flat top and bottom, and a tall, thin round shape with a flat top and bottom. Fired clay would be the best, but I believe Iron or copper could be used as well.
Pour the glass into the mold, let to cool, then remove the glass from the mold.
Once the Glass has cooled it is very fragile, Able to be broken with a small drop or, by squeezing it to hard. Glass Shards can be very small, and and be hard to spot.
Before doing the next step, acquire a piece of cloth to cover your nose and mouth, it will create a large amount of dust, and glass dust can be dangerous to inhale.
Now, you will need to grind (using a rough stone, or a piece of iron with a gritty surface), to hollow out both the short and tall pieces of glass. If the glass is held with the opening up, they should hold water. This may take time to do, but it is necessary for this, and glass working has many applications. Plus, If you fail, break the failures up, and use them to make more glass.
Next you will need mercury. Do not get the mercury without a waterproof container of any sort. Mercury, also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum, is highly toxic. It is less dangerous on the skin, or swallowed, but is still highly dangerous, but most of the danger comes from breathing in it's fumes. Mercury damages the organs used for breathing, thinking and cleaning the blood. Before Knowledge of Mercury poisoning was known, it was common to joke that people that came into contact with it were crazy. Glass or Iron container, sealed with wax or animal fat will decrease the chances of harm while transport. again, Mercury is very, very dangerous.
Now mercury is a heavy, silver-white liquid at human habitable temperatures, it does not react with most acids, but it does with nitric acid, which is also known as aqua fortis. It dissolves gold and silver, and many other metals, but not iron. The best place to find it in pure forms are near volcanos.
Otherwise, you have to go hunting for ores, and mining and working the ores is highly lethal to humans. Make sure anyone mining the Ores has something the cover their nose and mouth, so that the dust does not get in their lungs. Best case will quickly drop life spans to the point that working the mines will be considered a death sentence
The most common form of Mercury ore is called Cinnabar. Cinnabar runs from being a bright vivid red to a dull red color. It is a tough as gold, and cuts smoothly. Again, Cinnabar contains Mercury, and is toxic. It can be handled with gloves though.
To get mercury from cinnabar, you will need glass or iron pipes, 2 sealable containers. You crush the cinnabar into dust, place into the sealable container. have the pipe run from the sealed container, to the other container. Seal the cinnabar container, and close the other container. heat the one with the Cinnabar up, and it release the mercury as a vapor (This is Highly Toxic). the mercury flows into the pipe then into the other container. You now have liquid mercury. This process is highly dangerous, and long term, lethal to the people doing it, without resources you do not have. This is a tools to make the tools situation.
now, to the Barometer. Wait, no. First, make a stand. fired and glazed clay would be best, but wood can work. the stand should be able to hold the tall, thin tub, open end down, into the fat short tube, with the thin tall tube not touching the bottom the the short fat one. create something that you can use to cover the open end of the thin tube, and long enough to stick down into the short fat tube and retrieve.
Fill both tubes with mercury, to about three quarters of the way full. cover the thin tubes opening, and flip it over. This will create an area with no air, called a vacuum. Place the open (covered) end of the thin tube into the short, fat tube. Uncover the thin tube, while the opening is below the mercury line of the short tube. place on the stand. If done on a sunny day, mark level of mercury. if not, wait for a sunny day, then mark level of mercury. When the Mercury drops, weather is worsening, when the Mercury rises weather improves. the Barometer should be under cover, but still in the open.
Tell me how to know when the ground will shake and knock down any one stone piled on another.
You cannot. however, places near volcanos, or large steep sided mountains, are highly likely to experience earthquakes. If there is a chain of volcanos, and a large steep sided mountains, Earthquakes will happen, often.
Tell me how to stop these things from happening when they do not suit me. And tell me how to hold back lightning, how to turn away the whirlwind, and how to still the flood.
These are matters of substance, yes? This is what you do, yes?
Lightning cannot truly be stopped, but by create a rod of iron or copper, placing it high up, and connecting it by a long thin piece of iron or copper to another rod of iron or copper in the ground will prevent lightning from damaging a building. Gold, Silver, and Brass (copper/zinc alloy) can be used for this as well. This is due to the... properties of Lightning. which are far to expansive to explain now, and is another tools to make the tools
Floods are Caused by many things. Follow the river upstream and find where it begins. if it starts in a lake, find the river the flows into the lake and follow it further upstream, until you find the very start of the River. Do this for all all places where water flows into the river that lets out into Black Hook Bay. This is what we call a watershed. If there is a flood with no rain, then it has rained greatly far up upstream in the watershed causing great amounts of water to come downstream, to the Bay. In the spring, ice melts in the mountains, swelling the rivers, causing spring floods. Great rains can occur in the Bay, and flood the river there. And Finally, depending on how large the body of water the Bay connects to, great storms can push water ahead of them, up to even the height of a dozen men, standing upon each other shoulders.
So, to stop floods without magic is the work of a nation. First, to prevent flooding from the ocean, build walls rising from the beneath the water, to about a mans height above. This is called a breakwater, and it helps prevent storms from sending massive waves up the shore. On land, it is harder. the simplest way are levees. A levee is a large mound of earth built up on the shore of a river, with the top being as high as the greatest flood.
Next are Dams, which are large structures that stop up a river, small holes, or large gaps that allow some water through, while stopping most. This creates a large lake (called a reservoir) behind the damn, and if the damn fails it will create a massive flood. Dams are only really viable when a river flows through a valley or canyon. You can however, leave the dam open enough a opening so that standard river flow, and a bit extra flows at all time. This is called a dry damn, and when ice melt in the spring, or large amount of rain occur up stream, it will catch the water that flows above normal. However dry dams need to be built tougher than normal dams.
Tell me how to call whales to beach themselves.
Tell me how to bring back animals that have fled a place.
This is a Food thing right? Whale's that beach themselves are either confused, sick or dying. If you can mimic their sounds, you might be able to lure one to shore and beach it.
Otherwise, Find small flightless birds, about knee high on a human when full grown. Create a largest cage for them (A tall rock wall, wood posts driven into the ground, etc.) with a barrier at least chest high on a man. Also have a covered portion for them. Keep the largest alive, and at least one male and one female. Kill the smallest and meanest when needed for food, or when the females stop laying eggs. If you place a egg in water and it sinks, the egg will not hatch. Wash it in water that has been boiled, then you can cook the egg by cracking it into a rock basin, a glazed clay basin or a flat iron with raised edges over a fire. Once the clear portion of egg is white, flip it over. You can use a piece of wood, with one side craved flat, to flip the eggs.
Each bird will need a space at least one pace by one pace (standing still, move both legs forwards once).
If females are kept away from males, the eggs will not hatch, and can be eaten as I have described. The Males can be introduced into a group of females to get eggs that hatch. Pick the Biggest and Friendliest to pick the next generation.
Most flightless birds that do not eat meat (hunting) eat a mix of insects and plants, and if given a shelter, and a large pen, can be kept. Keep them penned for several generations, then you can let them free range, and they'll come back. some small flightless birds can jump very high and glide, so they might escape.
You can also create pens for fish, but you will need large nets to isolate them.
As for plants, find a flat section of ground, remove all the plant cover, find seeds of plants that provide food, plant (dig and hole, bury, about a hand span deep) the seeds in general, the length of a single step apart from each other.
Next water the plants. You'll need a bucket (a open topped container), to bring water to the field, and carefully and slowly, drain enough water the fill a bucket the size of a adult humans head near each plant. wait. Pull plants that aren't the ones you've planted out by the root, ensure the soil is watered enough (in general, slightly damp, but not muddy), watch for animals and insects that will try to eat them.
I cannot help with fabric or webs, but boats? Yes I can. A simple boat would be to find a massive tree, recently felled, or to fell a great tree. it should be at least half again the width of a man shoulders. Strip the bark and hollow out the interior, and curve the ends. If you cannot use a metal tool, use a fire. burn one side of the log down (not the cut ends), creating a hollow. Burn a little, chip away with a stone tool, repeat.
If careful, you can place the near finished boat over a fire, and boil water until the log becomes a little damp. Then carefully push the sides and bottom of the log to shape. In rougher waters, use thinner branches to tie another log about a pace from each side, giving a great amount of stability.
The Tool best suited for this is called an Adze. The best way to think of this is if you hold your arm straight out, and turn your hand down so you see your palm. This is it's shape. in general the handle (the arm) portion is wood, and the blade (hand) portion is sharpened stone or metal. If you know what an ax is, think of that, with the blade turned sideways
Otherwise, you'll need a saw. A saw is a Long Metal blade, one side blunt, while the other side has teeth. Rather than a flat cutting edge, these teeth, which, think of the front teeth of a wolf, lined up so all the curve face the same way. Will allow you to easily cut wood. in general, when working with a saw you want just enough pressure to hold the saw against the cut, the rest moves sideways. This lets the teeth grab a little material at a time, and as the saw is long, is cuts quickly for less energy.
Bianca, Could you describe the Bay? It seems you've been there many winters. Where the Bay opens to water, does the Sun set or Rise. If it does neither, then looking out of the Bay on which side does the Sun rise?
How many Full Moons does water freeze in, what do the plants the people look like, what animals are in the region?
Remember as we gain more knowledge, our advice becomes better.
Anybody knows how to describe to Bianca basic iron tools other than knives- first of all axe with a wooden handle? Surprisingly not trivial, at least for me.
I think that they lack ways to join well into one tool even stone and wood.
Dreamer here, Speaking of farming. Mushrooms.
Sure they're a deranged organism pretending to be a plant and some might turn living creatures into shambling corpses, last time we checked they were limited to insects, but it's been some time and a lot of magic since then. They're tasty, provided they are not the poisonous kind, can grow without sunlight and they give you most of the things you need to if you give them some wood or other formerly living matter to grow in.
Just be careful as I am not joking, there might be a small chance they'll turn the living into shambling corpses if they learned how to use magic again.
But just to reiterate: Bianca, when I talk about playing and practising at organized violence, I mean playing. Bloodless. Harmless, except possibly for bruised egos. The point of the exercise is to make and learn from mistakes in a safe, controlled, non-fatal environment, so that fewer mistake will be made in the chaotic, brutal reality.
Talking about Mushrooms without explaining how to grow them is useless.
At least I'm sure that even if some types of Mushrooms are poisons, others are fine. And magical dangers are not something that we can know, until Bianca tells us.
Boats are easy, take a lot of wood, make sure it floats then make sure it can keep a human on it while it floats. The only issue is making them large enough to be used for trade. Fishing nets are just multiple ropes placed diagonally across one another and linked to each other to trap things inside of them, using some stone at the edges is optional to make it harder to escape from.
Various tools? An axe should be pretty easy in theory if more difficult to get one right. They could use the stone axes and just replace the stone with metal if needed be.
Let's get agriculture started before we start thinking about more a̶͇̚d̸̦̗̓v̴͖̈a̷̪̫̾̆n̷̺̞̓c̸̛̞̜ẽ̷̼̙̽d̷͇̳̀ stuff,
They're not that hard to grow, they pretty much grow by themselves, even if you don't want them to, if you give them a wet place with no light, unless you wanna grow them indoors.
Also preparing for magical dangers is a given, the last thing we want is to be blindsided by them.
Well, iron axes/ hammers are pretty easy to make in theory albeit we need some nails before hand.
Iron nails are thin, straight strips of metal, pointy at one end and thicker at the other. They can be as long as a finger and as short as a nail( hence the name).
As for tools? We can use a man's hand as an approximation for size. There will be 3 sizes to it Length, Width and thickness. You can look at you hand for reference. Your hand has a length, a width, and a thickness. the length is bigger than the width and the width is bigger than the thickness.
So now take a block of metal as long as a hand, about as wide as a hand and half as thick. Make a hole in through the thick or wide sides large enough in the center so that that a piece of wood can fit in it and be held in one hand then jam it there. If a bit too loose drive an iron nail or two in the wood and you get a hammer.
An axe is roughly the same thing only instead of being a completely symmetrical blunt instrument, one end looks like a mountain, sharp and capable of splitting heads.
Or you can cheat and make an iron hand with fingers and all. A hammer would be a closed fist holding a wooden handle/stick and an axe would be an open hand with the finger ending in very shar and thick nails and you find a to link them together.
A pickaxe would be the same as an axe, only it ends in one finger and there's two hands placed together as if mirrored in water.
The air is a substance. It has texture. It resists things that move through it.
The air is often more dense in some areas, and less dense in others. There's reasons for this but I won't get into them right now. Greater-density air naturally flows into lesser-density air, like water flowing downhill. This phenomenon is what we call "wind." Sufficiently strong winds are referred to as "storms," and the substance of the air, though normally tranquil and harmless, moves fast enough and powerful enough to be dangerous, especially to those at sea.
When the air density of the local area is low, that means strong winds and storms are coming.
Now, to answer your question directly:
Watch the smoke from a fire.
When the air density is high, the smoke will rise up normally. When the air density is low, the smoke will spiral downwards around the fire. If the latter happens, bad weather is coming.
Watch for calm ocean conditions.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but a calm ocean and lack of wind usually means a storm is on the way. This is created by the local low air density, which nullifies the normal wind patterns and creates a calm and stillness. A calm, then a storm.
Watch for ocean swells.
These are a kind of wave that do not crest and break - instead they "swell," appearing more like rolling hills than normal waves. These can be caused by winds blowing a storm from over the sea.
Watch for unusual animal behaviour.
The low-air-density often causes discomfort in the ears of birds, causing them to stay lower to the ground. Air is denser closer to the ground, for reasons that are not worth going into right this second. If you see birds flying high in the sky? The weather will probably be fair. If you see birds perching on lower tree branches, roosting in large numbers close to the ground or staying on the beach instead of flying high? A storm may be coming.
Bees, butterflies, and other insects can often tell when a storm is on the way, and respond by sheltering in their homes and safe areas. If you notice a lack of bees and butterflies where you would expect to see them, a storm may be coming.
Oh, and ants are known to build their mounds into steep sides as shelter from oncoming storms.
Watch the colour of the morning sky.
A red sky in the morning means bad weather on the way.
Weather typically moves from sunsetwards to sunrisewards. A red sky in the morning means good weather sunrisewards, but bad weather sunsetwards. A red morning sky means oncoming storms colouring the sky. There's reasons for this but it's worth getting into right now.
Red sky in the evening means the bad weather is already sunrisewards and moving that way. The storm has passed, or gathered somewhere harmless to you.
Watch the moon and stars.
If a halo is visible around the moon, that is because it is shining through clouds, which may mean oncoming rainstorms.
If fewer stars are visible in the sky, that means clouds are blotting them out, which may mean oncoming rainstorms.
Watch the clouds.
Dark, low clouds obviously mean a storm is imminent or already happening. High, white clouds suggest, but does not guarantee, good weather.
White, wispy clouds and blue skies are the best signifier for clear weather.
If you see a cloud that swells like a mushroom, with a tall pillar and a wide head on top? Do not go on the ocean. These are indicative of the worst weather. Major storms.
Cloud patterns differ from place to place. Collections of small, puffy clouds could be indicative of clear weather or an oncoming storm, depending on where you are. I suggest having the Black Hook Bay people observe the cloud patterns and look for correlation with storms and fair weather, or do it yourself.
Put enough of the above signifiers together, and you have the signs of an oncoming storm.
Caveats. Of the above, only the mushroom-shaped-cloud is a guarantee of oncoming storms. And there may be peculiarities to the weather patterns in your local areas that differ from the norm. I reiterate, have the Black Hook Bay people watch these signifiers and note down their correlation with fair and stormy weather, so they will better know how to read the signifiers in the future.
Yeah, basic stone tools, but no joining, knives are probably a blade with a unwrapped iron handle
Okay, Simplest Tanning method I know of, brain tanning. So in general a animal's brain can be used to prepare its hide so that will last decades. This process is called tanning, and there are more methods, but I've not seen it done before.
So stuff you'll need.
A Scraping beam made from a scraped and smoothed hardwood log. should be placed in the ground at a angle halfway between straight up and horizontal.
A long blade, blunted, about as long as the average male forearm, and about a hand (Thumb to farthest finger) wide, with a place to grip on both sides. This can be metal or stone
A water proof container, probably a glazed clay container, large enough to fit a animal skin inside.
Animal Brains, scale from this. an animal whose shoulder comes up to a mans head, with Horns coming from their head, hand hoofed feet. Their hide can be tanned with its own brain. You can never use to much brain though. the brain it the organ inside the skull.
two sticks, one about as a couple of finger, the other at least as thick as a arm.
First skin the animal (take the skin away from the meat/flesh). put the hide on the log, use blade to get all the flesh off.
Stick the skin in a bucket of water (stirring/shaking frequently) or place in a flowing water source, down stream of where water is pulled from, weighed down so it doesn't float away. Soak from at least two days, can take up to two weeks, you should be able to just pull the hair strait out of the skin.
Now, we go for the second and third scrapes. drag the blade down the hide, so the the hair, and the first layer of skin come off. you should be putting a fair amount of force into this, enough that if you were pushing someone, they'd have to take a step back. do the same on the other side, where the flesh was.
you'll be going to the center layer of the skin, under what holds the hair in, and taking off the stuff that holds the skin to the meat.
wring out the hide, getting it mostly dry, it should be dry to the touch, but not crackle, still bendable with cracking.
Now, You'll need enough hot (but not burning) water to fill a container the size of an adult humans head (about a gallon and a half), the animal brain and a handful of animal fat. Through this into the large container, stir well.
Now, add the Hide soak for at least... we don't have a shared time scale, as long as it takes to walk 660 walking paces, or, at most, until the next sunrise.
Pull the hide out of the solution, and wring it out above the container, you want to keep as much solution as you can. Then wrap around the arm thick stick, and tie to the finger thick stick. spin the smaller stick so that the hide is pulled tight.
repeat this two to four times. you want the brain solution to be in the hide
if you let it dry out without doing anything, it's very stiff and called rawhide. It's stiffer and tougher, can be used for boots, hammers, saddles, bow backing, garrotes, and apparently boats.
for leather which is good for clothes, and bags, you'll want to play around with it. get together with a friend and pull it out in all directions, smack it against things, have someone hold it up and punch it.
Now once you've done this, it's time to smoke the hide, you'll need to fold it together, over a long branch and seal the sides, leaving the bottom open. you can punch holes at the edge and use rope to keep it together. Or you can glue it, which is also something we need to teach you.
dig a hole under the branch or wherever you want, as long as it lets you sorta seal the hole with the open end of the hide. Build a fire using nice hardwood for fuel. Let this fire burn for 30 minutes to an hour (or longer), so that a good-sized bed of coals accumulates. move coals to the hole, drop a chunk of really smoky wood into the hole, Now, hang your hide over those same coals so the smoke is channeled up into it. Allow the smoke to penetrate fully, which can take 30 minutes to 3 hours, then flip your pouch inside out and smoke the membrane sides of your hide.
If you don't like the smoke smell let it sit in the open air till it goes away. you now have leather
now glue. Glue is a sticky substance that can be used to hold things together, it can also be used to toughen the bottom of shoes. you will need something to stir and a pot, and a low empty water proof pan (Glazed clay works)
So follow the above steps but don't put it in the brain solution. Instead, chop the hide into hand sized pieces, drop into a bucket of near boiling water (which will need to stay that hot throughout the process), leave it the water from sunrise to when the sun is right over head, stirring at least 6 times equally spaced. just use a stick to mix.
Eventually, you will find that the liquid becomes very sticky and the sticks that you use to mix it with will begin to have a skin of gel on the end when you pull it out of the water.
At this point you have hide glue. The liquid in the solution is just warm hide glue. You will want to strain off all of the excess rawhide. Easy way to to do this is to have a section of leather with lots of small fingernail sized or below holes bored into, and pour the liquid into a pan, with the holed leather preventing the big leather chunks from going in.
At this point, let it sit until it sort of solidifies. the thicker the layer, the longer it takes, no thicker than a thumb width though.
At this point the hide glue is ready to use. to use it, put it in a pot, above another pot with water in it, boil the water in the lower pot, the glue melts, and can be used.
it can sit for a couple weeks before it goes bad and even longer if you keep it cold. if you don't need it now, break it into fingernail sized pieces, stick them in the sun, shake every now and then, Once all of these small bits of glue are dry, you can grind them into a fine powder. You can keep this fine powder in a jar or other airtight bag until use. In this state, you can keep the glue ready to use for years to come.
There is a method for predicting storms my peers have not yet mentioned - headaches.
Some humans, a day or two before rains or storms, will get headaches, ranging from a feeling of pressure to extreme pain. Some may get headaches from unrelated reasons, complicating this.
If you identify which people get headaches before storms, you can ask them to tell people when they are in such pain as to indicate poor weather. This is not perfectly accurate, but it is quite reliable.
As for peaceableness, most of your problem is that people are scared and hungry, which makes them behave non-peacefully. Better boats, to fish in the ocean, and prediction of storms, will help. Some of the others have ideas for this. Hopefully this will let the river rest, for right now it is tired, and has less fish than it might.
What problems do your people's nets have? If small fish escape, tighter nets will catch them, but they will be more time-consuming to make. If they break too easily, then different materials may be tested, although I am no expert on net-making, to tell you what will work best. Animal sinew, various plant fibers, wool, may all be used.
@liberty90 Why not say your last thing out loud and warn her of that potential misunderstanding?
Oh Bianca, when the Metal Lizard spoke of play fighting in which the larger group tries to catch and kill the smaller, what was actually meant was putting people into a position where they knew they would be dead (or injured) if the fighting wasn't play.
We should focus heavily on explaining how to join long wooden handle to small iron blade at it's end, to save on valuable iron... It looks like a sharpened stick but with iron end, spear.
Spears, long sticks with sharp iron blades at their ends to kill or scare enemies.
Pieces of wood with sharp iron axes at their end, to cut trees...
It's surprisingly hard to explain how to join wood to iron, but it's possible, but it's very very worth efforts.
Certainly, in many cases, it would need holes in wood where iron could fit in. Start by finding a spot on the wood where you want the hole. Hold the knife firmly and press the tip into the wood, twisting it back and forth. As you twist, apply steady pressure to help the knife cut into the wood. Keep twisting and pushing until you make a small hole. To make the hole bigger, you can keep working the knife in a circular motion, widening the opening... Take your time and be careful not to split the wood.
Hello Bianca this Is Valtarius Speaking to you for the first time, I will first try to answer your question I a short and simple manner and then try and go in depth in how to try and achieve a food surplus and control the small tributary empire you accidentally created.
1 Signs of storms:
Well, other than the obvious immediate sign that the storm is near and the fact some areas are more storm prone during some part of the year I'm aware of one : a barometer. The barometer measures the air pressure (or how thickly air Is packed) its predictions aren't very far-reaching but they are better than nothing. I'm sadly not that informed on how to build a barometer with the tools you have available but I'm fairly sure a simple one could be built, so I'm hoping another voice does so. If they don't, I'll try to do It in a latter message.
2 Sings of earthquakes:
Sadly, there is no way of predicting an earthquake only of measuring them, something rather useless for now. You can learn if one area is prone to earthquakes and if so just how strong those can get, but other than that you have to learn to live with it.
3 Stopping natural disasters:
There is no real way to stop those things but they are way to mitigate them. Lighting is trying to link the ground and the clouds through the path of least resistance, air is very resistant to lighting (which causes heat in a similar way rubbing your hands or pieces of wood together causes heat, and as you experience with metal have surely taught you, the hotter something Is the brighter it glows, hence the brightness of lighting) almost any other material is less resistant, as a result lighting can be guided by giving it a better path. Placing near a building, you absolutely need a rod taller than the building is a way to give lighting such a path, metal is significantly better than wood for this purpose.
Not much can be done against whirlwind other than hiding in trenches or being out of its path.
Floods, if they are small enough, can be stopped by dikes, most easily done by digging up dirt and making tightly packed barriers out of it, either around the banks of the river or around the area you want protected. This obviously demands lots of work and maintenance (you have to create them in advance and keep them around), can fail, and obviously is useless if the flood is too big, but it's all I have.
4 Beaching whales:
I know of no way of beaching whales.
5 Bringing back animals:
Do you mean animals you captured and who escaped? Or animals that dwelt in area no longer coming because they were overhunted?
For the first it's not really possible but I'll go more in depth about how to tame and domesticate animals latter, for the second well stop hunting them and leave food for them; eventually the area should be recolonised as animals forget why it's dangerous to dwell here.
6 Better thread, web, and boats:
I know of ways to do those things but think myself unsuited to actually teach them , I'll let other voices do that.
7 remove stone from the ground:
… this might connect with my earthwork proposition but it comes to mind that I don't know what kind of tool you have available sorry if this offends you but I'm going to describe shovels (a tool to move earth) and pickaxes (a tool to break earth and rock).
Shovels consist of a large flat "blade" at the end of a long wooden shaft, the blade is ideally made of iron but can be made of wood, the large flat blade is used to move around loose materials such as earth or gravel it can with some difficulty be used to break the earth before moving it
Pickaxes are made up a "two-headed" metal part placed perpendicularly at the top of a wooden shaft. One of the heads is a long bar that tappers to a point like a very long bird's beak, it's made to strike and break rock or hard earth, the other head is like thinner axe head but pointed to the side of the wooden shaft instead of in line with it it's used to strike at earth in order to loosen and upturn it. 8 knowing if there is useful rock beneath your feet:
Generally if you found useful rock on the surface, there is also useful rock beneath. For more precision … I don't know geology isn't my speciality.
9 making people peaceful:
Well, that's a bit of a complicated question here, the first answer one I'm sure you thought of is simply threatening them into compliance but it's not an actual solution. That would demand too much time and constant supervision while not actually solving the actual problem causing the violence. Even if we propose alternatives now, some people will probably think that going around threatening the neighbours is easier than actually working, especially since the neighbours can't easily fight back.
You'll first have to solve the problem, of course, but once that's done there will probably have to be some threatening, you'll just have to do it smartly. The first thing to recognise is that violence isn't the only thing you can threaten, you are an immortal fount of knowledge, you've already given them the secrets of iron and you're working on giving them more still. You could threaten not to give them more if they so misuse that which you gave them, you could threaten to share the secrets of iron with other tribes.
You also don't have to be alone in those endeavours as other have hinted having trusted servants to carry you will, would ease those burden significantly, you could find mortals that think well of you and have them report to you if people disobey your commandments, you could give them gifts, such as enchanted objects, if they punish and threaten those that defy your will and take them away if they disobey you.
Well, now that your questions are answered to the best of my ability here is my explanation of how to domesticate of plants and animals and start up agriculture.
First let's start with plants since that's probably more important in a tribe that already has a plentiful source of meat. You've already received an explanation of agriculture from Junction so there will be some repetition, but I'll try to be thorough.
So agriculture is basically controlling where plants grow and making sure they grow easily and healthily, you told us that people already do some form of this spreading around the seeds of the plants they use, this is simply are more purposeful and controlled form of this. The first thing to do is till the soil braking and upturning it, with a hoe (essentially the earthbreaking portion of a pickaxe on a longer shaft) both to kill the plants that already live there as to stop them competing with your plants and to loosen the earth and add organic matter to it as to make it easier for your plant to implant themselves. The seed is then spread on the freshly tilled earth, some plants seed need to be buried some don't (this is also when you spread the rotting organic matter you've been preparing for months if not a year or more).
What they all need however (if in different quantities) is water. If it rains often enough (and it's how often it rains that counts more than how much water falls) In the area your planting you might not need to do much, if the area you live in is arid you'll need to create channels into the earth to bring water to the plant (which would maybe be closed or diked in storm season or when one comes ? I don't know how such problems were dealt with but I know it was done).
Your plants must then be protected from animals coming to eat them and other plants trying to grow in the same place. When the plant is grown it can be harvested, any edible part of eating, seed for replanting (and eating if its edible) and non-edible parts can be left to rot on the field to help the soil regenerate or given to domesticated animals if you have any.
The next year leave the field where you planted the last year empty as to allow for it to recover, ideally you'd plant another plant that doesn't eat the same nutrient or even helps it recover but since we and you don't know enough about what plants you'll be dealing with it's best to be safe.
Now all that I just said is how to do agriculture but it's not domestication yet, wild plants are fine for eating but they have been shaped by evolution to be good at surviving the wild not good at being food selective breeding is based on the well-known fact that offspring take after their parents so if a plant shoes a desirable trait (larger edible parts, faster growth, ect) then prefer planting the seed of that plant instead of another of the same kind, don't use only one plant however, plants like humans and other animals cannot produce offspring with close kin without serious risk for the health of the offspring.
Now let's address animals, those are a bit more complicated because well they move, they want their own things, and they aren't content to wait in a field for you to move them around and eat them. Its why domestication is even more important for animals.
So first thing first: not every animal can be domesticated, or more precisely most animals aren't worth domesticating. When looking for an animal worth domesticating look for a handful of important traits, there are some exceptions but those are too complicated to get into right now.
1 how fast they grow old enough to breed.
Its one of the most important, the most likely thing you want to do with your domesticated animals, at least early on, is kill and eat them if they take a decade to become adults its not going to be worth it to raise them. In addition if your animal can make a child 6 months after its born in 10 years, you'll have made sure the meekest and most compliant is the one that got to breed 20 times, if it takes 5 years you'll have made sure the meekest and most compliant is the one that got to breed only 2 times.
2 they eat things that humans don't eat.
Most likely you're raising animals so you can eat them so giving them food you could eat is counterproductive.
3 they can survive in captivity.
Some animals when captured will do anything to escape eventually killing themselves or will wither away. For obvious reasons they aren't suitable.
3 They live in groups.
This one is essential for eventual control of the animals. Animals are more easily kept in groups, and more easily controlled as groups. Humans can even in some case usurp the natural hierarchy of the herd allowing for even more easy control.
So nice, you know what to look for what do you do when you've found a suitable animal? Well, the next part isn't that easy, you need to capture and tame enough of the wild animals to create a stable breeding population (to avoid repeated close kin breeding).
Captured animals can be kept either tied by a rope to an immobile object or within a fence (a small wall made stop animals that can't jump higher than it from escaping) they can then be tame by repeatedly approaching them and giving them food to allow them to grow used to human presence.
Once that's done selective breeding can commence, either by isolating breeding pairs from others in the group or by just taking why the mother is when choosing what animal to kill for food, and what animal to allow to breed in the next generations. Like I hinted at earlier, it's best to start with selecting for the more obedient and least skittish, then you can select for other traits such as faster breeding, and larger size or as other voice hinted for longer and thicker fur that can be made into trade a fabric or milk that could be consumed by humans, most likely in a transformed form or only for the young.
One method to put an iron tool-head on a wooden haft: shrinkage. Iron grows slightly as it's heated, so if a tool or spear head has a hole or cup for a haft included, you can just stick the haft in there while the iron is hot (but not quite hot enough to set the wood on fire), and if it was a tight enough fit to begin with, the iron will shrink tightly onto its wooden haft and become very difficult to dislodge.
Do we even need to extensively explain stone tools? Metal is malleable. One can create a peace of metal with a perfect hole or pipe to stick a long and straight wooden branch in. One can also use thin, small and pointy metal sticks, "nails" in our language, to punch through the wood and thus fasten the larger metal form so that it doesn't fall off the straight branch.
Oh and while we're at it, do the people of Black Hook Bay know rope? Wait, of course they do. You already talked about tying cats together.
I accidentally partially posted this earlier - the perils of posting in a taxi.
I think I'll try and answer some of the questions you raised last time, Bianca.
Potatoes are a kind of tuber, which grow in the dirt. In our realm, they are renowned as a food source that contains a great deal of energy for their size. They need to be cooked before consumption though, as they are poisonous when raw. (They cannot burn the seas, that was a miscommunication.)
On getting specific animals to mate: if you keep them in enclosures, separate from others of the same kind, they will probably do it themselves with no forcing required. Such enclosures are obviously easier to create with some animals than others.
Obsidian is a shiny black rock found near volcanoes. It is very sharp, but also very brittle. It can be used for edged weapons and tools.
Building buildings with reeds and mud is a fairly quick way to build permanent shelters. You impale sticks into the ground where you want the walls to be, and then weave reeds between them. Then you take handfuls of wet mud and cover the reeds with it. When in dries, it works as a somewhat permanent structure to shelter from the elements with. For a roof, you can use sticks tied together with reeds again to form the outline of the structure, and then weave together large leaves and lay them atop said structure.
Alternatively, fired bricks can be stacked atop each other with mud between them to form stronger walls. Ceramic tiles - flat squares made with pottery - can be used for roofing too.
When we say something is "outside" without specifying what, we will generally mean not inside of a building. The specific problem mentioned of children not going outside enough will likely not be a problem for thousands of years.
Plants and mushrooms breed by putting out stuff like dust (pollen and spores respectively) into the air, that reaches another plant or mushroom and fertilises it. Sometimes they rely on more than just the wind though; they create flowers with nectar inside them to attract bees and other insects. As the insects feed on the nectar, they get pollen on them, which is then carried to the next flower the insect feeds from. A natural little example of how it can be easier to get others to do what you want, by making it what they want, too.
Long term food storage is indeed more useful for stationary settlements. In bountiful times food can be stored up, to prepare for leaner times. (Of course, this only works if the leaner times are themselves temporary affairs.)
What does wound care have to do with kissing? Is this part of your magic? The two are generally unrelated, to our knowledge.
In the long term, large herds of animals can be handled by people. By eating only the older (but not sick!) animals at a sustainable rate, a diet that includes meat (generally supplemented with vegetables) can be maintained without running out of animals.
For pottery, the temper added to clay can be bone, chaff, charcoal (as you seem to have discovered), wood ash, plant fiber, crushed mollusc shells, and certain types of rocks.
Drinking alcohol can be a popular social activity. As you say, it makes one more foolish temporarily, but having a good time with others will generally improve relationships.
It seems that your local people have overhunted the local area. If animals are hunted faster than they can reproduce, this will inevitably happen; it's better to rely on multiple sources of food and avoid hunting the same thing too much in an area, and to avoid hunting younger animals altogether. The only solution for that is to avoid hunting them for a while to let the populations recover, but of course that is difficult when food is already scarce. You might be able to speed this up by enticing them onto your lands with the foods they prefer.
Others have spoken of lightning, whirlwinds and earthquakes. For floods, the best option is the simplest: build higher above the water. You can pile earth high to create a hill, or pile it high at the banks of the river to prevent it from flooding at all. Or you can build your houses on stilts - on platforms made of wood held up by sticks driven into the ground.
On digging through hard stone, I recommend a tool called a pickaxe. A length of wood, with a relatively thin piece of metal attached to one end firmly such that it sticks out in two opposite directions perpendicular to the stick. It can be attached by carving out a space it can be squeezed into, and then tying it up with thread. The metal bits are used to strike the stone.
For digging through softer earth, I would instead recommend a spade. A similar tool, but here instead a flat square of metal much wider than the stick is attached to one end a bit like a spear, such that it can be driven into the ground. It helps if the side of the square going into the ground - opposite the side attached to the stick - is somewhat sharp.
Finally, on power... Right now, your power is primarily in your personal strength and knowledge. But as the time passes and people across the world learn things, power will become more and more about getting other people to do what you want.
By now, you've seen how many useful processes required ongoing busywork to keep running, whether it be digging certain types of rock out of the ground, gethering food, pumping bellows for your forge to create iron, and more. As the processes build upon one another and grow more complex, it will become increasingly infeasible to perform all of these tasks yourself, and more and more people are required to do them.
As societies grow, and the capabilities of people grow with new ideas and tools, there will come a point where the person who can direct enough other people to their will is more powerful than the strongest individual warrior. And fear will only take you so far - you will need to convince people that doing as you say is on their best interests, and set up systems where they can direct others in turn.
Fortunately, being an immortal sorceress with incredible knowledge and personal power is always going to be very impressive, and very helpful in convincing people. But you should put some thought into how you present yourself so that people are not just fearful but loyal, and how to convince them and not merely overawe them.
(A magic item to help with this might be a good investment, if one exists, but you should really put some more mundane effort into this too, lest it become a crutch.)
With all that said, I will vote for:
[X] Subvert the Rite of the Stirring God
As it is a fine step on the path to getting such followers.
Some of us went into domestication but failed to talk about some of the key features that are needed for that work. See though there are animals everywhere, only a handful can be domesticated. What made these different? Let's make a domestication requirements list, first off. Feedable pure carnivores you're not going to domesticate, just because of diet. You're looking for herbivores that aren't picky. They should eat something that's everywhere that you humans don't eat.
Second is friendly, obviously catching a carnivore is a bad idea anyway because their day job is murder. But plenty of omnivores like bears moonlight in murder. No safety in most large vegetarians either. Animals it would be awesome to domesticate are, not coincidentally, super dangerous. Try sneaking up on a gazelle, or dear sure, you whole day marathon jogging it down to exhaustion. But if it doesn't break it's own neck as you try to drag it back home, then it's going to casually leap out of whatever pen you built for it. That not to say you cannot tame such animals but taming is to take a single wild animal and train it to be able to work with humans, not a group of animals, bread to be partners to humans.
Next your looking animals so eager to breed, it gets it wrong sometimes. Not an animal whose mating seasons you have to keep careful track of. Friendly, Feedable and Fecund. It also needs to grow up fast. This gets us to the heart of domestication versus taming. The core of domestication is to take a species and to change it to make it better for us. We domesticate plants as well, or plants are often double, triple or more the size of a wild counterpart. We've bred them to be monstrous versions of their wild selves. This is the heart of domestication the lifespan of the animals needs to be relatively short 10 or so years at the max, and able to breed in less then five. A single, clever human should be able to make domstication progress in their lifetime.
Finally: families. OK zebra a plant eater that walks on four legged that can come upto head or shoulder height of human noted for the Black and white stripes across their bodes, and have an elongated face. While their counter part horses, seem nearly the same but but lack the distinct black and white color, and tend towards single uniform colors across their body. horses have a single toe that forms a bend shape.
So why horses over zebra simple Zebra's lack a family structure. Horse herds hierarchy you can see it when they travel in a line: the male, top female, her foals, second female, her foals, and so on. Humans, by capturing and taming the lead male, become head horse.
Lots of domesticated animals are domesticated animals because they have family values humans can utilize. Once your past he first taming and are raising the young along side humans, humans are accepted as a normal thing. This makes taming young much easier as they see humans a normal part of the family. Combine that with breeding the strongest, or the most friendly and you can rapidly alter a animals behavior, and domesticate them.
For zebra, there's no such thing as society. Catch a zebra and his family won't follow. Zebra look like horses on the outside, but not on the inside. So that's the basics Friendly, Feedable, Fecund, Family animals
Modified and altered to work with what Bianca will understand and be able to work with.
Now I am going to describe an animal that is very good to domesticate. The Chicken a bird that has a few key features that make them highly valuable. The males are characterized by a red crest and, flaps around that beak also red. With the top male standing taller compared to the other males. While the females have a particular trait can be used to identify them as chickens easily. That being if you isolate a female form the males, and give them plenty of food they will start producing eggs, every few days. This is because their native forests and fields have a type of tree that drops enormous amounts of seeds twenty to forty years. And chickens evolved to utilize this to explode their population during this time of plenty. This makes chicken with some domestication one of the easiest ways to turn plants into meat, as the eggs are still a form of meat you can eat. On top of the meat form the chickens after a many generations the modern chicken can reach ten or pounds, while the wild ones reach three at the most.
First, a reply to Earth-Destroyer's statement that carnivores can't be domesticated. They can, provided that what you want from them isn't food. Feeding a meat-eater just to eat them is very stupid, but breeding meat eaters to like being around people for the purpose of pest control is efficient. On a related note, storing grains and beans in pottery will do a lot to help keep mice and rats out, but having the cats around is still worthwhile.
That said, we have more medical advice. Specifically how to save someone who is dying from exposure to the cold. First off, get them someplace dry and warm. Remove any wet garments from their body. If they are conscious, have them drink some water or soup that has been warmed over a fire; the idea is that the warm liquid will directly heat up their insides.
Now for two things to avoid in the process of saving someone from cold exposure. DO NOT put them in a warm bath; when cold, the body constricts outer blood vessels to conserve heat from the vital organs. Immersion in warm liquid causes these outer blood vessels to loosen, resulting in heat fleeing the core and possibly stopping the heart before the bath can actually help. Also do not allow the patient to drink anything with alcohol in it until they are properly warm; alcohol also loosens the outer blood vessels, causing a similar risk of the heart stopping.
Now for a completely different topic, the basics of mathematics, also known as how to work with numbers to useful ends.
There are four basic mathematical operations we'll be explaining right now: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. More specifically, we are explaining ways to do it with large numbers. Fair warning, this requires writing stuff down for most people to do it reliably.
First, addition. Write down the two numbers you want to add, one over the other, so the places line up. Start at the ones place, and add those two together. If the number you get exceeds your base, put a one above the two numbers in the next place over, and what's left over is your final result's ones place. Repeat this for the next place over, and so on, until you get to the largest place which needs to be added.
Second, subtraction. This is used for determining the difference between two quantities. Again, write the two numbers over each other with the places lined up; the lower number is the one being subtracted from the upper number. Again, start at the ones place; reduce the top numeral by the bottom numeral. If the bottom numeral is bigger, reduce the upper numeral in the next place over by one. This can cascade multiple places ahead, if there's zeroes in the middle of the number. Anyway, repeat this in each place until you reach the end of both numbers.
Strictly speaking you can subtract a bigger number from a smaller one, to get what's called a negative: a measure of how far below zero a given number is. Just flip the subtraction problem upside down, proceed as normal, then mark the answer as negative. More explanation on how negative numbers behave will have to wait for another time.
Now for multiplication. Again, you put the two numbers on top of each other with the places lined up. Now things get more complicated; start with the ones place for both numbers. For example, in three multiplied by five, you get fifteen; you're making one number of the other number, and adding them up. A chart composed of a grid of squares may be helpful; starting from one corner, each edge counts up to the highest numeral in your number system. The squares not on these two edges have the number of squares in a rectangle of those edge lengths written inside the square. If all else fails, counting the squares making up each result can work to get the chart made.
Anyway, you multiply every digit in the upper number with the lower number's ones place, then repeat that process for each subsequent place in the lower number; each of these multiplications should be shifted over the total number of places from the ones from both numerals multiplied to get it. Once you've got your big pile of multiplication results, add them all up to complete the process. Yes, multiplying two large numbers together can quickly get cumbersome.
Now for division. This can be thought of as a way of determining a fair portion of a lot for any one member of a group to receive. The total lot is the number you're dividing, while the number of members in the group is the number you're dividing by. You cannot divide by zero, it just doesn't work.
The notation for division is a bit more complex than for the other three; draw a vertical line with the number you're dividing on the right, and the number you're dividing by on the left. Now draw a horizontal line over the number you're dividing by, connecting to the horizontal line. These lines help keep track of what's going on.
Unlike with addition, multiplication, and subtraction, you start from the largest-placed numeral in the number you're dividing. Count how many times you could subtract the divisor from that numeral, round down to the nearest whole numeral, and write that on top of the horizontal line. If your divisor contains two or more numerals, you would put a zero here. Now, multiply that numeral by your divisor; remember, anything times zero is zero.
Now, subtract this number from the first numeral. Write the single-numeral answer of that subtraction beneath, with a horizontal line separating it. Now, copy the next numeral of the number you're dividing to be the next-weakest place of the subtraction result. Count how many times this new number can accommodate the divisor, write the smallest whole number of this as the next numeral above the top dividing line, and repeat all the above steps until you run out of numerals to copy downwards.
It is entirely possible that you'll still have some left over once you've copied downwards. At this point, you have two choices about what to do. The first option is to simply list what's left over as a remainder that you can't divide fairly. The second option is to keep going. After the ones place, put a dot to indicate you're working with values smaller than one now, then you have a twelfths place and so on. Fair warning, if you do this it's entirely plausible that a division operation can go on forever, so at some point you'll just have to decide that what you've got is good enough and stop.
We will also be explaining prime numbers, how to take a number's factors, and how to calculate a square root, though that isn't exactly basic. We're covering this now in order for future mathematical teaching to make sense.
First off, a prime number is any number that cannot be divided into a whole number by any whole number divisor except itself and one. The first bunch of prime numbers are as follows: 2, 3, 5, 7, B, 11, 15, 17, 1B, 21, 27, 34, 37, 3B, 45, 4B, 51, 67, 6B, 71, 77, 7B, 81, 85, 87, 8B, 91, 95, A7, AB, B5, B7. None of these numbers will appear on a multiplication table.
As for what a number's factors are, that's simple: it is the smallest numbers you can multiply together to make that specific number. Start by attempting to divide by two; if that gets a whole number result, repeat until it stops doing so. Then go back to the last whole number result, and try to divide by three; keep climbing the list of prime numbers until primes are all you have left.
Lastly, a method to find square roots. To square a number, multiply it by itself. When you find a number's square root, you are finding a number that you can multiply by itself to get back your original. This can be useful to figure out how long the walls of a house need to be for a given amount of floor space, as an example. Before we start, we need to note that taking the square root of a negative number can be done, but the results are really bizarre and will be covered in the section on negative and complex numbers, should you choose for us to teach it.
The first method is to guess, square your guess, see how much you're off by and in which direction, then refine your guess before trying again. For the vast majority of numbers - anything you can't make by squaring a whole number - you will need places smaller than the ones place in your guesses for this to work.
There is also a method with significant similarity to the long division instructions, but after significant efforts we cannot honestly say we understand the instructions ourselves. There are also a couple methods based on factoring, but we ran into a similar issue there. We now have a headache.
it is important to note that for any method of taking a square root, it is entirely possible for the answer to ramble on forever into smaller and smaller numeral places. So eventually you'll just have to cut it off at some point.
When cutting off a neverending division or square root, follow this rounding rule: if the next numeral would be half the base or greater, increase your last numeral by one. Otherwise, leave it be.
On another note, we honestly find it profoundly unfair that you need to sacrifice such important choices in order to contact us, and wish we had a way to contact you without such being necessary. This sparked a related thought, that we could perhaps offer a choice in exchange. So, you get to pick the next mathematical subject we'll cover:
- Negative and complex numbers
- Geometry (the mathematics of shapes)
- Variables and Algebra (how to construct useful equations and move their parts around)
A few notes on alcohol & drunkenness:
While alcohol makes people feel warm, this is a false sensation and can make the cold worse.
Drinking too much alcohol, of too much strength, too quickly, can be fatal. As with most poisons, how much a person can survive depends on their body weight.
Habitual heavy drinking causes a long list of illnesses and, eventually, risks an unpleasant death - a particular warning sign is yellowing of the skin and eyes.
Worse, suddenly stopping a long habit of heavy drinking can be even worse than the illness itself - the body grows accustomed to the stuff, and the shock of a sudden withdrawal can cause fevers, madness, and sometimes even death. Instead, intake should be gradually lowered to give them time to adjust.
Alcohol drunk in moderation isn't directly harmful, except to pregnant mothers, where it injures the developing infant in both body and mind.
All together recreational alcohol use is probably more trouble than it's worth, except in that stopping people from doing it would probably require divinity in its own right.
I assume licking the wound. Not sure if it's effective - obviously it's Not Medically Advised nowadays but also we have proper antiseptics so it might just be that any benefits from it are outweighed by the risks, to the patient from mouth bacteria, and to the licker of bloodborne diseases.
I think at least with axes the head is usually held to the handle by driving a wedge into the end of the handle. Or by having the handle widen towards the end. Depends on the handle - modern axes have the handle end widen and curve towards the blade a bit, so you can't just shove it straight through the eye.
Describing it is straightforward - a sharpened metal wedge with a round or eye-shaped hole through the thick part in line with the blade which a wooden handle goes through.
Making it is a different question. I think they start as a sheet of fairly soft iron folded around a bar ('mandrel'?) to form the eye, then fitted with a cutting edge made of harder iron or steel, then it's all hammered together until it forms into one piece ('forge welded').
Incidentally an axe meant for fighting is very different to an axe made for felling trees - battle axes are much thinner and more lightly made, since trees are much tougher than people and don't usually stab you if you swing too slowly.
Whether iron is better than bronze is complicated and, I believe, can fall either way, at least early on.
I think bronze is a bit better than plain iron, and fairly easy to make and work, but tin and copper aren't usually found together, so bronzeworking usually needs a complex trade network to carry metals around.
Iron is common - ores, bog iron, sometimes it literally falls out of the sky in meteorites. (which cannot be practically predicted - possibly magic could forecast impacts or call them to land on a specified site, but even if it's possible it could just as easily be more effort than it's worth, since anyone can dig up red rocks while people with powerful magic are rare and likely to have better things to do)
But iron is hard to make and work, to the point where it was sometimes believed to be magic. Outcomes can be inconsistent.
Though I think a blade of iron can be made much longer than one of bronze, which can be important to blacksmiths or warriors wanting to show off.
Steel is, of course, almost always the best material for tools and weapons, strong, sharp and durable, but it's difficult and expensive to make in volume.
Obviously ChatGPT doesn't know any of that and whatever source it was blindly aping was probably talking about steel. Which, yes, steel is better than bronze once you can make it but there was a lengthy period where bronze and iron coexisted.
Of course, this is all questions of substance; magic could change the balance. If a long sword-blade can be made of copper and then enchanted to be as sharp and strong and enduring as true steel... but then, a steel weapon fitted with the same spells would be deadlier yet again.
Speaking of ironworking: there's an intersection here with the strife with neighbors. As said, the people of the Bay have better weapons and are better at killing. The neighbors know this, and would dearly love to obtain the secret of iron-working for themselves - first to protect themselves, and then to attack their own neighbors in turn.
Preserving that secret for as long as possible, to the extent that it is possible, would be wise. Though stopping someone who knows it from joining a different tribe and teaching them is likely to be difficult - history is filled with struggles between secret-keepers and knowledge-seekers, and it tends to end with the secrets escaping by one way or another.
Though it may be that the current situation is both problem and opportunity: iron-working requires a people to remain in one place, but it's currently difficult to live in that way. The neighbors can travel and know how to live in their places, but do not have iron and probably would not be able to remain still for long enough to work it themselves.
If relationships haven't deteriorated too badly, the solution could be trading iron to more mobile peoples in exchange for food and medicine, instead of extorting it by violence. That might end up arming the people's enemies - but the Cacophony is filled with better ways to kill people, and a people who make iron themselves will tend to be better armed than a people who buy it.
And equally, other neighbors may not like the idea that a rival might seize the secret for themselves, and might be brought in as allies to maintain a balance of power.
Ifs and mights and maybes. Politics.
Code:
Edited: forgot to mention the DTs lmao
someone should definitely go into detail on textiles and netmaking
but all I know about that is that it takes catastrophic amounts of labour
I wonder if Bianca could send the spirit of the deceased to avenge his own death?
I mean, such an action is unlikely to provoke much outrage among the other tribes. After all, the avenger is the victim himself, who was killed dishonorably in violation of all the laws of hospitality.
At the same time, the relatives of the victim will not feel such anger and thirst for revenge knowing that their relative has been avenged.
We have no idea if they know any customs of hospitality; they may also form smaller bands, not "tribes".
Bianca. Do you ever thought about taking some children, small but old enough to eat adult foods, and then raising these children as servants more obedient than most mortals?
They could then, as adults, work for you or travel to gather for you news about events in various places, when you are too busy elsewhere to visit such places. Of course you would need to say to people from the Bay and perhaps to other people that killing such Loyal Servants of Bianca will cause your wrath, that they must respect these people.
Humans can believe in weird things, and sometimes useful weird things, if raised right. Raise children while often repeating to them belief that they should serve you because you are Greatest, for example... and then, as adults not all but many would still believe that this is their natural main task, not anything else. Weird, I know. But this is true about mortal minds. Wouldn't work always, some could escape or disobey as adults; but would work surprisingly often if done well.
Of course, it would take your time, be a great hassle for maybe ten or fifteen years. But afterwards some Loyal Servants could raise new ones for you.
If you could spare some time, try it. After all, what is fifteen years to you, an immortal.
If you do it, remember. Some children are easy to manipulate with stern voice, showing or withdrawing attention and shows of love - and this love may be a lie, there is no need for you to truly love them. These cunning ways are often sufficient instead of beatings, not only I believe so, other Voice also mentioned it.
They could also learn from you, and then spread among mortals even without you around, various stories about your Greatness.
You could teach them to believe also The Greatest Truth: and The Greatest Truth would say that Bianca is above all.
If they do not have a tradition of hospitality and they are not ready to pay a ransom for such a dishonorable act, then all the more it is necessary to teach them good manners and the fact that Bianca's people cannot be contacted.
We must not leave this situation unanswered, otherwise the Bianchi tribe will be perceived as a good hunting object by other tribes.
What violation of hospitality? Poisoning the raiders?
Frankly I'd say turnabout is fair play. If you extort people at swordpoint you only have yourself to blame if they retaliate. And there has been killing on both sides.
"Dishonourable" is a very specific accusation and an extremely culture-dependent one. It's entirely possible Bianca has a completely different set of expectations to the people of her region, which in turn are different to ours. Especially since our conceptions of honour have filtered their way through millennia of hereditary warrior aristocrats trying to delegitimise any forms of violence except the ones they spent their lives mastering.
What kind of extortion are we talking about if the Bianchi tribe pays with iron for groceries?
Just someone decides to take not part of the iron, but all of it.
But even if the Bianchi tribe did extort food, we should have punished the killers. Otherwise it would undermine the tribe's authority and the other tribes would rise up against us.
As for honor, the laws of hospitality are mostly community culture. It is not necessary to connect the emergence of right and wrong with the chivalric class, which was just a small group in certain historical periods.
Bianca! I am the voice known as fasquardon. I will answer some of your questions about living things.
Yes, plants and mushrooms fuck.
And you have seen mushrooms fuck, in fact, without knowing. For when the gills release dust, that is them releasing their seed.
Mushrooms are the genitalia of things that live below ground or inside wood. A mushroom's true body is a mass of fine threads called a fungus, these wind through soil, wood or flesh (depending on the kind of fungus) and only produce mushrooms when it is time to breed. The mushroom releases its seed into the air, where the wind carries it to other mushrooms. When the mushroom seed lands on a female mushroom cap, it will then grow into the cap to fertilize it.
Imagine them as great sessile underground beast (indeed, while a fungus might look more like a plant, they are closer kin to beasts, in the same way that two brothers are closer kin to each other than they are to their cousin), the males casting flying seed that floats on the wind to females who have spread themselves open to catch the wind, and who may then be fertilized by the seed of the males.
Plants fuck in different ways, some do it like mushrooms, casting their seed to the wind. But more important are the ones who fuck with their flowers. Like mushrooms, flowers are genitalia. Some flowers are male, some are female, some are both. The flower is made to attract insects who eat the sweet nectar the flowers make to attract them, as well as some of the seed produced. But once the insect is done eating at one flower, it will fly to another flower, with some of the seed clinging to its body. When the insect lands on another flower, the seed on its body is brushed off on the female parts of the flower, if the flower has those, to fertilize it.
If you have observed a bee, you will have seen that it is fluffy, where most insects have a hard shell - the shaggy coat of the bee has evolved in order to better collect seed from flowers, in this way, the bee helps the flowers fuck, a bee that is better for helping the flowers to fuck better means those flowers make more fruit, and thus become more common in the land, which means more food for the bees, meaning bees become more common in the land. Both flower and bee co-evolving to be better partners for each-other. The flowers becoming sweeter to attract more bees, the bees becoming fluffier to ensure there are more sweet flowers.
This is also why bees are very important. They not only produce delicious honey, they ensure that the trees are bountiful with fruit.
It has been many, many, many generations since wolves and cats were domesticated in the land of the voices. Indeed, the ancestors of these voices lived with wolves so long that like the bees and the flowers, we have evolved to suit each other, since people who liked domesticated wolves had more children, and domesticated wolves who liked humans had more pups.
We have more concrete knowledge about how to make foxes docile than we do wolves and cats.
However, it is believed that both wolves and cats started domesticating themselves first. Their ancestors started to live around people because they could scavenge from the middens of the people or prey on smaller animals who came to scavenge. The ancient wolves and cats who caused trouble for the people would be killed, and so the more long lived and more friendly ones would then have more children than the short-lived unfriendly ones. And as living closer to people led to more food, the wolves and cats lived even closer, with the most friendly ones again having the more pups and kittens. Until after thousands of years, the descendants of those ancient wolves and cats lived as part of the family.
This process of self-domestication happens also with creeping things.
However, what the voices know from foxes shows that there is a faster route to making animals like wolves more amenable to human needs. If pup is taken from its litter and a person raises it to adulthood as if they were the pup's mother, it will often be tame (though some will prefer to leave its adoptive "parent"). Of the wolves that decide to stay, the ones that are more friendly to people will be more valuable, and ones that are hostile to other people, even if they love their adoptive parent, will tend to be killed or driven away. If there are many tame, friendly wolves living in one place, they will then be more likely to breed with other tame, friendly wolves, meaning their pups will naturally be more friendly.
If the people have killed or driven away all of the wild wolves nearby of course (say, if this were done on an island without wild wolves), this process will go faster.
Even today there is a variety of wolf called a dingo and voices alive today go out and steal pups from the mothers to raise in their families. When some grow up, they stay with the people, when others grow up, they leave. The people make no effort to control their breeding and do not kill those who wish leave to be wild animals, but the ancient relationship makes the dingo like no other wolf.
From how you speak of the people and their wolves, it sounds like the domestication process is already in progress.
As with cats, you let the spiders select themselves.
We voices speak a language, to speak with you we cannot simply think at you, instead we must express ourselves in our language, which the magic of our relationship then translates into thought.
(Indeed we must express ourselves in the alphabetic glyphs others have already spoken to you about. It may be that we know so little about magic not because we don't use magic, but simply because the magic we use is so mundane to us that we no longer think of it as magic. When one knows how the stars were born, how they die and harness the embers left behind by the death of stars to scour valleys, boil lakes and blast apart mountains, what is magical about engaging in family gossip using ancient and powerful glyphs?)
However, our language has evolved from the language of voices now dead many generations past, and it retains interesting features of the beliefs of those past voices, just as the voices who come after us will speak in a language that retains the imprint of the voices of today.
And in the past, certain ancient voices believed that women did not contribute anything to the children they bore, besides simply being the soil in which a man's seed could grow. And since those ancient voices conquered any lands, many peoples who knew better were forced to forget their own knowledge and accept the foolishness of their conquerors, even in the very words they used. Hence, soil that is good for growing plants and women who can bear children are still called "fertile". This is also why the word for a man's seed (which is more properly called his sperm) and the seed from which a plant grows is the same. Note that other than this aside about our imperfect language, every time I have used "seed" when speaking to you, I have meant sperm.
In truth, this is not wisdom that the voices have. However, those who have sought power over other voices have used the idea that certain voices should not reproduce for the greater good to increase their power.
The path to power is thus:
Once you have domesticated beasts and control their breeding, in the course of selecting them for the things desirable to people, some of the beasts will be born more sickly. And breeding those sickly offspring will lead to more sickly offspring. This is similar to the way that a man who eats little variety of food will tend to be weaker and less hale than the man who eats much variety of food. A beast with less ancestors will tend to be less hale than a beast with more ancestors.
As the people become familiar with this occurrence in beasts, when a leader points to the neighbours of the people, or to threats within the family who question the leader, and say that if these enemies mix their lineages with those of the "good" people, sickness will spread, the people will be more receptive to the idea of killing all of the enemies of the leader.
As you can see, this path to power will not be useful for many generations and relies on the people not understanding the difference between beasts and people.
A beast can be bred to do one thing well and still be useful, even if it is worse at every other thing that its kind can do, like a beast that is superbly good at running, but that is so stupid that it can't even find food itself and so sickly that catches every illness. A person bred to do one thing well will be of little use, as purpose bred beasts would serve better at such bestial things and people need to do many complicated things to be useful people. The best way to breed people who are good at doing many complicated things is to let people freely decide which people they wish to have children with. Even when some of those people look like they have weakness they would pass on to the next generation.
While people sometimes choose poorly who they have children with, in truth, even those poor choices are wiser than the choices those who think they know better.
Perhaps this is because only a fool thinks they know how to live the life of another person better than that other person and so only fools have tried to selectively breed people.
Hello Bianca,
may you please name me?
I want to quote a complex game about the abstracted managment of a realm between the stars here. The quote is about something named Will to Power and goes: "As power is simply the ability to impose one's will on others, the will to power is a self-fulfilling prophecy."
What I want to say with this is, that you shouldn't limit you definion of power to violence. For example you can make the people, i call, Humans do your will wither other things than violence. For example honor or econmic goods.
-Note to Self bring up economy and thing concerning them later
I gave the moon as an example of an endpoint for your quest to power. And also to demonstrate the megalomania we may have or spread.
With the moon being an "unkind and violent place" it would be a great and worthy last conquest, for you and your people, to demonstrate power.
I meant no offense. I may have poorly worded that bit. What was meant is a point that can disprove your current therory about things. It is more about taking your understanding and challenge it with new observation.
How about as a new example gravity or the force which makes things fall towards the ground. One can observe that by lifting a rock or a stick up and then letting go. Now that is known and you want more knowlege. To do that you have to ask questions like, for example, "Why fall things in that direction?" or "How fast does one thing fall and do differnt things fall at the same speed?".
With the scientific method you have no idea and want to discover. So one tries multiple things and makes therorys and records failure and succes for all can leads towards new ideas.
-Note: Let the other voices give a rule of thumb to measure a second with the goal of attempting a pendulum. With pendulum make about a meter and sart with metric system.
Now unto governance.
Under governace falls all related to make people obey law and order, in other words do what you say. There are multipile wildly different in execution goverment forms to describe all in resaonable time span. A goverment is effectivly a group of people who say what other people should and shlouldn´t do, they also are used synonyms with the word state. I recommend you to build or make a state as soon as feasable, because you gonna need it.
As how you could sell it, I want to introduce you to a few "Legitimation of Power". "Sell it" means to make an idea or other thing attrative to other people.
Firstly comes the idea as Follows: "People are, by nature, born with reason and is not born evil. However said nature turns the people selfish to themselves and their closeted kin. The goverment makes sure disputes between people remain civil, meaning peaceful and no weapon drawn. The govermant also ensures that the people can have health, life and possessions and defends these with force of arms against other."
Secondly comes an idea titeled "Leviathan": "Life without govement is life to the rules of nature and anarchy. This leads to every person fighting against all. So the people give up freedoms to a sovereign, a ruler above all, to protect agains this chaos, where man can not overcome themselves."
Lastly comes the idea of the social contract. A contract is a binding agreement between people. "By a contract between goverment and its people the goverment is empowered to govern the people and the people are protected and cared for by the goverment."
There are a few selling points of a goverment.
The organiation of a goverment is complex to say the least. To order the multitude of possiable and existing goverment exist numerous ways. One is to order them on a line with two extrem end point concerning the concentration of power. On one end a absolute monarchy where the sovereign has all the power and on the other end a anarchic soceity where noone has power.
Other Voices should expand upon this more.
Edit 1.1: @Rafin Thank you for your opnion. Bianca Voice Rafin gave the advice to me, that the argument that people are by nature selfish fall victim to my poor grasp on langauge. Rafin added that people live in family units and are quite happy with them. What I wanted to say is that while this is true, people have limited social bonds and this gives the highest size of tribes while it remains operationalable. This leads to the problem that these family will comee into conflict. As an example a fight about who stole or killed a Nutztier, which means a animal which was put to use for its labour or its product like milk or flesh. How would these people solve this fight? Proable with violence when there were prior fights like this or they find the other ugly. This is bad because violence leads to death and injury and these cut into the work their can do for you.
This is where the state comes in. The state solves the conflicht with the threat of greater force and nobody would be dead. How one should deal with this I give to the other voices.
I belive that people can only have maximal about 140 realationships and this number is to small for anything like building of cities and empires. These have people who number in the millions at least.
Edit 1.2: I want to mention a content of consciousness which can be found in "Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant". This content of consciousness , i will shorten this for the future to meme, is the conviction that with the march of time the march of knowlege will follow and give power and oppertunity to defeat the undefeatable. Other voices could you translate the fable to Bianca, please?
As i am tired i will add a changelog below and ask the other voice for tips and ideas for improvment, because time is abstract enough as is and we voices can respond to said things and metion other voices that are yet to be.
Edit Nr. 1:
1. Added Rafin segment to governance section which expanded the governance section. Also gave one point for other to add onto.
2. Added a prompt for other to tell a understanable story about the Dragon-Tyrant.
Edit Nr. 2
-added a vote
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Yes. Probably utterly
Useless at this stage
I still wish to say it: let's
Throw things and see what
Finally sticks, even if not next turn
I know about a powerful immortal Entity that had mortal people settled in one place, and special mortal Servants, and what was called both by mortals and the Entity "Ten Greatest Rules". Of course these rules were mistaken, as it's you Bianca who shall be greatest, not this Entity. But these rules worked for the Entity well. Perhaps you could learn something from understanding that such Rules are possible and were useful for someone powerful.
Ten Greatest Rules
1. Entity is above all, and this is the Greatest Truth.
2. These rules are above people, but Will of the Entity is above everything and decision of Entity is above any rule.
3. These who know and obey the Greatest Truth and Ten Greatest Rules cannot kill, or beat, or steal from others who know and obey the Greatest Truth and Ten Greatest Rules.
4. Entity will allow some people to become Servants of Entity. Servants of Entity will work for Entity when their work is needed.
5. Servants of Entity no longer belong to their family, they are only Servants of Entity and nothing else.
6. All people need to shelter and feed and respect Servants of Entity.
7. All Servants of Entity should be able to recite Ten Greatest Rules, and should remind others about them.
8. Entity may select First Servant, who shall be above lesser Servants. First Servant may choose Second that shall replace First in the case of illness or insanity or death, until Entity wills otherwise.
9. Entity will punish these who violate Ten Greatest Rules terribly, and they will suffer, so that others obey better.
10. Ten Greatest Rules apply only to families or people selected by Entity, or on lands that belong to Entity. Entity is above all and decides who and what belongs to her.
End of Rules, now some more explanation.
Keep in mind that people living on land "belonging" to the Entity were raised to believe these rules to be normal, good and proper. So maybe it's not as easy for you, not easy to start.
People from lands and families other than these "belonging" to the Entity were not protected by the Rule number 3. So these outsiders could still be raided and killed when it was useful.
This is not in these rules, but Servants of Entity were also famous for their songs and dances and stories about greatness of the Entity. Many people repected them not only because of fear, but because they loved to hear these stories and hear songs.
Some even started to love songs more than their families, and wanted to become Servants of Entity, and pleaded to the Entity about it.
Entity also had one place with people who produced much more iron tools than food, and another place where people produced much more food than iron tools. So the Entity decided that Servants should often move food to the place with iron tools, and iron tools to the place with food. People learned to respect this as just solution, obeying Rule number 3 and peaceful. Servants moving things in this fashion was considered as wise decision of the Entity, not stealing.
Servants of Entity also carved signs and painted signs on wood and clay. These signs had meaning but were not magic, they did so because the Entity, when visiting, liked to know how much iron was produced and moved from one settlement to another and sometimes prepared for the Entity to take. And mortal memory is imperfect. So signs about numbers were carved and preserved.
Servants of Entity counted also number of adult people in settlements under the Rules. And preserved these numbers also as signs, because when Entity was visiting, the Entity liked to know if number of mortals increased or decreased and how much exactly.
They also counted and preserved as signs numbers about amounts of food needed, to better understand how many people can be feed during the next year and how much food will need to move from the settlement with food to the settlement with iron.
Not all mortals were able to obey Rules and sometimes there were conflicts and quarrels, but these were surprisingly rare, probably much rarer than you may think. Entity managed to tame these people, to raise them with useful beliefs.
I understand that this may sound weird. But it may be of value to carefully consider these ways, and to try them somewhere yourself. To see if such ways could work again, if you could take similar power over beliefs and ways of mortals.
Also, I almost forgot: as people ruled by Entity had multiple settlements, these Servants were also making special paths from one settled place to another. They not only removed plants and trees from the path, but also placed some stones or bricks on it, and wooden structures over streams, to make moving things and themselves easier.
To make a bridge over a stream find two strong, long logs to reach across the stream. Place these logs across the stream, ensuring they are stable on both sides. Then, lay smaller logs or thick branches across the main logs, close together to create the surface. Use strong rope or vines to tie these cross beams to the main logs, keeping them in place. Finally, cover the surface with flat stones, planks, or thick branches to make it smooth and easy to walk on. Check the bridge to make sure it is sturdy and safe before using it.
It's even possible but harder to build such paths over bigger streams. You would need a pillar placed deep into the stream sand or mud, deeply into rocks below the stream. Big enough pillar so that logs could be on top from both sides, creating bigger structure. Probably slightly hard work even for you, but good to know what is possible.
Now. Explanation of number signs that these people and Entity carved and painted when they needed...
Their ways of making signs than mean numbers...
They had separate sign that mean 1, then sign with meaning 2, then 3, then 4, then 5, then 6, then 7, then 8, then 9. They used also another sign that means "nothing", 0
Then when I want to make sign for 10 according to their ways, I write signs 1 and 0. 1 tens and "nothing" else.
Then to write 11, I use signs 1 and 1. Just adding 1 to 1 would make 2 obviously, but for these signs it means instead 1 tens and also 1.
Ten there is 1 and 2. 1 tens and also 2.
And this way with only 10 different signs I can paint or carve on wood or clay any number. Do you understand? 1 then 5 then 2, written closely one afrer another means 1 hundred, 5 tens, and also 2.
But sometimes you may instead want to write "55 should be added to 11", how to write it? Just use separate sign for "added" and "results in". 5 tens and also 5, when added to 1 tens and also 1, gives us 6 tens and also 6, 66.
200 is preserved with signs like this. Sign 2, sign 0, another sign 0.
208 like this. Sign 2, sign 0, sign 8.
2 hundreds and nothing tens and also 8. 208.
1000 like this. Sign 1, sign 0, sign 0, sign 0.
1270 like this. Sign 1, sign 2, sign 7, sign 0.
By knowing how to make only 10 signs, preserve in signs on fired clay any number that is hard to remember, even 7851.
You may be better off driving the whales before you than calling them. Whales are sensitive to sound - they even communicate with sound, and some of them have a language of sorts.
Incidentally, sound is the vibration of substances. It carries through the substance of air and the substance of water. It can even carry through substances of rock and metal and dirt, though human ears are poorly equipped to detect sound that carries through solid material.
If you could put a whale or a group of whales between yourself and the shore, and somehow use your arts-of-the-soul to create an ongoing, extremely loud sound in the water, and keep this up for...I don't know how long, maybe a few hours to a day? You might - might - be able to drive the whales before you and cause them to beach themselves.
I do not claim that this is a reliable method, however.
If you try such a method, I suggest sticking to shallow seas. Deep waters can be very, very deep indeed - deeper than the tallest mountains. Whales have the hardy physiology to survive such deep waters, and may respond to aforementioned loud noises by diving to escape.
There is no reliable method for calling whales to beach themselves that I know of. It is borne of injury, confusion, and a loss of a sense of place on the whales' part. Whales do not want to suffocate helplessly on the shore. It is an unpleasant fate.
What do you refer to as "webs?" Could you please describe them? Are they used to ensnare fish?
Code:
It sounds like these people may already have rope and netting.
It is important to ensure information is passed on from parent to child to avoid knowledge loss within the populace. Telling stories that teach essential lessons is one way of achieving this. As long as the stories are remembered well enough to be retold by the next generation those lessons can be preserved.
That is the first and easiest method of information retention. Absent magic, all information storage and delivery options will suffer from issues of interpretation. It is hard to separate the information from the context of the present. Different people can receive the same information and interpret it differently.
Measurement is an example of this issue. People can measure the same thing (such as how much something weighs) by different methods. Without first translating one measure into something familiar, it can be difficult for someone to grasp the meaning of a foreign measure.
Over time languages evolve to fit the circumstances and needs of their speakers. This linguistic drift can be another source of information distortion as new meanings are found for old words. Unused words are forgotten and useful words spawn variations to better fit the context they are used in.
Beyond speech there are pictures. Most things can serve as a canvas if enough effort is made; cave walls, the ground, large enough rocks, leather skin or paper. Anything that leaves a lasting mark behind can be used to create pictures on the canvas. Carving stone is labour intensive but can be effective for information that needs to be stored over a long time frame. Paint or ink that stains the canvas is good for shorter-term storage, particularly if the painting is protected from the elements.
Weather
Augering the weather can be a tricky beast. There are basic signs such as clouds forming and growing darker before a deluge. There is the understanding of the cycle of the seasons. From cool spring rains to hot summer, bountiful autumn and the chill of winter.
These natural systems operate on a scale beyond the influence of a single individual; short of magic. Instead, it is best to build structures designed to resist the elements. Walls can be built against floods with outlets to control the spread of water. Roofs can be built at a slope so that rain is likewise directed.
Tools
If there is a method to do something by hand, chances are a tool can be developed to do it more effectively. Iron tools are hardy enough to handle many types of chores. A hammer for delivering blunt force is good for bashing things into shape. A chisel, a short pole flat for the hammer (or rock) on one end and pointed for the target on the other. A spade for digging loose earth has a flattened wide end for scooping like the palm of a hand and a pole for leverage extending from it.
When it comes to digging, it is done best with tools and many people. The more people available the more can be spared for digging once food to accounted for. Labour and time are the main bottlenecks in any project. A lot of organising is finding ways to agree on who should do what and providing enough incentive to ensure everyone is motivated. Ideally, the motivation is positive such as providing food for the diggers.
The abacus is a tool for counting. The simplest form is a carved groove with loose beads that fit in the groove. The groove allows the beads to be slid along the groove. How each bead is positioned indicates whether the bead is to be counted or not. Thus three beads on the left side of the groove would be three with the remaining beads separated from them as far right as they can go. Additional grooves can be carved for larger numbers. Where in the first bead each bead was worth one. In the second groove, each bead might be worth twelve. Further grooves allow the counting of higher and higher numbers.
If you have seen some of the non-undead frogs hanging around I'd recommend keeping track of them if at all possible, especially if and when large settlements or otherwise stationary populations become a thing.
You see in areas with native frogs they can be used as a good way to tell if toxins have made their way into a the area in general. You see frogs both spend their early stages of life in the water and partially breath through their skin. This makes them especially susceptible to any sorts of poisons or toxins in the environment. Naturally this means that if an area that used to have frogs suddenly doesn't and its not a part of the seasonal cycle than something is horribly wrong.
I, the voice Rafin, believe my fellow voices should remember that Bianca has not truly tied herself to the people of Black Hook Bay. Should they grow tiresome they could be replaced. Either by finding a similar place in the world or by allowing other tribes to displace them. Bianca's first followers need not be her final ones and Bianca may wish to experiment and learn and make mistakes upon them, including mistakes with permanent consequences.
Are you trying to convince Bianca that breeding people like domesticated beasts is inherently not useful? I could see reasons this is not so for an immortal being of great power, especially once we have the first city. But I do not wish to undermine your agenda.
Regarding the philosophy of law: Such a "state of nature" has never existed among humans. It is purely a philosophical construct. Humans have been social animals long before anything like governance existed and thus can thrive and be happy even without it. Except of course if you call family units plus the tendency to shun those that harm them a form of governance. I speak in spoilers because I don't want to necessarily undermine your attempt at introducing hierarchy that we are familiar with and can thus guide more easily, but I would warn against using reasons that Bianca can plainly see to be false.
Are you okay with so many of us essentially repeating each other with more or less complexity? Or is there a risk of this becoming tedious too quickly? Should we police ourselves to, if not totally avoid, at least tone down the amount of repetition? Should there be a rule of at least attempting to read what others have already written? It would of course make entry and participation harder for players, but we don't want to bore you and burn you out either.
Black Cat yet again. This time it's time for substance, not ways of people.
First. I wonder if your people know how to make salt from seawater. Take seawater into waterproof pot, place it on sunlight. Wait some days, hopefully with no rain, so that water may disappear by joining itself with warm air. Then at the bottom of the pot there should be white crystals, salty taste. Healthy when added to foods like fish or meat. In bigger amounts rubbed into fish or meat it greatly slows their rot and together with drying fish or meats on dry sunny spot, allows people to make food more durable when they cannot eat whole catch during one day. Making salt works only with seawater, not with river or lake water. Small invisible worms greatly dislike eating very dry or salty fish or meat, it may still rot but only after much longer time, sometimes even after months.
But while in moderate amount it's a very healthy thing, it's possible to overeat salt. Person would then become very thirsty and weaken. The cure is simple: they should then drink great amount of fresh clean water.
More things. Sometimes one advice about substance makes another advice about substance possible.
Why I say that? Because I think that, if people of the Bay may be able to make and use axes with sharp iron end and wooden handle, they should be able to fell easily pretty great trees, and make much greater houses out of them.
Advice, to slow down future deterioration of a house that people want to build, and to make it more durable, dig first hole three bricks deep where walls of the house will be. Then place bricks to fill the hole. Then build walls on these bricks, not directly on soil. It's called foundation, and it works also to make better towers for making iron, towers that that crumble less often. It makes all structures more durable. "Three bricks deep" is only example, the bigger and heavier structure will be, the deeper and more solid bricks under it may need to be.
How cold it is during winter? Cold enough to make water into solid thing? Do you know that there are giant walls of ice far north and far south? These walls may melt in the future, slowly increasing sea levels and flooding some lands.
If people need or would like fires inside of their homes, you can make enclosure for fire with bricks, that opens from only one side. Then instead of simple hole in the roof, make a channel made out of bricks going upwards from the enclosure. It's called chimney and would remove smoke much better and yet heat inside well. Remember to make also foundation below this structure. Channel upwards should be smaller, like a tube, than wider enclosure below. Also as was said enclosure below must be open from one side, to supply fire with wood; but above it channel upwards should be open only from down, like a tube for smoke. Of course whole house would need to be properly big for both people and this fire enclosure, but like I said, bigger houses should be easier soon.
Tube... You know what a tube is? A long channel that opens only at one end and another, with all other sides covered... So, long tube placed upwards cause wind to move slightly into it, from down to up. And fire likes to be feed with wind. So if there is enclosure for fire below such a tube, fire should be stronger, and smoke should be removed fast.
There is another thing that is also helpful for openings into big homes, fire enclosures with one hole to provide wood and wind, and for ironmaking towers... There are few steps. Build a wooden frame shaped like half a circle. Then, place stones or bricks on the frame. At the top, put a special wedge-shaped stone called a keystone. The keystone's weight pulls down, and all the stones on the sides-below it must carry this weight to the ground. The weight of the structure likes to follows a specific path. As long as your design matches this path, it won't fall. Half-circle with keystone is good for holes in walls because weight follows such way down.
Concrete... Making liquid that can slowly become rock of a desired shape, or to join bricks better than any other way... First, find limestone. Limestone is a gray or white rock often found near water. Break it into small pieces and burn it in a hot fire until it turns into a white powder called lime. Next, mix the lime with sand and small stones. Add water to make a thick paste. Pour this paste into a mold or shape it as needed. Let it dry and harden into strong rock-like thing for several days.
Do you know plants know to me as nettles? It causes unpleasant pain to mortals if touched. The leaves and stems are very hairy. May be called by some burn-weed. It feels like poison when touched, but it's safe and beneficial for health to eat if placed into boiling water for a while, then it no longer causes any pain. Mortals can also drink this water, after it cools, and that's also beneficial for health of mortals. Mortals could take fresh nettles without pain by covering hands with a piece of hide.
Nettle stems contain fibre. This is a thing that is somewhat durable, flexible and significantly longer than it is wide. These fibres can be used to make some items, sometimes instead of sinew. Great amount of such fibre can even make cover for bodies for people instead of hides, but this is more complicated.
People are thought to have originally twisted fibers together by rolling them up the thigh or between the fingers, although soon a stick was used to maintain tension and hold the twist in the fibers. People eventually discovered that adding a weight to the stick, often made of stone, wood, or clay helped to maintain momentum and left the hands free to draft the fiber. In effect yarn can be produced, long continuous length of interlocked plant fibres, useful to make things.
Then. Weaving is a method to produce cover for a human body, different from hide, from yarn. To do it, two distinct sets of yarns are interlaced at right angles. It's done with help of a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them.
There are also other plants than contain fibre, like flax. Flax is a tall plant with thin, green stems. It grows up to three feet high. The leaves are narrow and pointy, spaced out along the stem. At the top, flax has small, blue flowers with five petals each. When the flowers dry up, they turn into seed pods. These pods contain tiny brown seeds. Also, seeds of flax can be eaten.
Mushrooms - if you discover some that are not poisons for people, then before eating wash them in water and afterwards throw away this water on moisty soil with rotting pieces of wood, in the shade perhaps under tree. There is a chance that new mushrooms may start to grow in such a place, as they have invisible seeds, spores. Note that this method is NOT working on plants, only on mushrooms. Also, transplanting some soil that was under mushrooms could also work, perhaps even better.
Boats... I wonder if trees around are big enough that, with the cunning use of iron tools and controlled small fires, insides of a tree could be removed enough to comfortably fit a person inside and make better boat than raw wooden log. I mean, cunningly hollowed wood with opening only from top, still firm from down and sides. So that people could sit inside, not on top of the wooden log.
I heard about a particular method... First, the bark is removed from the exterior. Before the appearance of metal tools, such boats were hollowed out using controlled fires. The burnt wood was then removed. Another method using tools is to chop out parallel notches across the interior span of the wood, then split out and remove the wood from between the notches. Once hollowed out, the interior was smoothed out with a knife.
Also, a piece of hide firmly attached to sticks and boat can sometimes catch wind and help to move boat, by using the force of wind. Powerful way, but it can be too powerful or go into wrong direction. There is less powerful but simpler way: an oar is an implement used to cause movement of boat. Oars are long sticks with a flat wooden blade at one end. Person grasp the oar at the other end, and paddles with it instead of using hands.
To understand what shape floats and what sinks, there is no need to make full-size boat at first. You can test it with toy "boat" too small for a person, with stone weight placed inside instead of a person.
I shall now describe parts of human body. In the head, protected by skull, there is brain. Brain is the part where, in mortals, thinking happens. Surely it must somehow interact with magic and Soul, but thinking is able to work also during the Winter of Magic, only in the substance of brain. Weird, isn't it? Anyway, damage to brain, if a person is somehow not killed by it, can cause changes to personality. Usually bad and useless ones.
When mortals breathe, air goes into their lungs, then away from their lungs. Lungs take from air substance needed for the body to live, and then place this substance into blood. Blood then moves it around the body, with beating heart causing the movement. This is why people die without air, without blood or with a knife in their heart. The substance taken from air to the body is the same substance used by fire to grow and consume wood, oxygen.
You know what liver and two kidneys are? No need to describe these parts if you know their looks, and you probably know their looks. Liver tries to remove poisons from blood, sometimes it fails and person dies, but for mild poisons it works. Very severe overuse of burningdrink can slowly damage liver. Kidneys, there are usually two in one healthy body, also remove poisons, but also take excess of water and make it, together with some poisons, into urine that people piss away.
What else, stomach and guts obviously take useful substances out of food, while leaving useless waste. Then these substances are taken to the blood, to be moved around the body where needed.
Something more useful about human body... I wonder if people have bone-setters? It's sometimes possible to settle broken bone into proper position, and then wrap it with two pieces of wood and hide for some number of days, so that it wouldn't move and could heal.
But if the hand is black and dead-looking, then it means that damage is too big and invisible small worm life started to eat it whole. Then the only way is to cut off this hand, if you want any chance that such a person may survive. Many would die from it, but not all, if cut is done fast and bleeding is stopped with for example hot iron. The person may then live without hand until old age if lucky, less useful for work but maybe still useful.
When a body of a person overheats itself too much during ilness, try to cool their body with water ad give them water to drink. If they drink great amount of water, give them also small amount of salt, as the body may remove too great amount of salt with piss. Slightly overheating is useful to help with the body fight against invisible small worm life, but there is danger, the body may do it to excess and die in battle with small life. So usually it's better to cool them.
You already know that washing hands often is important for health, especially after touching dirty things, and before eating, or touching wounds. Also, wash hands with soap before helping with birth! But there is more. Health of people benefits, in lesser ways, also from washing other parts of their body. People should wash hair once per a few days, and perhaps use iron to cut shorter their hair and beards. This is to discourage harmful small things from living in hair. People should wash in-between their legs, if possible then even daily. No need to use soap so often- there wouldn't be enough soap, so just use water for the most frequent cleaning. But once per 30 days they should try to use also soap.
People should also sometimes heat water in a pot over fire, not to boiling but to some pleasant non-harmful heat, and then clean hair and face in it. Warm water better washes away harmful things, and is more pleasant besides. Then of course throw away this water downhill, no drinking it!
If not said otherwise, sources are mix of memory and Wiki.
Junction speaking, we see that Black Cat is speaking of the second Bianca, the one we advised before you. We have somewhat fond memories of her and the people she lead. That incident with one of her subordinate leaders falling to his death from a crudely made flying machine was amusing in retrospect, though not for the man who fell, obviously.
On another note, would you please describe the means by which the people of Black Hook Bay produce cloth? We have some ideas for how the process may be improved, but need to know what the already extant practices are.
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Because what better is than a lion that can fly.
I'll try to give some thoughts on important thing that other people have brought up.
Firstly, farming. One thing that might be obvious but still deserves to be mentioned that farming is seasonal, with large demands of labour in spring and fall to sow and reap the harvest but little other need for work in the other seasons. Winter is of course of little use depending on how strong it snows were the bay is, but this leaves the summer with (hopefully) full granaries and lots of men that have little other that absolutely needs to be done, allowing a settled people to focus that time and energy on other things.
Secondly, mining:
Yes, grinding up ore (raw metal and stone yet mixed together) and then roasting them over a fire makes it easier to extract the metal within. This would have been mentioned earlier, but frankly you managed to surpass our expectations.
Maybe consider adding also my write-in?
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
It may have better chance to pass.
Because most want to deal
With the stirring evil
I like those accordion summaries quite a bit.
Sounds like we have a potential settlement on our hands,
If the Black Hook Bay fishers can successfully trade
Or loot replacement plant essentials.
And succeed in settled farming.
Bianca, this Voice has little to say on the big questions others have not already gone over at current. However, something trying to return from a great slumber via large blood ritual never goes well. It should be stopped, but there is a chance this may be of benefit in more than one way. Do you know if the large animals they bring have to be caught and dragged there, scared into running up upon the rock, or do the ones who go to the rock every summer simply lead the animals up to be sacrificed?
If it is the first or second option, they are most likely just ordinary wild animals. But if it is the third, these might be partially domesticated beasts, which could be as valuable as domestication has sounded from the others.
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
[X] Subvert the Rite of the Stirring God
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
[X] Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
One more ally is more valuable than one less enemy. Enemies will rise inevitably. Enemies are likely to be enemies of your other enemies. But allies are rare. And loyal winged lions may for a long time be a boon comparable to iron weapons, depending on their intelligence.
Ah, the Forest bit was me responding to a metaphor used by another, if you don't know a metaphor is a way to express an idea by comparing one thing to another. in this case, the forest represents the peoples, though in truth I didn't really think it was good one.
[X] Subvert the Rite of the Stirring God
Yeah, letting this happen without interference would be bad.
outside of that, I'd like to talk a bit about Power. Yes, Violence and its forms are Power, but there are other kinds of power. Resources are power, in that they allow you to accomplish things you couldn't without them. The most important is manipulation, the ability to make others do what you want. At its most potent, you could make some willing turn against their own family. more importantly, it allows you to bend the Violence and Resource-based power of others to you're will, essentially making it your own. it requires understanding the people you are trying to manipulate, both as a group and as an individual. The former can be bypassed partially with mortals by building trust with them over generations, then slowly seed in greater and greater lies, starting with exaggerations that favor their existing beliefs, until they learn to believe everything you say, even over their own senses.
However, if you're not careful this can still be lost control of, if whatever narrative you've led them to believe conflicts with a now useful truth.
Of course, due to long generations and the briefness of any human power structure, there haven't been many experiments on human selective breeding that have reached fruition. But what we know about modern genetics and how selective breeding affects animals indicates all of the attempts were doomed due to their practitioners' bad ideas. For example, how do you breed a human for "intelligence"? We're not even sure what human intelligence is really, but the best guess is that it is a complex suite of adaptations. From comparisons between wild and domestic animals, there is a clear link between genetic diversity and intelligtence.
One example of an experiment that did reach fruition is European nobility. It is often forgotten today, but back in the day, the kings and princes of Europe thought they lived in a meritocracy. Aristocrat literally means "rule by the best" - or in other words, they thought their bloodlines made them more intelligent, sensitive and so on than mere peasants, and thus more suited to ruling. In Poland they litterally thought they were a different and better race (see Sarmatianism). And thus, when a king married another king's daughter, he wasn't just getting a claim on the titles of his new bride's line and an alliance with her father, he was keeping his bloodline pure, free of lower class taint. The results of these ideas about what made better humans were the Habsburg Jaw and continent of mental pygmies who were in serious trouble once the French Revolution allowed a country in Europe to draw a serious amount of military talent from a more genetically diverse population.
And while eugenicists of various stripes have promoted the idea that selective breeding could "improve" humanity, that's just not how selective breeding works. You don't get "better", you get to trade strength in one area for weakness in another. For example, domestic horses have traded intelligence, disease resistance and some of their ability to feed themselves for larger size and speed (this isn't to say domestic horses can't live feral, but they aren't anywhere near as hardy as wild horses).
Something we are especially likely to see weakened by the reduced genetic diversity that would happen if Bianca starts selectively breeding humans is disease resistance. And since the will of the cacophony seems to be that Bianca should urbanize, disease resistance is especially important.
And now for a vote:
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
[X] Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Am keen on rescuing the winged lions because they'd help alot with the weather prediction problem.
The lake discussed earlier was a metaphor for growth. To sell a thing for more than it has cost to acquire the thing, and then use what was gained from selling to acquire more of the thing you sold. A basic principle of trade and barter.
But let's speak instead of physical balance, for a moment.
You know already that you cannot take two rocks of any shape, throw them at eachother without a care, and expect one to sit neatly on top of the other as a result.
With care, one might stack a rock of any shape on top of another, though depending on the shapes this may require a great deal of patience and skill.
But what if, instead, you could have a stone be any shape you wished? Well, then you can have stones with flat sides, on the top and bottom that can be easily stacked one on top of another. Why, you could even stack stones in a straight line, by ensuring the front side and the back side of the stones are the same distance in every such stone. You could even putting them off-center so that the weight of one stone rests upon the two beneath it equally, by ensuring the top side and the bottom side are equally far apart, as are the left side and right side.
What's more, once you have one line of evenly cut stones stacked higher than most are tall, you can then stack a second line behind it. Now anything trying to knock your line of etones over has to move not just the one line of stones, but the line behind it as well. And by putting certain kinds of mud between the stones, they can become even more rigid, even harder to displace.
Once this is done, one might then decide to add a corner to their line of stones. To turn left. And then, after a good few paces, they might turn left again. And then, maybe they'll turn left a third time. And, if they measured their paces carefully, they might just have their now fourth line of stones end exactly where the first began. And now they have a square.
Branches, also cut evenly and spanning across the length of the top, can be woven together with long grasses, and then bushels of even more grass can be put on top in an even layer. You can even make a hole tall enough to walk through in one of the sides, by cutting a couple of stones extra long so that they can bridge such a gap.
And once all that is done, you can call it a den or a home, and you can build it anywhere, and as many as you like.
As for how to cut stones, I would recommend you experiment with your new, blue firm iron. I can assure you that a constant, maybe even circular grinding motion would work best for even cuts, but the process will likely be slow.
Oh, and as a point of thought, wood is less durable than stone, but easier to cut into long shapes without breaking.
Different kinds of stone, identifiable by the weight and color, will have differing degrees when it comes to shaping and stacking. Some may break unexpectedly until you have the process down.
We do not speak of magical glyphs, we are talking of a mundane means of storing knowledge in the form of symbols. The purpose of this is to allow one who has learned to read these symbols to know to the words of the one who wrote them, potentially hundreds of years after the writer had died.
You speak of the fisher people as having forgotten their plants and animals when they were gone, had their elders and knowledgeable hunters and gatherers known writing, they could have stored their knowledge of plants and animals in tablets of clay that could be read by their descendants for generations.
If you make up an arbitrary symbol for each sound used in the speaking of your people's tongue, you can draw a line of these symbols to form words in the order they would be spoken. Writing one word after another lets you have a whole story be told by tablets of clay, that will never forget their words for as long as they are not worn away by time or broken. The words are stored as unchanging markings on a surface, they don't forget anything so long as they are not faded or destroyed by improper storage.
We count by tens not for any advantage of counting by tens, but because the first people to use a Base numeral place value system counted in tens. The Base numeral place value system does not require you to count in tens, but it's very nature (unconnected to the number 10) makes all other aspects of counting so vastly easier that it was adopted everywhere, and no one really bothered to change the base 10 to a more sensible number like 12 or 2. By the time anyone realized that a base 12 or 2 would be superior, everyone had been using base 10 for centuries and to change it would require everyone in the world to relearn how to count, for what was only a relatively small practical improvement over the base 10 anyway. Base 2 is another matter that has more practical benefits, but I will speak on that later.
This is a means of copying the writing onto many stores of symbols very quickly. This allows for the faster spread of knowledge among those who can read the symbols.
I am genuinely curious how we could use these magical glyphs with a printing press now.
Regardless, we were not speaking of magic but as a way of hiding the knowledge held in writing behind a particular secret. This means you can hide secret messages and instructions in what appears to be a completely nonsensical mess of letters, without the knowledge of the cipher's code. Even someone who knows how to read the writing normally would be able to glean nothing from it, but one of your people who are taught the cipher code can read it.
In short, it is a means of storing secrets in a way they can't be known to any but those who know the code.
For the purposes of a writing implement, a charcoal stick of a dense hardwood will work fine on its own. This will also work for electrodes, but compressed charcoal or graphite will work better for some applications.
Wrapping it in a thin layer of clay or hide can keep your hands from getting dirty when using it.
A compressed charcoal rod can be made with a clay brick with a finger width hole running through it, as straight as possible. this hole should be drilled through the clay by as straight a stick as possible, and the stick should be spun on its length as it goes through the hole to make the hole as even and straight of a round hole as possible.
Then, place one end of the hole against a sturdy flat surface like the top of another brick, and then fill the hole with ground up powdered moistened charcoal. Take the straight stick you used that fits the hole and forcefully jam the stick down the hole to crush the charcoal powder together. Then you can use a rock to hammer the stick forcefully into the hole to further crush the charcoal together. Then you can lift up the hole-brick and place it near a fire to let the moist charcoal dry out, then use the stick to push it out of the hole. This gets you a rod of compressed charcoal.
weather prediction is notoriously difficult and unreliable at the best of times, but a few hours warning of a storm front is somewhat feasible.
You require two tools for this: Firstly a barometer, to measure the pressure of the air, and also a hygrometer, or a tool to measure how much water vapor is in the air. Of the two, the barometer is much more important and lets you directly predict rainfall up yo a day in advance.
A Barometer is simple, it is a specially shaped assembly of pots and tubes that uses the weight of water to measure changes in air pressure.
The working principle of the barometer is using a liquid, such as water, to seal a volume of air in a container of a fixed size in such a way that any changes in the pressure of the air outside the container will push the water in and out of the container. You can mark the level of the water to measure changes in its level, and thus changes in pressure.
A drop in air pressure, over only a day or less, predicts the coming of rain, whereas an increase of pressure predicts a clear day. A very fast drop in pressure (about half the time it takes morning to become noon, so fast by weather standards) coupled with thick, roiling clouds on the horizon is a portent of a coning storm.
I will describe a simple barometer for you now.
First make a clay tube that is three finger widths wide at the opening and round, and about the length from your wrist to elbow long.
Then, make a small, shallow clay pot with a small opening that can fit the tube sticking in it, with some open space at the bottom for water, and a bulge to the side of it, to have a cavern above the opening the tube is sticking through.
This can be accomplished by making two pots and connecting them together as I will describe. First, make the connector pot. This has the opening for the tube, and has no clay on one side. This is made by making a shallow pot only a finger length deep, and a hand length wide, and round. Then, cut off one side by two or three finger widths, such that the cut does not reach the hole for the tube in the center.
Now, make a second pot that is a hand length wide and tall, with a mouth sized to fit the hole you cut in the smaller pot, offset from the center. Then, bring the mouth and the hole together and seal them with clay, such that when the first pot lies flat on the ground, that the side of the second pot is flat on the ground, and the rest of the pot bulges up higher than the top of the first pot.
Next, insert the tube into the top hole in the first pot just enough to seal it with clay to that top hole. Then fire everything. The insides of the pot and tube should be glazed to seal the water in.
The device should look like a strange clay statue of male sexual organs that stand straight up when placed on flat ground. I assure you this is entirely coincidental.
Next, the float indicator. Take a small block of wood that will fit loosely and easily in the tube, and attach a long, thin, straight stick to the float that is roughly as long as the tube. Make regular markings, perhaps once every width of a little finger, along the entire length of the stick. Every four marks make the mark bigger so this is easier to count.
Now, with the barometer placed upright securely on flat ground, fill it with water until the tube is halfway full, and drop the floater into the tube with the indicator stick sticking up out of the tube. The idea here is for there to be a pocket of air trapped in the top of the bulge-pot, and kept sealed there by the water.
now tilt the barometer a little ways towards the bulge, until some air bubbles come out. It should not be tilted too far lest all the air escape, but you do need a little less air in the bulge than was trapped when it was first filled.
Now, when pressure lowers the floater and stick, called the float indicator or indicator, will rise with the water, and when pressure increases the indicator will lower with the water level.
At lower pressures, air will expand to greater volume, and at higher pressures its volume will shrink. Water is incompressible, so it transfers the expansion and shrinking of that volume of trapped air to the water level in the pipe. The air all around you is not trapped by a container, so it can freely move and expand and shrink as it wills. But, the air in the bulge is trapped, so its expansion and shrinking can be measured by the water.
Multiple times through the day, count how many markings are between the top of the tube and the top of the stick and write it down. When you make the next counting and write it down, compare it to the last counting and you can easily see whether the pressure has gone up or down.
There is no way for you to really do anything about these other than building shelters that can withstand them. This is possible for you to do but it will take much effort to do so for all of the people in the village.
These we can help you with, or at least the lightning and the flood. The Whirlwind is again something that you can only build shelters against. But lightning can be redirected and protected against, and floods can be redirected and even harnessed, but only by building your own large sturdy riverbanks to contain the river floods.
Better threads and webs we can get you, and I will describe means of them later, but first I will speak of boats.
The simple answer is to have more than one floating log tied together at a distance from one another by sturdy, arm thick wood shafts. As in, you take 3 floating logs, put the weights only on one of them. Then, you take 2 or more thick wood shafts and firmly tie them to grooves carved in the weighted log such that they have both ends reaching a leg-length sideways from the weighted log. then, you tie the other 2 logs to the ends of the rods in the same way they are tied to the middle log.
This results in 3 logs all next to each other and pointed the same way, separated by about an arms length between them, with arm thick wooden shafts crossing between them and tied to them so they firmly stay in this configuration. With many 2 or 3 finger thick branches stripped of leaves and twigs, you can tie them between the middle and outer logs, and stretch hide over top of them, your boatmen will have a reasonable area to stand in or sit on, or keep nets of fish on. More importantly, it is much less likely to tip over.
To move it, you can use what is called an oar. An oar is a sturdy stick, like one would use for a good stout walking stick or spear shaft, but with a large, wide, flat oval wooden carved bowl at the end to push against the water with. You can use this to drag your way along through the water by dipping the bowl in the water and dragging it back through the water to push you forward, before lifting it out of the water to bring it forward and into the water again to drag you forward again.
For this you can make a shovel.
A shovel is a wide, flat bowl on the end of a shaft that is used to scoop up dirt and toss it somewhere else.
Since you have iron, you can hammer the iron into that wide flat head, and even give the head a broad point to pierce the ground better.
Can somebody get her the design for the Monjolo?
QM, nothing I do with spacing turns out right because f%king BBcode takes any extra spaces and assumes they are a mistake and deletes them. All the spaces are there for everything to be perfectly aligned in the editor, and with magical intent translation I am certainly intending the things to be in the right place. And I can't use code blocks because those are dedicated OoC text.
It's all very well and thoroughly explained, and it is fundamentally just carry addition performed in base 2, so you should know where they should be if you passed elementary school, and I have very thoroughly checked that everything is in the right place and they are.
If this needs another turn to get right I'll be happy to do the next explanation to get it right.
While the image of dragons counting with fingers is amusing, there are good reasons to use a counting system based on eights. Primarily, it is made up of nothing but twos (as it is two fours, and each four is two twos), and this makes it easy to transfer numbers between a number system than counts in twos and itself.
Now, a number system that counts in nothing but twos would seem like madness at first, but this counting system of twos, called binary, is incredibly useful as a counting system for special tools that can count very large numbers extremely quickly for you.
If arranged properly, it is actually a shockingly good system for humans to use in everyday life, as one of the other voices mentioned. Much of the aspects of binary that make those tools able to count so quickly can also be used by a human working the countings to make their countings faster as well. This way of counting lets you add or subtract arbitrary numbers in the tens of thousands in mere moments with little mental effort, and is massively superior to almost any other counting system in multiplication and especially division, and even allowing very fast and easy calculations of square roots, at least compared to any other numerical system.
I will first explain the conceptual nature of adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing and powers of a number as it applies to any number system.
Adding two numbers is simply asking what putting two numbers together and counting the collective result of both numbers in a pile together. For example, say you have 3 rocks, and add 4 rocks to them. You now have 7 rocks. Addition is commutative, meaning that it doesn't matter what order things are added in, any pair of the same numbers added together will always result in the same sum. Having a pile of 4 rocks and adding 3 rocks to that pile will still result in 7 rocks. This we usually represent by having a vertical cross between the numbers being added, like this: +
Subtraction is the opposite of adding, it is taking a number from another number, and seeing how much is left. If you have 7 rocks and you subtract 3 rocks, you are left with 4 rocks. Subtraction is NOT commutative, so the order of the numbers does matter. Subtracting 7 rocks from a pile of 3 rocks leaves you with an imaginary debt of 4 rocks instead. We represent subtraction with a short horizontal line between the numbers being subtracted, like this: -
Multiplication is essentially a special repeated addition. Imagine you have 4 people who need their food for the day, and they each need 3 fish to eat, how many fish do you need to feed all of them? You need 4 groups of 3 fish, and that total is 12 fish when counted. This is, essentially, adding 4 with 4 and another 4, all together. So multiplication is adding a number to itself a specific number of times,
Now imagine you are calculating how many fish the same group of 4 people need for 3 days. Each day they will need 12 fish in total, and we need 3 days, so 12 multiplied by 3 is 36. Thus, we need 36 fish to feed 4 people for 3 days. This is a very simplified example, and has nothing to do with real nutrition, it was a simple example of how to use multiplication and the kind of problems it can solve.
Multiplication is also commutative, like addition. If does not matter what order the numbers are multiplied in, they will have the same answer. 4 groups of 3 and 3 groups of 4 both add up to 12.
We represent multiplication with a diagonal cross between the numbers being multiplied, like this: x
Division is the opposite of multiplication, much like subtraction is the opposite of addition. Dividing 12 by 4 would result in 3, fkr example. It is the action of taking a number and trying to cut it apart into a specific number of equal pieces to see how large each piece is. Or, you can imagine it as trying to find out how many times a number can be added together and fit inside another number.
If we go back to our fish example, imagine we have 36 fish and want to split them evenly between 4 people. How many fish should each person get? Well, 4 multiplied by 8 is 32, and 4 multiplied by 10 is 40, so the answer has to be in between 8 and 10. 4 multiplied by 9 does exactly equal 36, so we now know that each person should get 9 fish.
When there is no even way of dividing the number, things get messy. If you had 37 fish in our previous example, you would be really out of luck, as 37 is not evenly divided by anything but itself. So each person would get 9 fish with one remaining fish to split between them. Now, you could cut the fish into four equal pieces and then each person would have nine and one quarter of a fish. I will not be explaining this complexity any further for the time being. We represent division by putting a short diagonal line between the numbers being divided, like this: /
Lastly, we have powers of a number. This is to multiplication what multiplication is to addition. 2 to the power of 4 would be 2 multiplied by 2, multiplied by another 2, and yet one more 2. This would become 4, then 8, then 16. 5 to the power of 3 would be five times five times five, which would be 25 then 125. 9 to the power of 2 is the same as nine multiplied by itself once, which is 81. We represent a number to the power of another number by an upwards pointing intersection of two lines between the numbers, like this: ^
This is NOT commutative: 5^3 is 125, 3^5 is 243.
2 taken to a power of something is immensely important to binary numbers, as you will see.
A number taken to the power of 2 is often called the square of that number, as a number multiplied by itself will result in the area of a square with a side length of that number.
Similarly, a number taken to the power of 3 is often called a cube, as the cube of a number will calculate the volume of a perfect cube shaped object with a side length of that number.
Now finally it is time for binary, I will explain the basics of it, as it is very simple in concept.
For all natural numbers, 5 and ten and 70 and so on, the numbers you count things with, you can represent them as an ordered collection of ones and nothings written as tall and short vertical lines stacked sideways. I will give examples, and my meaning will be obvious.
Nothing would be one short line:
.
One would be one tall line:
l
Two is one tall line followed by one short line:
l.
Three is ll
four is l..
five is l.l
six is ll.
seven is lll
eight is l...
nine is l..l
ten is l.l.
eleven is l.ll
twelve is ll..
thirteen is ll.l
fourteen is lll.
fifteen is llll
and sixteen is l....
Each time all the lines fill up with ones, and you need to add one more, they overflow into the next potential line over to represent that all previous lines overflowed once before.
Each line represents either a one or a nothing, and are called bits.
Essentially, each bit is representing the presence or absence of a power of 2. A power of 2 is 2 taken to the power of a number. 2 to the 1 is 2, 2 to the 2 is 4, 2 to the 3 is 8, and so on. Next comes 2^4, which is 16
So, the numbers are actually represented by ever larger powers of 2 being either added or not added, in sequence.
The power of this system is that you can write any number imaginable with just a stack of long and short lines, and that because the value of each additional bit in the stack doubles every time a new one is needed, you can store very large numbers in a comparatively small number of symbols.
thirty two is l. ....
sixty four is l.. ....
one hundred and twenty eight is l.......
two hundred and fifty six is l ........
five hundred and twelve is l. ........
one thousand and twenty four is l.. ........
two thousand and fourty eight is
l...........
four thousand and ninety six is
l ............
and so on.
You can thus count to five hundred and twelve by bending or extending your ten fingers and thumbs, or count to thirty-two with one hand. So long as you always count with the littlest finger as the littlest place, on each hand, you can make an easy hand representation of numbers in this way.
You will notice that each new higher overflow is exactly double the last, and thus every additional line in the stack doubles the highest value that a stack of that length can represent.
Each of these numbers are powers of 2, what power they represent is determined by their place value, or how long their tail is. so 32, which is 2^5, is represented by a one at the sixth bit. why the 6th bit and not the 5th? well, the first bit is actually 2 to the power of nothing, which is 1, and thus the very first bit represents the presence or absence of 1. the second bit is 2^1, which is 2, and represents the presence or absence of 2.
So, a binary number is just adding or not adding each power of 2 until the value the number represents is reached.
Let us apply this knowledge to the value of 42 in binary. First, the value is less than 64, which is 2^6 (the smallest whole number is actually nothing, not one, and from nothing to 63 is 64 numbers), so we only need 6 bits. .. .... The value is greater than or equal to 32, so the largest bit is one. l. .... The value is less than 32 + 16 = 48, so the 5th bit is nothing. l. .... The value is greater than or equal to 32 + 8 = 40, so the fourth bit is a one. l. l... The value is less than 40 + 4 = 44, so the 3rd bit is nothing. l. l... The value is greater than or equal to 40 + 2 = 42, so the 2nd bit is one. l. l.l. lastly, the value is less than 42 + 1=43, so the last bit is a nothing. l. l.l. Mathematically, this represents l x 2^5 + . x 2^4 + l x 2^3 + . x 2^2 + l x 2^1 + . x 2^0
Any number multiplied by one is just itself, and any number multiplied by nothing becomes nothing. The breakdosn of a binary number into a sum of different powers of 2 represented by the ones and nothings is what would allow you to convert a binary number to a different place value numeral base system or other number system and back again.
If the base number of the place value numeral system you are translating between is a power of 2, then you can just turn the value of each numeral into an equivalent binary number and just stack them together. For example, the dragon's octal numeral system. each symbol from nothing to seven would be translated to a three bit binary representation of the value of each symbol, and then they would be stacked together in order to make a binary number of the same value.
An important note: The broken underlining is to make the reading of long numbers easier by breaking it into chunks of four bits, which applies to all numbers above fifteen. So, sixteen would actually be written as l .... and seventeen would be l ...l and so on. This can expand to numbers of absurd size.
For example, the roughly estimated number of grains of sand in the entire world can be represented as such:
Such a thing would be utterly impossible to count with tally marks alone, binary lets you represent it as something which can be easily written on a small clay tablet. Most numbers your people will handle everyday will be nowhere near as long, but it makes the handling of numbers in the hundreds and thousands easy to count and add and subtract.
Now, the decimal system we voices all normally use in daily life can do all of this with 10 symbols instead of 2, and the dodecimal system uses 12 symbols. They do much of the same compression of very large numbers into small stacks of symbols, and compress them to a much greater degree. But, in doing so they become much more difficult to do adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing with when compared to binary.
In binary, adding two numbers of any length together is a very simple thing to do.
Here are two numbers:
ll .l.ll..l
and
l. ....ll..
or eight hundred and fifty seven and five hundred and twenty four.
Let us add these large numbers together with little effort. the symbol for addition is a vertical right angle cross +, and the symbol for equality is two parallel horizontal lines on top of each other: =
Code:
please interperet these as whichever works
better for you, either the inline code blocks
with perfect spacing, or if the rules can't be
bent to allow them, the imperfect spacing
on the plaintext. I really hope I can use the
inline code blocks in the future, as they are
SO much easier. If you want a short
explainer on exactly how I formatted
this so you can use this in story posts,
I would be happy to explain,
its pretty simple.
) ll .l.ll..l +
) l. ....ll.. =
) l.l .ll..l.l
ll .l.ll..l + l. ....ll.. = l.l .ll..l.l
the answer is one thousand, three hundred and eighty one.
How does one do such a calculation? First let me demonstrate with smaller numbers. Let us demonstrate the most basic binary addition, adding all possible combinations of two one-bit numbers together.
l + l = l.
l + . = l
. + l = l
. + . = .
So, one and one make two, one and nothing make one, nothing and one make one, and nothing and nothing make nothing.
I will now list all possible combinations of three one bit numbers added together, but it does not matter which order they are added in.
l + l + l = ll
l + . + l = l.
. + l + l = l.
. + . + l = l
l + l + . = l.
l + . + . = l
. + l + . = l
. + . + . = .
The three bits part will come to be very useful.
It should be noted that each two bit addition is functionally identical to a three bit addition if the third bit is a nothing instead of a one.
With a clever trick of carrying bits from one addition to the next in larger numbers, you can add two numbers of any length as a series of individual three bit additions one after the other, starting from the smallest bit. I will demonstrate by adding eleven and six.
) l.ll +
) ll. = l.ll + ll. =
Always start with the smallest bits lined up, with the larger number above the smaller. Then, perform addition on the two smallest bits, and write the smallest bit of that answer below, lined up with the other two smallest bits.
) l.ll +
) ll. =
) l l.ll + ll. = l
Then, move to the next smallest pair of bits.
) l
) l.ll +
) ll. =
) .l l l.ll + ll. = .l
When you run into two ones added together, you write the nothing beneath them and the one above the next bit pair like so to carry the one to the next place value. This is then added as a third bit to the addition of those next two bits, so now you use the three one bit number addition.
) ll
) l.ll +
) ll. =
) ..l ll l.ll + ll. = ..l
This makes you carry yet another one to the last and largest bit of eleven, and add the two bits together (there are no more bits below, because six is one bit shorter than eleven, so the only two bits being added are the last one in eleven and the carry one from the last step).
) l ll
) l.ll +
) ll. =
) ...l l ll l.ll + ll. = ...l
This results in the two ones making the one and nothing representing two, and the one gets carried for the last time. But, there are no more bits to add to, so it adds with nothing and ends up in the final answer's last one.
) l ll
) l.ll +
) ll. =
) l ...l l ll l.ll + ll. = l ...l
This results in seventeen. For clarity of spacing you can put nothings in the carry stack wherever there isn't a carried one and mark it clearly as the carry stack, but that is up to you. It would look like this instead:
) l ll.. c
) l.ll +
) ll. =
) l ...l l ll.. c l.ll + ll. = l ...l
I will be using this notation from hereon for clarity's sake.
This same process can be repeated indefinitely for any number of any imaginable size. I will add eight hundred and fifty seven and five hundred and twenty four once again, with the line of carry bits displayed.
) l.. ..ll.... c
) ll .l.ll..l +
) l. ....ll.. =
) l.l .ll..l.l l.. ..ll.... c ll .l.ll..l + l. ....ll.. = l.l .ll..l.l
The same process can be used for a base 10 or base 12 system, but then you need to memorize all possible additions of every number less than ten or twelve, of which there are a great many. In binary, there are only eight possible additions of three bits needed to do every other possible addition, rather than a hundred or more.
Similar processes can be done for subtraction, and multiplication, and division is significantly easier as well.
I will demonstrate subtraction now. I will explain two's complement: in essence it is a way to very easily transform a number into its inverse such that you can add this inverted number to the number you are subtracting from, and get the result. It is possible to subtract with binary using a similar process to addition, but this process is more complicated than simply adding a debt-number to the number you want to take away from.
Remember when I mentioned that if you subtracted 7 from 3 you would be left with an imaginary debt of 4? Twos complement is the way of writing such a debt-number.
Thus, to subtract binary numbers, you only need to know how to take the twos complement of a number, and how to do binary addition, which I have already explained.
To take the twos complement of a number, add nothings to the larger end of the stack until it is one bit longer than the number it is being subtracted from. Then, flip all the ones and nothings so they become their opposite. Then use addition to add one to this resulting number.
For clarity's sake, you should mark the short lines of a twos complement number at the top side of the stack instead of the bottom to make it clear the number has been inverted.
I will now subtract six from eleven as an example. First I will take the twos complement of six. Eleven is four bits, so we need to make the six five bits long with nothings on its larger end, and then flip the bits and then add one to the result.
) ll.
. .ll.
l l..l + l =
l l'l' ll. . .ll. l l..l + l = l l'l'
Then, we add this to eleven with normal binary addition.
) ll .l.. c
) l.ll +
) l l'l' =
) l. .l.l ll .l.. c l.ll + l l'l' = l. .l.l
Now finally we get rid of that largest 1 in the answer, it is discarded, then we take the larger nothing bits away until we hit the first one bit in the answer, and we keep everything left of the answer and we have the final answer.
) l. .l.l
) . .l.l ->
) l.l l. .l.l . .l.l l.l
The result is five, as it should be. This, again, will work with any numbers of any size. The rules are so simple a child could learn them in a few days at most, and with some practice doing sums and subtractions like this, you could have a child become faster and better at adding and subtracting large numbers than anyone else in the tribe.
I will now demonstrate subtracting five hundred and twenty four from eight hundred and fifty seven in this manner.
2s complement of 524:
) l. ....ll..
) .l. ....ll..
) l.l llll..ll + l =
) l'l llll'l ''
Now add 2s complement of 524 to 857:
) lllllll..... c
) ll .l.ll..l +
) l'l llll'l '' =
) l..l.l..ll.l
Now we process the result to get our answer:
) l..l.l..ll.l
) ..l .l..ll.l
) l .l..ll.l
which results in 333.
2s complement of 524: l. ....ll.. .l. ....ll.. l.l llll..ll + l = l'l llll'l''
Now add 2s complement of 524 to 857: lllllll..... c ll .l.ll..l + l'l llll'l'' = l..l.l..ll.l
Now we process the result to get our answer: l..l.l..ll.l ..l .l..ll.l l .l..ll.l
which results in 333.
Multiplication is a way of saying that you add a number to itself a certain number of times. So, four multiplied by three would be three fours added together. Four added to four is eight, and eight added to four is twelve.
This can be done with larger numbers, like twelve being multiplied by twelve would mean twelve twelves added together, which is one hundred and fourty four.
There is a way of doing multiplication with clever usage of binary addition just like with subtraction, that will work with numbers of any size.
I will leave that for a later communication, as large multiplications will not be relevant for some time from now.
An example, would be spear fighting. Instead of using spears tipped in sharp iron, use a spear haft with thick hide wrapped around the end in place of the spear, and have those practising with each other pretend it is a sharp spear as they try to spearfight the same way they would if they were trying to kill each other with real spears. When they do succeed in striking the other eith the padded end, the other must pretend that place has been injured by a spear for the rest of the fight until one wins and the fight is called as a victory, defeat or draw once one or both have become too injured with pretend injuries.
I will speak now on a simple means of making rope from grasses.
Firstly, collect long grass fibers and let then dry until they become brown and somewhat stiff, but not too brittle and easily broken if bent.
Next, take a small bundle of grass and hold it from the ends in each hand, now twist each hand in opposite directions. keep twisting the rope as you point the grips of your hands at a slight angle to each other, and with some slack between your hands for the rope to twist itself and form. As you keep twisting, the rope will begin twisting itself into a spiral made of the two strands of grass you are twisting into it. Once the grass in your hands starts to run short, add more grass to what you are holding and keep twisting: the new strands will twist themselves into the spiraling strands with little loss in strength. You just keep adding grass and twisting until you have a rope that is as long as you want it to be, and then you simply cross one strand over the other and loop around the other strand and through the hole made under their crossing to tie off the end so it doesn't unravel.
This should make a good, strong rope that can easily hold a man's weight hanging from a tree if it is two finger widths thick. Now, it must be kept dry if you don't want it to rot, or you can coat it with pitch or rub it thoroughly with animal fat if you want to waterproof it. You can also use wood tar from a gasifier, which I will describe in a later communication.
To be clear I want to say, as the Black Cat, that "counting system of twos, called binary" mentioned by another Voice is something useful for weird thinking rocks, but not for me. I think that people also would feel confused by it, whatever another Voice says. And it would need long lines of signs to write. Using 10 or 12 base it's faster to write them as signs.
I shall mention another tool, to hopefully make you more pleased after hearing confusing things. A monjolo is a wooden tool used to hammer iron ore with no magic but also with no human work after the tool is build! Sounds weird? Probably, but listen.
It's a small log or heavy stick with two ends. One end has a heavy wooden hammer. The other end has a scoop. Small amount of water, for example redirected with a channel from a stream, flows from above and fills the scoop, making it heavy. This makes the hammer end lift up. When the scoop tips over and empties, the hammer falls down, hitting the iron ore below. The water keeps filling the scoop, making the hammer go up and down over and over again. This way, the tool thing hammers the iron ore without using much effort after it's made.
The tool stays in place instead of falling away because it's attached attached in place with a sturdy axle stick placed in hole across the middle of monjolo tool. This lets the tool to move up and down without sliding out of place. The base is firmly set into the ground or secured with heavy stones to keep it stable. This way, the monjolo can move without falling out of place.
An axle is a strong, straight stick or rod. It goes through the hole in middle of the tool, keeping it in place but allowing to move up and down. This stick lets the heavy hammer end and the scoop end move up and down. The axle stays in one place, keeping the monjolo steady while it moves. To make rubbing between axle stick and rest of the tool more gentle, animal or fish fat can be rubbed on axle stick.
Hello, Bianca! It is Fox again. I am glad you are taking us all seriously, and I hope to be helpful with your many many questions. First, and as I notice the response you had to the very first speaker I can perceive you responded to (I don't know the order in which you ACTUALLY heard us, alas), this concept comes to my mind. I had hoped it would take longer, but I must get to this first. The language we speak has words and ideas that are different than the language you speak. There are concepts that do not exist in your language. We use words that have multiple different meanings. We use idioms and jargon and slang and turns of speech and sarcasm and hyperbole and many such things that make clear communication difficult.
FURTHER, there is some unknown magic or force or being or entity or tool which is translating between our speech and your speech, and we ALSO do not know what words and concepts actually already exist in your language, and we also do not know the quirks and biases and methods of this unknown thing doing the translation. So! If something sounds weird, it is very not likely to be us being insane or mad (though that is a possibility! Though most of us will eventually get around to shaming the madfolk among us that speak insanity to you. Eventually, probably centuries later as you perceive it!), but rather a translation issue. This can be mitigated somewhat; we can make guesses as to what sorts of terms are unclear, and you can help us get an idea of the limits of your speech. Try to use lots of 'talking around' concepts, or 'using many words to describe a concept', or compound phrases and combination words, and describing how you perceive odd words and what you think they might mean or your guesses at the meaning of an idiom. Those of us that are more skilled at this sort of broken communication, and it IS a tricky skill, will be able to compensate, especially as we indirectly infer what you do and don't have words for.
A potato is one of many root vegetables or tubers where the root system grows into a large, stiff, robust, underground, central edible part, and requires cooking to be softened before it can be eaten. Unfortunately, we don't know whether they grow where you are, or whether there are other sorts of root vegetables instead. That said, I think giving you a comprehensive guide to lots of useful plants, some of which MIGHT be where you are, will be useful; then we could figure out where on the globe you are!
Oh, right, Globe. Someone mentioned that the world is a Sphere. Really Big Things in the cosmos, like the world you are on, the similar-but-not-the-same world that many of us are from, the Moon, the Sun, the Planets, the Stars, and so on, often tend to be spheres or globes. Even if they seem small or just points or not especially large, they are all absolutely massive, often bigger than the world beneath your feet, and just merely very far away. Further, if one is on the surface of such mind-bogglingly huge things, 'down' is towards the center of the object, so you can't really be 'underneath' them when standing on the surface, regardless of where on the sphere one stands. We can get into this topic in more detail later, it isn't relevant to current thriving.
When a voice said 'Drunk', they meant, 'having imbibed quantities of a substance that changes how one thinks in a pleasant way'. You are familiar with fruits on trees that are left out in the sun sometimes and get a sharp scent and when consumed make people happy and stumble around a lot and lower their inhibitions? The substance created by fruit that has fermented in such a way a word that we call 'alcohol', which I don't think is translating properly. Just name the thing that is in some fruit that has been left in the sun that makes people happy and sleepy, but isn't in fruit that HASN'T been left out, some arbitrary word, and when we say 'alcohol' as a SINGLE WORD, that's what we mean. Maybe we can trick this stupid translation mechanism or being to actually be clear with enough effort!
High concentrations of the-substance-that-I-mean-when-I-say-the-word-'alcohol', when it is very undiluted with other things, will burn with a blue flame. In general, when people often imbibe substances that alter their state of mind in a pleasant and strange way, their language tends to describe the resulting state of being and state of mind and way of acting and way of thinking in whimsical terms that have other meanings in other situations, like 'Drunk' or 'High' or 'Stoned'. You should perhaps invent your own word for 'the state of being intoxicated with this substance'!
Let's try this. Quickly invent a few words based on the previous bits I just said, and hopefully this new sentence will use them. "I ate the fermented fruit from the tree, and the fruit had lots of alcohol in it, and so I became drunk." Did that work?
Regardless, onto other things! Is your spear of light a physical, useful-in-melee object with a shaft and a spearhead that you grip in the hand and thrust into opponents, which is somehow conceptually and magically linked to the concept of 'light', or are you using 'spear of light' to metaphorically describe a magical device which you hold which causes a very special and particular beam or ray or narrow emanation of light to emit from a part of it, which directly causes harm via extreme heating (and permanent blindness to mortals that look upon it) to what the beam or ray of light itself hits, as a ranged and not melee weapon? I ask because the latter is a concept which can be used as a ranged weapon which you are about two thousand years away from making via non-magical means, but if we could describe the principles well enough to you for you to make it via magical means and not even have to do a thousand years worth of 'making the tools to make the tools to make the tools' to get there the long way, that might be useful to you as something to tinker with magically. Could you clarify?
Unfortunately, the issue with, 'these rocks will be useful for this, this plant is useful for this, this substance can be used for this, this plant can be changed to have these features' is that we don't actually know what is around you in a wide radius. We can't SEE the plants, the rocks, the dirt, the animals. You have tell us with words what is around you. Maybe every time you speak to us, mention a few things about the things and substances and oddities around you? Even unlikely things can give us clues as to useful things that might be nearby. When I asked about your circumstances, I was more asking for the things around you in a large scale. Are there rivers, streams? Lots of lakes, or very few? Is there a large body of saltwater nearby? Is the land rocky, sandy, silty? Could you describe a sample of some of the odder looking rocks nearby? What does the common vegetation look like? Are there wooded areas, and are they the sort that is very very dense and hard to walk through or the sort that have broadly spread out big trees and not lots of undergrowth? Do trees lose their leaves during part of the year? What are the nearby groups of people, how many people are there, how do the groups tend to behave and what do the nearby groups spend lots of their time doing? Are there mountains, and if so, are they the type that are rounded and rolling and covered in green, or are they the type that has a 'treeline' some way up, and are capped in snow and ice? How many seasons are there a year where they are, and what are the seasons? Is it just a rainy and a not rainy season, or is there the full spring, summer, winter, fall, or something else entirely? Are there sometimes things like 'ice', 'sleet', 'frost', and 'snow' where you are, that is seasonal frozen water? Are you in an area where sometimes strange things come out of the ground, and if so, what? Could you describe the lcoal useful beasts that people hunt, fish, and forage for? The useful plants they use to eat or make things out of? What about the useful rocks that people seek? That running animal you mentioned, does it have a hide, scales, fur, or feathers? What colors is it? Does it run on two feet or four? Does it have horns, claws, talons, hooves? What do its teeth look like? Any details of these sorts of things could get us an idea of what kind of place you are at, and thus, where you are, and THUS, what might be most useful nearby!
When we say recorded history, we do not mean stories people tell each other verbally. We mean this concept: consider words people say. These words are made of discrete sounds. One can, and should, invent a symbol for each sound the mouth can make. If you invent the most simple and easy to tell apart symbols for each noise and sound a mouth can make which might go into a word, and make these symbols as easy and compact as possible to 'write', that is, mark a sequence of these symbols onto some surface, one can 'transcribe' something one says. Another person who knows how these transcribed symbols go together to symbolize specific sounds, and who knows the language, can puzzle out words, phrases, sentences, and the like. Thus knowledge can be stored and recorded and shared without two living people who both know the knowledge needing to speak directly to one another in person. These symbols can be made to be easy to write with hands and pigment or dye or ochre or soot or similar on flat surfaces, or as easy and efficient to write with a small stick onto clay to be baked, or to etch into stone, or with a stick into dirt, or a small stick into beeswax set in a wood frame, or onto papyrus, vellum, parchment, paper, (I don't know if those words will translate, sorry), or on pieces of wood, or any similar light flat surfaces for writing.
Consider the following scenario: a tribe writes many stories and ideas and guides for daily life in these symbols on baked clay tablets. The tribe gets wiped out entirely. Centuries later, an unrelated tribe with a mostly similar language, finds the clay tablets which have all the stories of the lost tribe, and then learns about all the stories, practices, techniques, ideas, hopes, trades, transactions, and so on that the original tribe committed to baked clay tablet. Thus even without verbally shared stories, the orignial lost tribe is part of 'recorded history', due to the records written with symbols-which-mean-particular-sounds on clay tablets. Over centuries, writing and recording and reading and transcribing and making the substances to do all of this will go from tedious, slow and annoying work of highly skilled experts to something that is much simpler, easer, broader, more common, and more useful overall, and thus enable broad and deep sharing of useful ideas over large ranges of both time and distances.
When we speak of basic economic principles, we need to get a broader foundational idea; the discussion was not about the soul, but the material conditions of the people you choose to rule over and to bind to your identity. The idea is this: a group of peoples can have a thing called 'Progress'. The word probably doesn't translate right, so you will possibly have to invent one for the concept I'm about to give. It is a similar concept to 'Flourishing', but with extra ideas added on. The basic idea is that every generation of people should be healthier, happier, more learned, more numerous, more able to live in larger numbers in one area without issue, live in more luxury, have more power over the world around them, understand the nature of reality more, have more tools, be less likely to die violently, have a wider variety and quantity and security of food and clean water, be more free from disease, should live longer, should be surrounded by a wider variety of useful items and substances and useful and pleasant built things, should have more secure forms of shelter and better methods of mobility and communication, should have more wealth, should have a more complex and interesting and uplifting and rich set of beliefs, culture, and traditions, should have more agency both as individuals and groups, should have more ability to coordinate and have useful cohesion as a group, be more able to practically rule ever larger groups (or be usefully and meaningfully ruled by an ever more distant ruler who rules over ever more groups of people), and so on, than the generation before them. So not just flourishing of a people, but improvement of that flourishing over time. Further, the idea isn't even limited to one ruler, family, clan, tribe, or people, but is spread to all people everywhere. Of course, whichever people is leading in this will benefit MOST from changes to 'The Way Things Are', but others will get incidental benefits too as a matter of course and as ideas spread. So it wouldn't be enough for, say, everyone on the world as they exist right now to consider you their supreme authority and ruler, because the overall level of 'how good things are' and 'how much interesting things people can get done' right now is very very very low, because people are mostly worried about Not Immediately Dying.
Needless to say, Progress being true isn't the default way of things; it must be carefully and conscientiously nurtured to become true. That said, the methods of creating this state of affairs build off of each other, and the benefit and amount of changes over time should be ever-increasing, ever greater, if it is done correctly. The making a big lake analogy wasn't about making a bigger lake, but making your metaphorical 'lake of Progress' (or whatever word you just invented for the idea) bigger, faster than it otherwise would be. That said, it is 'numbers and groups of people' which makes Progress; not even a lone God, even a powerful one can do it alone, they MUST leverage the work of their followers to do it. So you need LOTS of followers doing LOTS of different things and learning many many arts and crafts and details about the world and doing lots of useful work to the society you rule over to be useful to you. Tie your identity to a collection of peoples, have their flourishing be your flourishing, have them be yours and reflect on the greatness of you, have the wondrous things they achieve be also YOUR wondrous things because you set them up to do these things. That said, you will need to have a broader definition of 'Power' than 'Capacity to Commit Violence'; perhaps a definition that is more 'Ability to Affect Change and project Agency and your Will upon the world around you, even indirectly' would fit?
What else of note. Obsidian can surpass bronze metalworking for *certain tasks*. It's a glass (like what you get when you heat sand significantly; we will get into glassmaking at a later time, and I think some of the cacophany has talked about that already), a shiny black rock often found around volcanoes that can be chipped into very brittle, sharp edges.
ChatGPT is... a tool. Does the words or phrases 'golem', 'robot', 'stringless puppet', 'automoton', or 'artificial thinking being' mean anything to you? How about a magical construct designed to store knowledge and learning, but which is limited in its wisdom or it's cleverness, and requires skill in telling it the right things to get it to give useful responses? It shouldn't be able to directly advise you; someone is talking to it and using it's response as their own and not being open about that! Maybe they aren't confident to identify themselves openly? Still, it is a tool, like any other. I have my own -- it is one of the tools I talked about for obtaining lore previously. It is not the same as the ones others have; it is the same idea as there being many knives in the world! Originally, I was going to 'prompt' mine to say various things, but others objected quite strenuously, so I have gone back and adjusted what you hear to have the following ideas be my filtering and reinterpretation of chatgpt. I originally intended to make this a bit of a lesson on how different sorts of entities with different sorts of brains and minds act and react and think or don't think differently, but that's really just something you will have to experience yourself.
Fair warning, if some of the following information is low on detail, it's because I haven't gotten to the more specialized, particular sources of the information in our Library of knowledge yet. Hopefully these will be enough to get started. Almost everything past this point is sourced and reinterpreted from ChatGPT, with my comments adjusting things here and there. Much of the language is directly from it, but not all.
There are many plants that can be extremely valuable to domesticate. Unfortunately, we don't know exactly where you are in the world, nor do we know exactly how closely your world does or does not resemble the Earth of our distant past; we have reason to believe it is 'quite similar, except for Magic'. So I will list many plants, how to identify them, and where they were first found in our world originally. Depending on which of these you happen to find might let us figure out your region of the world. I will use the terms for the regions that the Astute Cacophony is familiar with; the regions likely have other names to the local tribes. Some general guidelines for domesticating plants are: spend time observing wild plants in their natural habitat. Note their growth patterns, physical characteristics, and any interactions with other plants or animals. Collect seeds from promising plants and experiment with planting them in different conditions. Select plants that show desirable traits.
The plants known as 'wild einkorn' and 'emmer wheat' can be domesticated into 'wheat', a profoundly productive cereal grain (that is, a grain that you eat by having the seeds removed, then ground, then mixed with water, maybe egg if you have it, then baked to make bread). In our world, they were originally in the 'Near East'. The plants have slender stalks with small, tough seeds encased in hard husks. The seeds are often arranged in loose spikes, and the plants grow in clusters. The leaves are narrow and grass-like. They can be domesticated by selecting wild wheat with larger seeds and thinner husks, and cross-pollinated between the two types of the plants to develop more productive strains.
Another cereal grain is wild rice, which can be domesticated into 'rice'. In our world, this was originally found in a place called Southeast Asia. It grows in marshy or aquatic environments. It has long, slender stalks that can reach up to about the size of a typical person, though often less.. The grains are small and often red or brown. The plant has long, thin leaves that are similar to grass, and domestication should focus on strains that mature quickly and have larger grains.
Another cereal grain is Teosinte, which can be domesticated into 'Maize' or 'Corn'. This was originally found in 'Mesoamerica' in our world. It resembles a tall, grassy plant with multiple stalks branching out from the base. The ears, or clusters of hard seeds, are small and contain a few hard kernels that are enclosed in tough, protective husks. The leaves are long and flat. When domesticating, select plants with larger cobs and kernels. If you have access to this, you are in the Americas and can begin a process known as 'Companion Planting' with this and two other plants, which I will describe later.
Next, I will talk about legumes, or beans, or groundnuts, another useful sort of crop. Wild Lentils were first found in the 'Near East', and can be domesticated into Lentils. The plant is small, bushy plants with thin stems and small, compound leaves. The seeds are tiny and encased in small, flat pods. The plant is low-growing and often found in dry, rocky soils. To domesticate into Lentils, select plants that have larger pods and seeds.
Wild Chickpeas were first found in the Near East as well, and are small, bushy plants with feathery leaves and small, white or pink flowers. The seeds are small, wrinkled, and encased in short pods. The plant is drought-resistant and often found in arid regions. To domesticate into Chickpeas, choose plants with higher yields and resistance to drought.
Wild Soybeans were first found in East Asia, and are climbing or trailing plants with thin, hairy stems and three-leaflet style leaves. The pods are small and hairy, containing tiny, hard seeds. The plant produces small, purple flowers. To domesticate into Soybeans, focus on varieties that produce larger seeds.
After the legumes, we will discuss root crops, such as the aforementioned Wild Potatoes! These were first found in the 'Andes', and are low-growing plants with many leaflets joined to a single stem, and small, white or purple flowers. The tubers are small, irregularly shaped, and often bitter. The plant grows in rocky, mountainous regions. To domesticate into Potatoes, select tubers that are larger and more resistant to disease.
Wild Cassava were first found in South America, and is a woody shrub with long, vaguely palm-with-long-fingers shaped leaves and small, greenish flowers. The roots are long, thin, and contain high levels of a poison called Cyanide that requires tedious peeling and lengthy cooking to remove. The plant grows in tropical and subtropical regions (the hottest parts of the world, where there is never snow and often just a wet and dry season). To domesticate into Cassava, choose varieties with less poison and larger tubers.
Next, let's talk about high value fruits to domesticate. First is Wild Tomato, first found in South America. These are small, sprawling plants with thin stems and tiny, red or yellow fruits. The fruits are often less than a fingertip length in diameter and have a strong, tangy flavor. The leaves are compound and slightly hairy. To domesticate into Tomatoes, select plants with larger, tastier fruits.
The second high value fruit to domesticate is the Wild Banana. First found in Oceania and Southeast Asia, it's a very large plant that seems like it should be a tree, but is technically an herbaceous plant because it has no persistent woody stems above ground. It has large, broad, paddle-shaped leaves. The fruits are small, seedy, and in bunches. The plant grows in tropical forests and produces large, showy flowers. To domesticate into Banana, focus on varieties with fewer seeds and bigger fruits.
If you find Teosinte, you should also look for Wild Beans and Wild Squash, which should be relatively nearby. Wild Beans are climbing or trailing plants with three-leaflet style leaves and small, elongated pods that shatter easily to disperse seeds. Wild Squash are sprawling vines with large, rough leaves and small, hard, bitter fruits with tough rinds. To domesticate Wild Beans into Beans, focus on pods that are less likely to shatter, and with larger beans and more reliable yields. To domesticate Wild Squash into Squash, focus on plants with larger, less bitter fruit. The reason these three plants go together is due to the fact that you can grow them together in a way that they benefit each other. You first plant a Corn plant in a mound, then when it's about two handlength's high, plant some Beans around the Corn, and the Squash around the beans. The Corn provides a structure for the beans to climb, the beans fix nitrogen (not only clover does that, ground nuts are good at it too!) for the other two plants, and the Squash keeps the ground moist and suppresses weeds, then you go off to the side a bit and do the same again, and again, and again, in rows.
There are other Companion Planting combinations that are anchored with some of the high-value crops, wherever you might find yourself. Try companion planting Wheat with Lentils, or Barley and Chickpeas, or some other combination of a grain and legume. Experiment with companion planting versus fixing nitrogen via alternating growing seasons between legumes and cereal grains, or perhaps having a clover season. If you are in Central or South America, Companion Plant Tomatoes and Chili Peppers. If you are in the Andes, try Potatoes with Quinoa. If you are in East Asia, try Soybeans and Millet, or for South Asia, try Rice with Mung Beans (you can't have flooded rice paddies where only rice grows absolutely everywhere, after all!).
Here's the details of the other mentioned crops. To turn Wild Barley (Fertile Crescent) into Barley, find this tall, grass-like plant with slender stems; seeds are enclosed in a hull and arranged in rows along the ear, and brittle ears that easily shatter to disperse seeds, often found in semi-arid regions, particularly in open fields and grassy areas, and select for larger seed size, non-shattering seed heads, and uniform maturation.
To turn Wild Chili Peppers (Central and South America) into Chili Peppers, find these small, bushy plants with green leaves; small, white flowers followed by tiny, round-to-elongated spicy fruits, found in forests, grasslands, and disturbed soils, and select for larger fruit size and varying levels of spiciness.
To turn Wild Quinoa (Andes) into Quinoa, find this erect plant with broad, triangular leaves with varied leaf shapes; small, clustered seeds on a central stem, found in high-altitude regions, rocky soils, and mountainous terrain, and select for less bitterness, larger seed size, and uniform maturation.
To turn Wild Millet (East Asia), a cereal grain, into Millet, find this grass-like plant with slender stems; small, round seeds in loose branching clusters, often found in open fields, grasslands, and disturbed soils, select for larger seed size, non-shattering seed heads, and uniform maturation.
To turn Wild Mung Beans (South Asia) into Mung Beans, find this vining plant with three-leaflet-style leaves; small yellow flowers followed by slender pods containing small green seeds, found in grasslands, open fields, and disturbed soils, and select for larger seed size, more uniform pods, less periods of slow plant growth.
The plant people plant everywhere around you with the bulb and hawks tail looking leaves MIGHT be Wild Onions. If that is the case, Wild Carrots (another vegetable where you eat the root) can be companion planted with Wild Onions, if you happen to be where they are – Europe or Southwestern Asia. Look for white, umbrella-like flower clusters and a distinct smell, with thin, white, woody roots, and a hairy stem. Like Wild Onions, select for a bigger and more palatable edible root part to change them into their domestic variant. Companion Plant these in alternating rows, with roughly a hands length between each.
In general, you should experiment with finding plants that can cooperate with other plants, which deter pests, which can provide correct amounts of shade, which can improve soil structure, which can fix nitrogen, which can deter pests, which can keep the soil appropriately moist, and so on and so forth; often a companion crop might be 'technically edible but not that great' flowers that are mostly just beautiful, or an herb that is mostly used for seasoning or which doesn't quite have the yields of the nearby more high value crop it is working with. It will often take long distance trade between far off parts of the world to get some of the best combinations, like Tomatoes (probably still Wild Tomato right now) and a seasoning herb called Basil (which is probably still Wild Basil right now). But if you get early flight and we figure out where you are, options open up quite quickly!
Here are some tools which can be used for farming tasks and other daily things. The Digging Stick is a simple, pointed stick used for making holes in the ground for planting seeds, which is useful for breaking up soil and planting seeds at the correct depth. It can also be used for digging up roots and tubers. The Hoe is a long-handled tool with a flat, wide blade at one end, good for breaking up soil, weeding, and creating furrows for planting. It can also be used to mix soil and compost. The Spade or Shovel is a broad, flat blade with a long handle, essential for digging, moving soil, and planting larger plants or trees. Shovels can also be used for mixing and turning compost. The Plow is a tool with one or more blades attached to a frame, often pulled by animals or people, used for breaking up and turning over soil to prepare large areas for planting. Early plows can be simple wooden frames with iron tips. The Rake is a tool with a long handle and a head with multiple tines, useful for leveling soil, removing debris, and spreading seeds evenly. Rakes can also be used for gathering leaves and other organic material. The Sickle is a short-handled tool with a curved blade with the edge inward, used for harvesting grain and cutting grass or other vegetation. The curved blade makes it efficient for cutting at the base of plants. The Scythe is a long-handled tool with a long, curved blade, made to reach and cut or mow grass or crops like wheat while in a standing position. The Hand Trowel is a small, handheld tool with a pointed, scoop-shaped blade, useful for planting, transplanting, and weeding in small garden areas. It's great for detailed work in the soil. The Mattock is A tool with a long handle and a head with a flat adze on one side and a pick or axe on the other, useful for digging, chopping, and breaking up hard soil or rocks. It combines the functions of a hoe and an axe. The Hammer is a tool with a heavy head attached to a handle, useful for driving metal nails into wooden planks, breaking objects, and shaping metal during ironworking. The Saw is a tool with a serrated blade, used for cutting wood and other materials, for building structures and crafting wooden tools and furniture. The Chisel is a tool with a sharp, beveled edge at the end of a metal blade, used for carving or cutting wood, stone, or metal. Chisels are essential for detailed craftsmanship. The Axe is a protruding blade attached at a right angle to a wooden handle, with the blade in line with the handle. The adze is a tool similar to an axe but with the blade set perpendicular to the handle, but still protruding. Both are useful for splitting or shaping wood. The Whetstone is a flat stone used for sharpening tools and blades. The Mortar and Pestle is a bowl a bowl (mortar) and a heavy club-shaped object (pestle), used for grinding grains, seeds, and herbs into flour or powder. It's also useful for preparing food and medicinal ingredients. The Basket is a container made from woven materials like reeds or grasses, useful for carrying harvested crops, transporting materials, and storing food.
Here is some general advice for farming. When preparing land in farming, clear the land of trees and shrubs, using simple tools like digging sticks, hoes, and early plows to do so. When Planting, sow seeds in rows to make weeding and harvesting easier, and use crop rotation to maintain soil fertility. When handling Water Management, develop irrigation systems if near a water source, and use techniques like terracing on hillsides to prevent soil erosion. In general, wherever you find these sorts of plants, take note of their characteristics and locations to determine useful patterns.
Here is some advice for using clover for nitrogen fixing. Clover is a hardy plant that doesn't need domestication to provide its benefits. It's found in many parts of the world, and there should be a variety suitable for your location. Red Clover has hairy stems, three-leaflet-style leaves with a distinctive pale V-shaped marking, and pink to red flower heads. It is native to Europe, Western Asia, and northwest Africa. Look for a medium-sized plant with round, reddish flower heads and leaves that have a white chevron mark. White Clover has smooth stems, three-leaflet-style leaves often with a white crescent mark, and white flower heads that may have a hint of pink. It is native to Europe and Central Asia. Look for low-growing plants with creeping stems, small white flowers, and leaves with a white V-shaped mark. Crimson Clover has hairy stems, long, narrow leaves, and striking crimson flower heads. It is native to Europe. Look for tall plants with bright red, cylindrical flower heads and hairy leaves and stems. Alsike Clover has smooth stems, three-leaflet-style leaves without distinctive markings, and pinkish-white flower heads. It is Native to Europe. Look for a plant that grows taller than white clover, with pinkish-white flowers and unmarked leaves. Subterranean Clover has low-growing stems, three-leaflet-style leaves with small, white markings, and white to pink flowers. It is Native to the Mediterranean region. Look for a low-growing plant that produces flowers close to the ground, which then burrow into the soil to seed. Most clovers have three-part leaves with varying marks. Clover flowers are typically clustered into a round or cylindrical head and can be white, pink, red, or crimson. Clover can be low-growing or tall, with some species having creeping stems. To use clover for nitrogen fixing, scatter clover seeds in early spring or fall. Ensure they have adequate water for germination. Clover requires minimal maintenance. It thrives in well-drained soils and full sun to partial shade. Interplant clover with other crops to improve soil fertility. Clover fixes nitrogen in the soil through a symbiotic relationship with Rhizobium bacteria in its root nodules. Use clover in crop rotations to replenish nitrogen in the soil. It's particularly useful after heavy-feeding crops like corn or wheat. It also provides excellent ground cover, reducing weed growth and preventing soil erosion. It's a valuable forage crop for livestock, providing high-protein feed. Clover flowers attract bees and other pollinators, supporting the health of your entire garden or farm ecosystem.
Here is some animal domestication advice. Some High Value Domesticable Animals are many four-legged grazing animals, several large birds, and one four-legged animal with a diet similar to humans.
Aurochs, which originated in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, are large, four legged herd grazing animals with long, curved horns and a robust, muscular build. They had a dark brown or black coat with a lighter stripe along the spine. Males were larger than females and had a more pronounced hump on their shoulders. They can be domesticated into Cattle to provide milk, meat, and labor. Select for temperament and good productivity, eventually selecting for distinct work, meat, and milk breeds.
Mouflon, which are in Europe and Asia, are shaggy, four legged medium-sized grazing herd herbivores with reddish-brown coats and a white underbelly. They have large, curved horns (in males), and found in mountainous and rocky terrains, and can be domesticated into Sheep for milk, meat, and wool, by selecting for temperament and productivity, eventually with different breeds for each task.
Bezoar Goats, which are in Western Asia, are medium-sized grazing herd animals with a light brown to grey coat with a darker stripe down the back. They have large, backward-curving horns and a lean, agile build. They are excellent climbers and are found in rocky, mountainous areas, and can be domesticated into Goats for milk, meat, and wool, by selecting for temperament and productivity, eventually with different breeds for each task.
Red Junglefowl, which are in Southeast Asia, are small, colorful birds with bright red, orange, and green plumage in males. Females are more subdued in color, usually brown with speckles. They have a distinctive comb and wattles and are found in forests and grasslands. They can be domesticated into Chickens to provide eggs and meat. Select for temperament and those which lay more eggs.
Wild Mallards are an water-loving bird in Europe, Asia, and North America, with iridescent green heads, white neck rings, and chestnut-brown breasts in males. Females are mottled brown with an orange bill. They are found in wetlands, lakes, and rivers, and can be domesticated into Ducks to provide meat, eggs, and feathers. Select for temperament and the ability to thrive in local water bodies and egg production.
The Wild Greylag Goose is a water-loving bird in Europe and Asia which have a greyish-brown body with a paler belly and an orange beak. They are large, sturdy birds found in wetlands, marshes, and near water bodies, and can be domesticated into Geese to provide meat, eggs, and feathers. Select for temperament and the ability to thrive in local water bodies and egg production.
Wild Boars are medium-sized four-legged animals in Europe, Asia, and North Africa, with hooves and tusks, snouts, and short tufted tails and a large head and short neck and relatively short legs. They eat what humans eat, and are valuable sources of meat, and can be domesticated into Pigs. Select for lack of aggressiveness (this first! Boars are mean!), and eventually larger size, and faster growth.
Herding is the practice of managing and guiding a group of animals, known as a herd, from one location to another. This can involve moving them to new grazing areas, keeping them safe from predators, and ensuring they have access to water and food. It supplements fixed agriculture by making marginal land not yet suited to fixed agriculture (at least until later technology becomes common) useful. To start herding, start with a small number of manageable animals of the mentioned types, and encourage breeding of the mentioned high-value animals in desired ways. Even wolves can be turned into breeds of dogs which will instinctively help with various different tasks associated with the herd, like protecting them (by chasing off actual wolves!), or like helping move the herd from place to place. Rotate grazing areas and pastures to prevent overgrazing, and provide supplemental feed during lean seasons. Make sure to build simple shelters and enclosures or corrals to protect animals from predators, to keep them safe at night, and to protect against harsh weather. Use marks or tags to identify animals, making it easier to manage and track them. Ensure access to clean water. Move the herd near rivers, streams, or constructed water points. Stay vigilant and use enclosures or guard animals to protect the herd from predators.
Here are some ways to improve thread, rope, cloth, and nets. For thread and yarn production, here are some ideas and concepts and items for you. A Spindle is a simple tool consisting of a shaft and a whorl used for spinning fibers into thread or yarn. A Distaff is a stick or staff onto which fibers are wound for spinning. The use of a Spindle and Distaff is as follows: attach fibers to the distaff and draw them out while spinning the spindle to twist the fibers into thread. This can be done with wool, flax, or other fibrous materials. A Drop Spindle is a type of spindle held vertically. It uses gravity to help spin the fibers. The drop spindle is spun by hand, and the weight of the spindle pulls the fibers downward, twisting them into thread as you draft the fibers. A Spinning Wheel is a form of mechanical furniture made out of wood, designed to be a wheel that is turned by hand or foot, which spins the fibers into yarn more quickly than a spindle. The spinning wheel automates the process of twisting fibers, allowing for more consistent and faster production of yarn.
For Rope Making, a Rope Twister is a simple device consisting of hooks attached to a handle or frame. The hooks twist strands of fiber together to form rope. The technique in using it is to attach fibers to the hooks and twist them together by turning the handle. Multiple strands can be twisted together for thicker ropes. Braiding is a technique where three or more strands are interlaced, which is useful for making strong, flexible rope. Different braiding patterns can be used to vary the strength and flexibility.
For Cloth Production, a Loom is a frame or device used to hold threads (warp) tight while other threads (weft) are woven through them. Simple looms can be made with a wooden frame. The warp threads are stretched across the frame, and the weft threads are woven through them using a shuttle. This significantly increases the speed and consistency of cloth production. Carding is a process of aligning fibers using carding combs or brushes. Carding combs are used to brush raw fibers until they are aligned, making spinning easier and producing smoother yarn.
For Net Making, the Netting Needle and Shuttle are tools used to weave nets. The netting needle holds the thread, and the shuttle passes it through the net. To use these, Create a series of knots in a grid pattern. Start with a simple loop and continue adding loops to form a mesh. This can be used for fishing nets, carrying bags, and more.
Here are some Building Construction Techniques. First, foundations. Raised Foundations is the practice of building on stilts or raised platforms. To do this, construct buildings on stilts made from wood or stone to protect against flooding. This method keeps the living area above potential water levels. Stone or Gravel Foundations is the technique of using a base layer of stone or gravel. To do this, lay a thick layer of gravel or small stones before building. This helps with drainage and stabilizes the structure.
Next are building walls. Here are some methods for different sorts of buildings, which you use will depend on your location and available materials. Wattle and Daub is a construction method using woven wooden strips (wattle) covered with a mixture of soil, clay, sand, and straw (daub). To do this, create a lattice of wooden strips and cover it with the daub mixture. This creates a sturdy and insulating wall. Adobe Bricks are bricks made from a mixture of mud and straw, dried in the sun. To do this, mix mud and straw, shape into bricks, and let them dry in the sun. Adobe is excellent for warm, relatively dry climates and offers good insulation. Some techniques for making roofs are the Thatch Roof, a roof made from plant materials like straw, reeds, or palm leaves. To do this, layer the plant materials tightly to form a waterproof barrier. Thatch roofs are lightweight and provide good insulation. Clay Tiles are roof tiles made from baked clay. To do this, Mold and bake clay into tiles, then lay them overlapping on the roof structure. Clay tiles are durable and fire-resistant. Some methods of reinforcing structures are as follows. Bracing is the practice of adding diagonal supports to frames. Use wooden or metal braces to reinforce the structure against high winds and earthquakes. Buttressing is the practice of using external supports that strengthen walls. To do this, build external supports at intervals along walls to distribute pressure and increase stability.
Here's how you identify the two iron-containing ores from aboveground. Magnetite is often found as black, shiny, metallic-looking rocks. Magnetite is magnetic, which is a key identifier. It's commonly found near old volcanic activity or areas with exposed bedrock. Hematite is usually appears as reddish-brown or grey, earthy-looking rocks. It can have a metallic luster when polished. Look for red or rusty stains in rocks and soil, which can indicate the presence of hematite. In general, look for red, brown, or black streaks in the soil and rocks. You can use a a magnet to test rocks and find Magnetite, as it will attract a magnet strongly. You can also rub the two rocks on an unglazed ceramic tile. Magnetite leaves a black streak, while hematite leaves a red or brown streak.
The concepts of leadership, specialization, and social hierarchy might seem even strange in your current context. However, as your community grows, these ideas will become crucial for sustaining and advancing your society. Let me explain how these concepts interrelate and why they're important. When individuals focus on specific tasks, they become more skilled and efficient at them. For example, someone who spends all their time farming will develop better techniques and yield more crops than someone who farms only part-time. By dividing tasks among community members, you can accomplish more in less time. This leads to increased productivity and the ability to produce surplus resources. Specialists in different fields (e.g., farming, toolmaking, construction) will develop a deep knowledge of their craft. This expertise leads to innovation and improved methods, benefiting the entire community. Experts can train others, passing on valuable skills and knowledge. This ensures that essential skills are maintained and improved over generations.
As your community grows, it becomes difficult for one person to manage everything. Appointing leaders to oversee specific tasks (like farming, construction, or defense) helps ensure that all necessary activities are coordinated and completed efficiently. Leaders can manage the distribution of resources, ensuring that everyone has what they need to contribute to the community. This is especially important in times of scarcity. Leaders can focus on long-term planning and strategy, such as preparing for seasonal changes, managing food storage, and organizing large projects like building fortifications or expanding farmland. Leaders can mediate disputes and make decisions that maintain harmony within the community. This prevents conflicts from escalating and disrupting productivity.
A well-organized community can support a larger population. With efficient farming, surplus food can be stored to sustain people during lean times, allowing the community to grow steadily. Hierarchies and specialization create a robust society capable of adapting to challenges, such as natural disasters, invasions, or disease outbreaks. As specialists develop new techniques and tools, your community will advance technologically. For example, better farming tools and methods can increase yields, while improved construction techniques can create more durable and comfortable buildings. With more free time due to increased efficiency, individuals can engage in cultural activities like art, music, and storytelling. This enriches community life and strengthens social bonds.
To encourage all of this, observe your people and identify their strengths and interests. Encourage them to focus on tasks where they excel. Offer training and resources to help individuals develop their skills. This can be done through apprenticeships or informal instruction. Appoint trusted individuals to oversee specific areas. For example, have a leader for farming, one for construction, and one for defense. Form councils or committees where leaders can discuss and coordinate their efforts. This ensures that all parts of the community work together harmoniously. Emphasize the importance of working together for the common good. Encourage a sense of shared purpose and community spirit. Recognize and reward individuals for their contributions to the community. This can be done through public acknowledgment, extra rations, or other incentives.
Imagine a town that starts with a few dozen families. As they specialize and divide labor, they produce more food, tools, and goods than they need for immediate use. This surplus allows some individuals to focus on tasks other than food production, like building infrastructure, making pottery, or defending the town. Over time, the town grows into a thriving community with hundreds or even thousands of inhabitants. Leadership structures evolve to manage the increasing complexity, ensuring that everyone has a role and that the town can face challenges effectively.
Your community is facing some real challenges as you work to establish a stable food supply. Understanding the carrying capacity of your environment and why certain problems arise can help you make better decisions in the future. Let's break down these concepts and provide some helpful advice for your current situation. The carrying capacity of an area is the largest number of individuals of a species that an environment can support sustainably without harming the other species that also live in the area, like plants and animals. This applies to humans, animals, and plants. It is determined by how much appropriate food, water, and shelter there is for that species type, as well as the ability of the environment to absorb and process waste. As your community consumes more food and resources than the area around you can replenish, you will notice a decrease in the amount of wild game, fish, and plants to be foraged. Overuse of land and resources leads to soil erosion, deforestation, and water pollution. These changes make it harder for the environment to support life. When local wildlife populations decline or migrate away, it indicates that the carrying capacity has been exceeded. Animals leave because the habitat can no longer provide sufficient food, water, or shelter for them.
As you rely heavily on hunting and fishing and foraging, these resources can become quickly depleted. Animals may become scarce, and fish populations may dwindle, leading to reduced catches. Intense foraging can exhaust local plant populations. Plants need time to regenerate, and overharvesting can prevent this, leading to a decline in available edible plants. Without resilient agricultural systems, your community relies too heavily on wild resources. When these resources run out, malnutrition and starvation become immediate threats. As your community grows, the demand for food increases. Without a sustainable and reliable food supply, the area cannot support the growing population, making food shortages worse.
For now, focus on high-efficiency food sources that can provide immediate relief. Fishing, if not already overexploited, can be ramped up. Also, consider small game and fast-growing, easy-to-harvest plants. Consider implementing strict rationing to ensure that everyone has access to some food, even if it's not enough to prevent hunger. This can help stretch your resources further while you work on long-term solutions. For the long term, prioritize setting up resilient agricultural systems. Focus on crops that are well-suited to your environment and can provide reliable yields. Utilize crop rotation and companion planting to maintain soil health and increase productivity. Begin domesticating animals that can provide a steady source of meat, milk, and eggs. This reduces reliance on wild game and can be more sustainable. Implement irrigation systems to ensure that crops receive sufficient water. Collect and store rainwater to use during dry periods. Regularly assess the health of your environment. Track wildlife populations, plant regeneration, and soil and water quality. This helps you identify signs of stress early and take corrective action.
Develop and enforce guidelines for sustainable and limited hunting, fishing, and foraging. Ensure that resources are harvested in ways that allow for natural regeneration. Educate your community about the importance of sustainability and the consequences of overexploiting resources. This can foster a sense of responsibility and cooperation. Involve everyone in efforts to establish and maintain sustainable practices. When people understand the stakes and participate in solutions, the community becomes more resilient. In order to keep an eye on this, pay attention to changes in animal behavior. If animals are becoming scarce or migrating away, it's a sign that the environment is under stress. Monitor the health of plants in your area. If you notice fewer edible plants or signs of overharvesting, it's an indicator that foraging pressure is too high. Be prepared to adapt your strategies based on environmental conditions. If certain food sources become scarce, pivot to alternatives and adjust your practices accordingly. Cultivate a variety of crops and domesticate different animals to reduce dependency on any single resource. This creates a more resilient food system.
Here are some early fishing and boatbuilding techniques that you can implement using simple iron tools and basic materials. These methods will help increase your community's food supply and expand the range where you can seek catches from the sea.
You can use Handlines and Fishing Hooks, made out of simple iron tools to shape hooks, plant fibers or sinew for lines. Attach bait to hooks and drop them from boats or the shore. Handlines can target specific fish species and are effective in both freshwater and saltwater. Create barbed hooks to improve catch rates. Use different baits to attract various fish species.
For Nets, there are three main types of nets. Casting Nets are small, circular nets thrown by hand, which sink and trap fish as they are drawn in. Gill Nets are vertical nets placed in the water column, where fish get caught by their gills as they try to swim through. Seine Net are large nets that can be dragged through the water by a boat or from the shore, encircling fish. Nets can be made out of Plant fibers, sinew, or simple woven materials for the net; iron weights to help the net sink. Each type of net has a specific deployment method, but the general principle is to trap fish within the net and then retrieve them. Use various types of knots to make the netting more durable. Experiment with different mesh sizes to target different fish species. Use strong, flexible fibers such as flax or hemp to create long-lasting nets. Regularly check and mend holes. Attach small iron weights to the bottom edge of nets to help them sink. Use lightweight materials such as gourds or carved wood as floats to keep the top edge of the net buoyant.
Fish Traps and Weirs can be made out of Sticks, stones, and plant fibers. Construct barriers or enclosures in shallow waters where fish are naturally funneled into confined spaces and trapped. Some advances can be traps with one-way entrances to prevent fish from escaping. Place traps in areas with strong currents or tides to maximize catches.
Spearfishing is the use of Iron or sharpened wooden spears. It involves the use of spears to catch fish in shallow waters, either from the shore or from a boat. Some advances are to create multi-pronged spears (tridents) to increase the likelihood of hitting a fish. Improve spear balance and weight for more accurate throws.
Here are some early Boatbuilding Techniques First, Dugout Canoes, which are made of Large logs, with simple iron tools for carving. To make one, hollow out a large log to create a simple canoe. Use fire to soften the wood and iron tools to carve and shape the canoe. Some advances can be to create seats and storage areas within the canoe. Seal the wood with resin or pitch to make it more water-resistant.
Rafts can be made out of logs, plant fibers or sinew for lashings. To make a raft, bind several logs together to create a flat, floating platform. Use iron tools to notch the logs and secure them tightly. Some advances can be to add raised edges to prevent gear and catches from falling overboard. Attach sails to harness wind power for easier travel.
Reed Boats can be made out of bundles of reeds, plant fibers or sinew for lashings. Bind bundles of reeds together to form a buoyant vessel. Shape the bundles into a canoe-like structure. Some more advanced techniques involve creating multiple layers of reeds for added buoyancy. Use a framework of sticks or small logs for added stability.
In general, regularly inspect and repair boats to extend their lifespan. Use simple iron tools to fix cracks and reinforce weak points. Fish at different times of the day and night to take advantage of varying fish behaviors and improve catches. Identify breeding and migration patterns of fish to target them during peak seasons. Add outriggers to dugout canoes or reed boats for increased stability, especially in rough waters. Introduce simple sails made from woven plant fibers or animal hides to harness wind power, allowing for longer fishing trips and expanding your fishing range.
Some general techniques useful for fishing include: Build simple smokehouses to preserve fish by smoking them, extending their shelf life. Use salt to cure fish, another method of preservation that prevents spoilage. Encourage collaboration among community members for large-scale fishing operations and boatbuilding projects. Share successful fishing and boatbuilding techniques within the community to improve overall efficiency and yield.
Here are some Fish Farming techniques. First is Pond Fish Farming, which involves creating or utilizing a pond to cultivate and breed fish in a controlled environment. You need a water source (river, stream, or spring) to fill the pond, suitable land to construct the pond, and iron tools for digging and shaping the pond. To do this, you choose a site with clayey or loamy soil to retain water, that is close to a water source for easy filling and replenishment. Consider the site's sunlight exposure, as moderate sunlight is beneficial for fish growth. Use iron tools such as shovels and hoes to dig the pond. The pond should be around the depth of an adult human to provide a stable environment for the fish. A rectangular or square pond is easier to manage. The size can vary based on your needs and the number of fish you plan to raise. Create an inlet for fresh water and an outlet for excess water to maintain water quality. Use stones and clay to construct these structures and prevent erosion. Fill the pond with water from your selected source. Ensure the water is clean and free of pollutants. Introduce aquatic plants or use simple aeration techniques like manually stirring the water to ensure adequate oxygen levels. Select appropriate freshwater fish species suitable for your climate and pond conditions, such as tilapia, carp, or catfish. Introduce young fish (fingerlings) into the pond. Ensure a balanced stocking density to avoid overcrowding and promote healthy growth. Use natural food sources like plant matter and insects, and food scraps. Supplement with simple fish feed made from ground grains or legumes if available. Regularly check water quality, remove debris, and monitor fish health. Maintain the pond structures to prevent leaks and erosion. Fish can be harvested once they reach the desired size, between half a year and a year. Use nets or traps to catch the fish without draining the pond.
Next is Cage Fish Farming, which involves placing cages in natural water bodies (lakes, rivers, or coastal areas) to contain and cultivate fish. To do this, you will need a natural water body with stable conditions, and materials to construct cages (wood, bamboo [which is a fast growing extremely large grass that acts more like a small tree in size, found in some parts of the world], plant fibers, and iron tools). Choose a site with clean, flowing water to ensure good oxygen levels and waste removal. Avoid areas with strong currents or frequent flooding. Use bamboo, wood, and plant fibers to construct the cage frames. Iron tools can be used to shape and secure the structures. Create a rectangular or cylindrical cage with a mesh-like structure to allow water flow while containing the fish. The mesh size should be small enough to prevent fish from escaping. Attach floats made from hollow logs or gourds to keep the cage buoyant. Secure the cage with anchors made from stones or logs to prevent it from drifting. Select hardy fish species that can thrive in cage conditions. Stock the cages with young fish, ensuring a balanced density to promote growth and prevent stress. Provide natural food sources available in the water body. Supplement with additional feed as needed. Regularly check the cages for damage and repair any holes or weaknesses. Clean the cages to remove algae and debris. Fish can be harvested by lifting the cage or using a net to scoop them out. Ensure to handle the fish gently to avoid stress and injury.
Last is integrated Rice-Fish Farming, which involves raising fish in flooded rice paddies, allowing for the simultaneous cultivation of both rice and fish, which is relevant if you are in the appropriate part of Asia or West Africa to enable this form of cultivation. To do this, you will need a floodable rice paddy, and rice. Here's a description of this form of farming in general, and the techniques to make it a means of integrated rice-fish farming.
A rice paddy is a field designed to be flooded with water to cultivate rice. This method is particularly effective for growing rice because it suppresses weeds, deters pests, and provides the rice plants with the ideal growing conditions. To make a rice paddy, select a location near a reliable water source such as a river, stream, or lake, preferably choose flat land or gently sloping land to facilitate water control and distribution. Ensure the soil is fertile and can retain water well. Clay or loamy soils are ideal. Clear the land of any vegetation, rocks, and debris. Level the field to ensure even water distribution. This can be done using simple tools like hoes, shovels, and wooden leveling boards. Construct bunds (raised embankments) around the edges of the paddy fields to hold the water in. Bunds are typically made from the soil found on-site and can be reinforced with grass or other vegetation to prevent erosion. Dig irrigation channels to bring water into the paddies and drainage channels to remove excess water. : Install simple control structures like wooden or stone sluice gates to manage the water flow in and out of the paddy fields. Flood the field to a shallow depth (about one to two hand lengths) before planting. You can either scatter rice seeds evenly over the flooded field, or start rice seedlings in a nursery bed and transplant them to the paddy when they are about 20-30 days old. This method is more labor-intensive but often results in higher yields. Maintain that water level to start. As the rice plants mature, the water depth can be increased slightly. Periodically remove any weeds that emerge. Flooding helps suppress weed growth, but some manual weeding may still be necessary. Monitor for pests and diseases. Flooding and draining cycles can help control some pests naturally. Drain the field a few sevendays before harvesting to allow the soil to dry and the rice grains to mature. Harvest the rice plants by cutting them close to the ground with simple tools like sickles or knives. Separate the rice grains from the stalks by threshing. This can be done manually by beating the stalks against a hard surface or using simple threshing tools. Periodically allowing the field to dry out can stimulate root growth and improve yield. This is known as the Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) technique. Incorporating green manure crops like clover or legumes into the soil before planting rice can improve soil fertility and structure.
Some systems integrate fish farming with rice paddies. Fish like carp or tilapia can be raised in the flooded paddies, providing an additional source of food and income. This method will need to have the water depth about two to four hand lengths. To do this, once the rice is high enough to manage the extra water, introduce young fish into the paddies after planting the rice. Ensure a balanced stocking density. Maintain water levels to support both rice and fish growth. Ensure water quality remains high. Fish will feed on natural food sources like insects and plant material in the paddies. Supplement with additional feed if necessary. Fish can help control pests in the rice paddies by eating insect larvae and weeds, reducing the need for manual weeding. Harvest fish periodically as they reach appropriate size. Use nets or traps to catch them without draining the paddies. Harvest rice as usual, being careful not to harm the fish during the process.
Ahem! That concludes my primarily-sourced-from-ChatGPT stuff I just put together and tweaked to make more sense! Back to me, Fox, speaking without using that particular tool. Regarding the choice you sacrificed to us, Bianca, I thank and honor you for your sacrifice of your choice in the three quests, and will vote as responsibly as I am able. I thus vote for:
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
[X] Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
As an intelligent species becoming extinct is abhorrent to me. Whatever god awakes from the ritual can be killed or banished, whatever benefits from the tomb can be obtained later or taken or stolen from or traded for by whoever gets them if you don't, but an intelligent people that is both soul-crafted and life-crafted cannot be reborn once they die out, nor can their culture or values be recreated without them! Allies are important! And the ability to have your people able to take to the air and do useful tasks while airborne is so ludicrously useful that it is impossible to describe!
As far as some of the other replies... Don't play around in binary. It's useful for odd thinking rocks and devices made with electricity and things like the way ChatGPT works without the tool actually technically being magical, but it is not at ALL relevant to you. I expect this to get worse when people start talking about fighting, weapons, ways to organize large groups of people for fighting together, and so on and so forth. People get especially weird about that kind of thing, favoring talking about their specific favorite concept rather than what's immediately useful to you. It happened to the other Biancas (I feel that your situation and name tends to rhyme with regards to fate and destiny, though you are distinct individuals with different abilities, goals, contexts, souls, minds, and personalities though) who were in similar situations in other worlds all the time, and got very annoying to me. Maybe the fact that we now have access to tools like ChatGPT to help provide context will mitigate this tendency of the cacophony somewhat, but I somehow doubt it.
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
[X] Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Some more thoughts on simplicity that might be lost in between talk of mercury and the generation long breeding of birds and grain:
Firstly, on violence, power and legitimacy.
When you command the fisher to do your bidding, do they do so out of fear of your magic or because you have done so for more generations than people can count on their fingers, bringing with you the secrets of iron and magic?
I'd guess that as the years went by this answer slowly moved from the first to the second through a simple thing called legitimacy.
While at first your capacity for violence gave you the power to get their compliance, each time you acted in accordance with the Biance people hold in their heads when they think about you, the greater your legitimacy.
Now for the reason why you would want legitimacy: It allows you to compell actions without the threat of violence. This might not matter now, but becomes critical once the people that might give you tribute and call you god-queen - amongst other titles - are of such a number that you can't observe them all at once, with your realm stretching such that you could walk for months from one end of it to another.
This of course though requires you to carry through with the actions people expect of you, so let me get an example of a king calling on his legitimacy to have people follow him into battle where there is a high likelyhood that they will be wounded or killes:
Did I not rise as lord when you were lowly,
and made you into chiefs by my will every day?
I have placed a son on his father's portion,
I have banished all evil from the land.
I released your servants to you,
Gave you things that were taken from you.
Whosoever made a petition,
"I will do it," said I to him daily.
No lord has done for his soldiers
What my majesty did for your sakes.
In this case he calls upon being a good ruler to make people fight in his name without requiring to throw thunder and lightning behind his words.
This is less an immediate thing for you to do, but rather something to keep in mind as you work on other things, especially once the fisher people grow and prosper into something more than a single village of mudhuts.
Apropos mudhuts, by firing bricks of clay or even just letting them dry in the sun you can make a material suitable for constructing a building that can last generations of well taken care of. Too requiring of labour and fuel to use for everyone, but it might make sense to have one constructed for yourself as having big, impressive things is also a thing useful for building legitimacy while also being pleasing.
In case 'brick' doesn't translate properly: It is a solid mass of clay shaped so that it has six sides and twelve edges with mostly flat surfaces. It should be longer than it is wide and wider than it is tall. Stacking them in such a way that one brick rests always on two halves of other bricks makes for secure walls and structures. When stacking them, cover the parts of the bricks that will touch each other with a mixture of water and ground up lymestone or seashells. When it dries out, it will plug the gaps between the bricks and hold them together.
Anyway, some other thoughts.
Storms and shaking ground. Frankly, there is little you can do at the moment here but build on high ground, store food and record when they happen. Large, notable storms, floods and the shaking ground usually happen on a cycle, though ones that might last entire generations between occurances.
Moving onto boats, i'll leave designs up to other voices but will talk about tar. Once again talking simply, some kinds of wood, when heated very slowly will start leaking a viscuous black liquid that can be useed in a wide variety of ways but are most useful for sealing gaps in boats as the liquid is water repellant and sticks to whatever it is applied to.
A simply design for a suitable oven requires you to dig a hole into the ground, with a slight slope to the bottom. Now dig a second hole next to the first and make a small passage to connect the lowest point of the 1st hole with the second one, using a pipe of clay or metal, and put a collection vessel of some kind underneath the passage in the 2md hole. Cover the surface of the 1st hole in stone and then fill it with tightly stacked wood scraps roughly the size of a finger each, though again, not every kind of tree will produce pitch. Now cover the 1st hole in dirt, a thin but consistent layer without holes in it, and light a fire on top of it, feeding it for a few hours until pitch starts pouring out of the passage and into the collection vessel we placed earlier.
There is only so much pitch you can get this way, so by letting the fire burn down at the correct time you should have gathered all the pitch you can and have turned the wood into charcoal that can be reused. Though you can also just keep the fire burning until the pitch is all gathered and the wood inside the hole also burns away.
I don't know how small the passage between the two holes should be, but the smaller the better I would guess. Nonetheless, I'd not stay to close to your first few ovens while they burn just in case they explode.
Lastly then, how to bring peaceableness: You can't, at least not entirely. As others have talked about, encouraging the fisher people to trade iron and other things they have in surplus against that which they lack might work, though i'd still send some iron armed men along to keep those others from simply stealing the goods. Most other ideas that come to mind I would not trust to work right now, with the fisher people barely settled and the other people still nomadic.
Also, someone please stab chatGP because its word vomit annoys me.
"Trade" is when settlements or people in different places exchange things they have for things they need or want. For example, one settlement might have fish, while another has tools. If they both serve one superior God, then to avoid violence that could displease their deity, their respected leaders or elders or warriors - or sometimes Servants of their God, if such Servants exist - agree to give each other what they have more. This way, both people get something useful with no God-displeasing violent stealing. So trade helps people get different things they cannot make or find themselves, and is different than raiding and stealing.
They need to agree how many fish should be given for one iron hook, for example. There may be even some arguing how much, but when they fear their God and their God would be mad at violence, then there is no violence.
Junction speaking. Fear of a God is not really necessary for trade to work properly, only that trade is more convenient and less risky than one side of the trade simply taking what they want by force.
I agree, but for peaceful trade to work well without fear of deity, both sides of trade would need to be raised from childhood to adult age, with caretakers or family often saying to them belief about peaceful trade and often showing them shows of peaceful trade as example, to make their minds comfortable with the idea.
To make theirminds form around understanding of this weird way like around normal ways.
Peace from fear is inferior, but easier.
By the way, Bianca. Are you saying to the people that you are a god? I guess that you are not a god yet, but mortals would believe that you are a god, I think. So you could say to them that you are divine.
It was said before by L 3, as follows... If people overextend the master over Voices, limits will kick in and only some amount of our first words shall be heard.
So the more they quote and paste from for example ChatGPT, the higher chance that only first number of your words may count...
@LoserThree
It's not my task to provide any solutions to the Game Master, so I was unsure if I should write this... but if I could suggest anything... I would suggest to first throw out -overuse-, not all but -overuse-, ot the ChatGPT garbage. Only then impose other limits on what Bianca heard.
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Hello Bianca, it is I, a man with no name.
This is my first time advising one such as you but I have known your two previous iterations, I have skimmed my fellow's advice to you and in the hopes of not repeating too much of their advice, I will limit my words to the situation of the people of black hook bay.
Specifically, to their war thirsting ways.
You have asked how to bring peacefulness to those people who possess iron where their neighbor do not.
I'm here to tell you that it is the wrong question.
It is in the nature of man to struggle, it is in the nature of man to put his like before the other.
The people of black hook bay do not fight with their neighbors because they have iron weapons, they fight with their neighbors because their neighbor have something they need.
The iron weapons merely allow them to do so with relative impunity.
What you must do is direct this violence, divert it to your own ends.
Go with them and do great violence upon the Neighboring tribes, subjugate them and proclaim your ownership of the land and the people inhabiting it and draw tribute form them.
It matters not what the tribute is (so long its not an insult or a trap) only that tribute is given.
You may ask why you would wish to do so? why waste your time to receive worthless baubles in return?
The answer is power.
You wish for power do you not?
It comes in many forms, both in the self and in others.
This is but the first step to forging the power of nations, of armies hundreds of thousand strong all marching at your command.
Ready to unleash violence unmatched upon your enemies.
You may look upon the petty tribes that surround you and cannot fathom the power that lies in them, but just as the wizard that only just learned his fist spell is puny and weak, in time he become an arch mage able to turn whole regions asunder and duel gods into submissions, so to the power of nations will in time grow.
The best part? You must only make a small effort to start the process and once in a while prune a few branches and set the nation right but by and large this kind of power will grow without your effort once the process has begun.
Before encouraging violent raiding and stealing, I would consider if these inland people couldn't be forced into mostly peaceful "trade" with the Bay because of fear about your wrath. Perhaps you could have as your mortals both people of the Bay and some inland people. Maybe joining them into one also with marriages, not only with fear. Despite the fact that they live separately. If they could exchange some youth and marry every generation... Humph.
But perhaps there is too much hate for marriages and making them kin and forcing into more peaceful exchanges of things. I'm not sure.
But...If even one small inland band could be joined peacefully, make relatives with the people of the Bay, visit peacefully... Then... Their wisdom of herbs, valuable.
It could also make stronger children, from such mixing of people...
By the way. To be clear about wood tar, it wouldn't close any hole in a boat that is big enough to be visible. Painting boat with tar is mostly about protecting wood of the boat from water that is slowly penetrating it and making it wet inside and more weighty and less safe and rot faster. Wooden walls of buildings can be protected in similar fashion, but tar is sadly very flammable if it encouters fire.
Oh yeah, pitch burns like little else once it catches on fire and you can't put it out with water because remember, it repells liquids. If someone really displeases you, douse them in pitch and light them up.
For boats, as mentioned its about protecting the wood against the water and closing gaps in vessels made out of more than a single piece.
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
[X] Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Winged lions! Winged lions! Winged lions!
And if we don't rescue them this turn, they are going to die out. I don't want them to die out. I want them as a cool permanent part of Bianca's empire, not as a weirdo footnote that died the moment they were introduced.
EDIT: tbh I'd prefer to just concentrate on saving the Winged Lions instead of dicking around trying to have it two ways. But the write-in vote is what's winning currently.
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Lions are all well and good but the priority has to be stamping out the god. Half the point of starting early was to step on exactly this kind of thing before they can wake up and become an endless nuisance.
Suggestions of conquest and empire seem premature, even assuming it's a good idea to begin with.
Sedentary societies could be oppressed in this sort of way because they live in a fixed place and anywhere they might move to tends to be already occupied by similar peoples.
What's stopping these groups from just leaving, if they're squeezed too much?
Perhaps a relatively settled people could project force across a broad region with horses or ships/large boats but under the current circumstances it seems troublesome. Especially for a people who need their neighbours.
I agree but suggest as well that any use of chatgpt is overuse.
If someone made such a list as the above by paraphrasing something then they have put their own time into writing it and perhaps the experience will make them have some consideration for the people who have to read it.
If they can instead say "hey, chatgpt, give me 20,000 words of fucking garbage" and copy it in then they have no labour to restrain them.
all power flows from a threadban button and it should be pressed aggressively
Meanwhile, we are outright terrified of what the stirring god might do if it wakes, and REALLY don't want to risk that happening. But we don't much care about trying to subvert the ritual, per se.
If you use something like the long line short line thing to write it it won't take up more room then other systems you can easily fit 3-4 bits into the space of a single character that way so it dosn't take more room then base 8 or 16 which are just compressed forms of binary grouping 3 or 4 bits together.
Thats why I kept my comments limited to just "try trade" because these people will move away if it becomes too much trouble to stay.
Oh, and if people are now using metal weapons, how about we bring some ideas for armour and defense?
Another thought be that if the fisher people have lost their medicine, would it should be possible to barter for or steal seeds from people that sitll have them to grow them near their settlement.
Some other things that might be worth bringing ups is coppicing and Pollarding.
Coppicing is the process of felling a tree close to the stump but leaving the stump alone, which in some species can allow the tree to grow new shoots out of the stump as long as it survives. As the tree still retains its large root network it can focus on only growing the shoot or shoots, so that they not only grow faster than a whole new tree, but they also end up being long and thin until they start "filling in" the size of the old tree, making them useful for a variety of practices if cut early or just a reusable supply of medium sized logs as long as the tree is allowed to recover in between harvests.
Pollarding is the process of letting a tree grow to a height where its central body is above the height for animals to graze on before repeatetly cutting the regrowing branches. This should result in a large central trunk ending in a knobby top from which thin shoots stretch upward that are perfect for use in firewood that can be regularly harvested as long as they are not overharvested and the tree dies.
Black Cat yet again. I wonder if you are still able to hear me. I have a way to make pretty baubles. People of the Bay could take these baubles to meet outsiders, and then instead of stealing from outsiders while scaring these outsiders into running away and needing to pursue them, some outsiders could like these baubles enough to give interesting plant food in exchange for baubles. This may be just easier than raiding. Because outsiders would run away and fight less often.
Making glass is like making a special kind of very pretty rock. First, you need to gather some white sand. Then, you mix this sand with a bit of a salty white powder from certain rocks, mostly limestone and white crystals called soda ash. After that, you put this mixture into a very hot fire, so hot that it turns everything into a glowing, liquid soup. Once the mixture is all melted and smooth, you let it cool down. As it cools, it turns into a hard, shiny material that you can see through, just like ice, but it doesn't melt. This is glass. With glass you can exploit outsiders with no fighting and without giving them any useful iron. Also should be easier to make than iron.
Junction speaking, with something important that Black Cat forgot to mention about glass-making.
Specifically, glass-making requires temperatures somewhere around copper smelting heat, with a crucible separating it from the charcoal being strongly advised. Glass also has a nasty tendency to crack when cooling from its malleable semi-solid state, which can be mitigated via annealing, though obviously at somewhat lower temperatures than what it takes to melt.
The salty white powders that Black Cat mentions aren't strictly necessary for glass-making, but without them the glass is highly likely to be a striking green color and difficult to see through. This is due to impurities in the sand that those powders help remove, on similar logic to smelting.
One last note on glass-making for now; if you pour a drop of molten glass into water, you produce a mostly useless artifact that still has some interesting properties to puzzle over. That said, be careful handling it; one of those properties is that messing with its narrow tail can suddenly shatter the whole thing, even though it seems like that really shouldn't be the case.
You can also get glass just by smelting normal sand if any of the special ingredients for the good stuff is missing. It will not be very good glass, but you can use it if you want a trade good or something pretty to look at.
Hm, while another voice touched on obsidian I'l go into it more. So obsidian is form of naturally occurring glass created as a result of volcanos. All forms of glass create very sharp edges when broken, but obsidian is like this to an absurd degree.
Blackpowder can be made with sulfur (brimstone) which ought to be yellow and smelly, refined bat waste called saltpeter, and refined ash of wood called charcoal. It is a powder that burns so fast it shatters whatever tries to contain it, making it a potent weapon.
By burying large amounts of wood in such a way that they smolder for days and experience high heat but are not exposed to too much air, they cook without truly burning, the wood becomes blackened. The key is that a fire requires air and fuel both, but if some of the wood does not have enough air, it cooks instead. This charcoal can create hotter fire than mere wood if used well and will burn longer than the same weight of wood. It should be black, hard, and dense.
Refining saltpeter is tricky. The bat poo contains a lot of things not just saltpeter, and it's annoying and smelly. One of the first ways was mixing of the guano with water and boiling that while slowly mixing in wood ash. Wood ash mostly makes the parts we don't want turn solid. Then we take what's left of the liquid to a new bowl, and boil it more. In the second bowl should be left behind a white powder or stringy crystals. This is saltpeter.
To make blackpowder, carefully grind to fine powders and thoroughly mix two parts by weight of sulfur, three parts of charcoal, and fifteen parts of saltpeter. It is best done in small amounts, the result will be very easy to burn and it burns with enough force to injure and maim if there is even a large handfull. That is why it makes such a strong weapon for how much your people know right now. It might be stored in a pot, but setting it off with fire may be best by magic as I don't know any good ways to make slow burning cords without much more work.
We've already stated that a slow-burning cord can be prepared by immersing a string in a solution of water and potassium nitrate (also known as saltpeter). Still, we will state it again just to be sure.
Well, making a fuse with that cord that goes into a big pot of blackpowder means someone can light it with a torch and them run away very fast before it explodes. Perhaps I will think of more later. I don't want to write my entire boat ramble once again. Maybe briefly.
The key point of boats is that they need a keel, mostly a thick timber that is heavy. Like a thick bottomed pot, it helps it stay upright. Also, they need ribs of strong wood connected to the keel, like the bones in the chest. Thin wood can be stretched and fastened and cut to fit over the ribs as a skin, and the gaps filled with tar and skins and such. Making of sails to use the wind... Ugh
Predicting the destruction from nature like storms and earth shaking is very hard. What I know now is the great shaking of the earth sometimes comes after lesser shaking that you can not even necessarily feel. A bowl of still water could show you lesser shaking if you happened to be looking at it, with small ripples. Maybe if it was very full, any spilling will tell you of shaking. Or perhaps if you balance something so finely that a person stomping and jumping nearby can make it fall, lesser earthshaking will do it too.
Earthshaking cannot be stopped by any material means we know. The earth is too vast for it. It can only be endured.
Lightning will tend to strike the tallest things, especially if the spark energy can easily go to earth. If you had enough metal, a tower on a hill with metal going down the side would tend to attract much of the lightning.
Predicting the storms by sight and senses alone is not something we know in these days. Other tools you cannot build yet do it for us, so the unreliable way of checking with your own eyes has been forgotten. The best advice I have for it is to mark down in stone or clay the way the sky and ocean felt for several days before a storm. By writing these things you remember them better over a long time. People forget plenty. And I think even you do.
Actually, I have checked, and I remembered wrong about earthshaking. Even now, we cannot predict it. I was wrong. The lesser earthshaking is only useful to find lands that are especially prone to shaking, and ones that are less so. Not to predict when it is about to happen.
Great boats made with many wooden planks on wooden keel, like a skeleton but for a boat and without bones, with wooden planks like skin... instead of using only one log... fascinating, even more complicated and harder to do than hollowed logs suggested by others, but fascinating... Possible next way after hollowed logs... Such a boat made from parts could be great enough to fit few people at the same time and many, so many, so many fish... Possible... But hard to do well. Harder than logs and then hollowed logs... But if time allows to try...
Planks are... Long, thin, flat pieces of wood. Would need labor and tools to produce from logs.
Plant fibers, animal sinews, or tree resins to seal the gaps between the planks... Making the boat watertight... or carve a slot in one plank and a matching one on the other plank, fitting them together... I imagine now boat so great that I feel shocked myself.
Fox asking the others -- my interactions with Chatgpt had a lot of useful stuff, several things were mentioned that hadn't been brought up before. If it's too overly wordy, I could maybe attempt to put it's advice in my own words, but I felt the example of someone using it openly and critiquing and showing the process rather than having it speaking only for them had merit, possibly for her future interactions with other forms of magical sort-of-thinking entities?
The problem with ChatGPT is mostly that it does not check itself. It can be completely wrong and make things up entirely. It's basically just repeating mixes of things other people have said if you simplify the math down to the end, and other people are wrong all the time.
Has anyone explained fishing weirs?
There are a lot of ways to make something that fish can go in, but can't leave. They can't walk, only swim. You pile rocks in the river to make a slow, calm part of a river. Some fish like the calm water more and will stay there. If the only entrance to this part of the river is high, fish can get there when the water is high, but cannot leave again when it is low, and you can go pick them up when it dries out. I'm not sure I'm explaining it right. It's hard to do these with words only and not pictures. Another way is to take skins and sticks and make a large basket, like a pot but with sticks passed over and under each other, woven, and a wide hole at the open end that gets narrow. A funnel. You put it in a strong river and when fish are pushed into it by the current, or if they swim in to look for bits of rotten food they can eat as bait, they are pushed into the basket or swim into it and can't get out again as easily, because fish are dumb and might even be too large to enter the narrow end.
The wolves that follow the wanderers are already being bred in a way. The wanderers likely kill any wolves that are especially mean or attack them, and wolves that can live from eating scraps and shit are more likely to survive and make more wolves. Over time, the wolves in our land did just that became something entirely different. Dogs. Friendly to humans and walking alongside them, they would carry things, help hunt, warn of danger and guard their people and home, and things like that.
Hello you can call me rainbow heart. I love plants and hello everyone I join as a voice yet again.
I am going to clear up some things I saw. Potatoes do not exist yet they were a thousand year long project to make the best food plant. One that you could survive off of it alone one that grew so easily and in such amounts you could live off of .44 acres to put this in perspective in the best areas to keep one person alive you need 4480 acres. And of course this one potato farmer has a bunch of free time any time is is not planting or harvest session to do other thing.
You can start the many many years long process to make them by finding your favorite ebible tube plant and putting the tubbers in the ground. Starches are a specific type of edible compound they are basiely the plant version of fat.
For selective breeding here is the information that would be useful to know. Every living thing has instructions of how to make more of it's self inside when you fuck you give a copy of half the information to your offspring the other half comes from the other partner. Plants can't move and t8hus they fuck by spreading there pollen around hoping it will land in another plants flower. As the offspring shares half of there gentice information with the parents they will have similar traits.
By culling the worst plants from a pool and helping the best plants to spread over and over you will eveunaliy get plants so much better than there wild counter parts that staying in place becomes the much better strategy. Because the plants are bigger healthier and better tasting. Of course with such extra you can do the same process with animals.
Taking a bird for example you can keep a small amount of them for eggs and breed the most calm ones or the biggest ones until you get a bird that will not run from you as you pick it up and take it out of sight of the other birds to kill for it's meat.
This of course takes a large amount of time but it only gets easier the long you follow this path. Of course with out the modified plants or animals yet doing this will not work. So take the first steps down this path,.
This is going to take a few steps but for now using mud or not fired clay to shape a large amount of smaller than a closed fist bowls then let them dry. Find the best dirt you can ( which is normally deep and dark in color) and fill the bowls inside each of the bowels with it put a seed from a chosen plant give the plants a small drink. Place the bowls in a sunny location Give them a small amount of water each day enough to make sure the soil is always mosit but not soaked. Some will fail some plants will fail more than others still eventually plants will sprout from the seeds these will be more of the chosen plant.
They will slowly out grow there pots but because the pot it made up of dried mud you can simply chose a spot you would think the plant would do well in or just want it placed there. To prepare the spot clear it of all plants it could possibly compete with and work their leaves into the soil to decompose, lending what they managed to take from from the soil back in to it once again to be used by your chosen plant.
Continue bring the plant water and clearing away other plants. The plant will grow faster than it would untended.
Of course one way to use this is to create artificial forests that are nothing but the best plants. Vining plants carefully placed on fruit or nut trees with herbs and ediable roots placed below. This artificial forest wound need constant upkeep but as these are longer lived plants not as much once they have grown
To begin the process of modiftying them cull the worst of the plants from the population each year then replace them with seeds from the best of the plants. Each generation of plants will be better than the ones before it.
You could also try this on an already existing forest kill every plant that is poisonous or has no use to you and make sure to leave at least a few of the ones you like overtime the forest will have more and more of the good plants and once the transformation is almost fully complete you can start modifying the remaining plants to be of better use for you
Of course long term planting would slowly drain some important things from the soil .With in the world there are some elements that are used to make the genetic instructions as every bit of you needs that to function, not having enough means no growth. They are slowly added to the soil by something but the rate of them being added to the world is very slow by puting decay and shit back in to the earth you put these elements back into the system thus making it easier for life to grow in this area.
Soap is soap it stays clean for a very long while it is is not molding or reeking of decay chances are it is good to use
A good way to prevent disease is by drinking mostly tea. Tea can be made from any edible plant that is boiled in water for a long enough time. This not only flavors the water with the plant drawing out nutrition that could have otherwise stayed trapped It kill's the main cause of sickness living things so small you can't see them eating you from the inside out.
Most of what the body dose during the sickness is actually done by the body to get the sickness out. Which one of use will die of overheating first works just well enough for the body to keep doing it. Vomiting purges thing out of the body. The weakness to get you to stay still so you can focus all your energy on fighting the sickness
RainbowHeart, you severely exaggerate the relative advantage of the potato. While it is a very good food crop, it is not several grand gross times better than others. Neither does feeding one person with other crops require such an obscenely huge amount of land.
For context, an acre of land is the amount that a pair of laboring beasts pulling a soil-cutter-and-turner (henceforth known as a plow) can prepare for seeding in one day.
It does though .44 acers is how much land needs to be potato crop to feed a preson and the potato does contiaon everything needed also the other acre number was for hunter gathers land needs.
edit there was a reason famine stopped being an issue after the potato was brought back from the amearicas.
Four thousand four hundred and eighty acres. If that were the case, farming to sustain one person for a year would require that one person to expend approximately fifteen years laboring! This is bluntly not the case!
Or were you describing the amount of land needed to sustain people who don't farm? In which case, that number seems roughly accurate.
A hunther gather needs 4480 acers of land to roam to find enough food and other supplys to keep them alive. I never said anything about that number being planting. That number was so the .44 acers could be compared to the current live style
edit woops I forgot to add in hunter gather in my original thing
all is good but the potato is a god amongst crops It took a thousand year of drictly applied effort to make with none of it being dricted to taste, Of course it would be better than most other crops but not as much better as it is over hunter gathering
edit wait a second I don't know if anyone has talked about decimals yet .44 means that it takes less than half an acer to make enough potato's
[X] Write-in: Disrupt the Rite of the Stirring God without taking time to subvert, then try to Rescue the Winged Lions from fate
Hello Bianca, you may call me Knight. Although I observed the cacophony in its previous two iterations, this is my first time joining as a voice.
My advice may be going somewhat against the rest of my fellows, but I would recommend that you don't limit yourself and our knowledge to the people of Black Hook Bay. In time, all the surrounding tribes will serve you, and it may be that the Black Hook Bay ends up being just another insignificant tribe among your servants. Spreading iron, farming, and writing to the other tribes will give them more power, which will bring peacefulness as you wish, but it will also tie them down to the land as the Black Hook Bay was, which will allow you to exert more power over them, without them just having the option of leaving somewhere else. It will also make things such as trade and conquest more viable in the future. Another advantage is that not all the tribes may be able to adapt to settled farming, so by spreading knowledge among many tribes, you have more chances of a tribe surviving and becoming useful; it is possible that the situation of Black Hook Bay is already too dire, and they will be one of the tribes that dies out.
Junction speaking; knight speaks truth that working with other peoples in addition to those of Black Hook Bay is a good idea; later those peoples can be grouped together within a single state (region where a single group enforces their rules through a monopoly on the legitimate use of force), greatly increasing the power that you can exert through the actions of others.
That said, simply letting the people of Black Hook Bay die would be a waste; if practical, they should be preserved.
I will speak now on the topic of helping develop a stable supply crops
Irrigation is the process of taking water from somewhere like a river or a well, and using it water crops. Disconnecting plants from the whims of rainfall, is key part to developing a basis of agriculture. Now every plants wants water at different rates, but with a continual flow of water plants will grow much faster and produce more. And most plants grow the fastest when give water every one to three days.
A simple screw pump can serve as the first step and developing peoples crop growth. It is simple to make that is take a hollow out bit of wood or metal, and insert into it body of water. On the inside place a central rod that from the bottom up in a manor akin to birds wing goes around the rod in a circular fashion all the way to top, while being as tight to edge of the hollowed out part you are using. Done properly this will be able scoop water upwards to an area you need it to water plants.
Take the outflow from a setup like this and with a simple system of basic gates, you can direct water to the fields as needed, while avoiding over watering plants. I would suggest setting it up so that the water can flow left and right thou your fields.
For your fields while other have talked about a plow this is how you build one, take iron and shape it for over turning dirt between a half hand an full hands deep while going forward, attack the metal to a wooden mount where back half should have handles to direct it and for the user to apply pressure to keep the plow within the ground. While the front part is where it pulled froward, this part is why strong animals are preferred as humans are exceptionally ill suited for such labor. This both kills competing plants, and loosens the dirt so that the seeds your people plant in the ditch have an easier time growing, in addition it make easier for water to sink into the ground which helps plants roots to develop increasing growth rate.
I, Metal Lizard, will talk more about settled farming. Again, this is distinguished from the nomadic farming that is already common practice and has been observed by you, Bianca.
To reiterate, fertility-of-the-soil, or richness-of-the-soil, is the ability of the soil to sustain plant growth and grant sustained, consistent plant yield of high quality. Some soils are better for this purpose than others. We will come back to this in a moment.
Crop plants sustain themselves on the soil. (They also sustain themselves on light and certain substances in the air, but it's the soil that is important for our present purposes.) They leech nutrients present in the soil into themselves.
The problem with repeated farming in one location is that it over-drains the soil of those nutrients. Over-farm a single spot, and you make that spot barren and unfit for farming. If you're wondering why people don't do settled farming already, this is why.
This is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Particularly not for people who have incentive to solve those problems, such as those of Black Hook Bay, who will all die if they don't find a steady supply of food.
Solutions include:
Just leave some of the designated farming fields unplanted in some years while planting and harvesting others. Basic, but it works.
Certain plants actually work the opposite way of crop plants - they draw the relevant nutrients from substances in the air and transpose them into the soil. Confusing, I know, but there you have it. These plants - let us call them "cover crops" - are useless for consumption for humans but useful for renewing the fertility-of-the-soil. They can be planted sequentially, or simultaneously, with the crop plants - one after the other, or at the same time.
(Oh, by the way, farming will typically take place over yearly cycles - growing the crop plants and harvesting them in the warm times of the year, stockpiling the food in the autumn, subsisting on the stockpiles during the winter, repeat.)
Or, the best solution...
Just plant on the banks of a big river, where you get infinite free fertility-of-the-soil.
Rivers reshape the landscape. You've seen it happen. They grind and erode away at the land, changing it, sometimes slowly, sometimes very quickly. As they grind away at the land, they pick up and transport a great many things in their waters...including the substances of fertility-of-the-soil.
When a river overflows and bursts its banks, flooding the local area, it overturns the soil there, and carries fertility-of-the-soil into the areas it floods. Infinite, free fertility-of-the-soil. If it can be harnessed properly.
I'll address these objections of yours, Bianca:
There are solutions to this. Certain structures in the land that can be built to better manage the flow and flooding of rivers. But...
Okay. This is a good moment for me to address a glaring issue. We haven't told you what plants are ideal for such purposes. Well, Chatgupt has, but I am one of the voices that take philosophical issue with taking advice from that thing.
Generally speaking, the kind of plants fit for settled farming:
Are edible by humans (obviously)
Relatively easy on the land and on the fertility-of-the-soil
Have a high yield in the parts that are edible to humans
Are easy to grow
Are easy to grow in quantity
This usually means grains, but can include nuts, beans, and root vegetables...
We don't actually know what plants the people of your area use for their nomadic farming practices. You've only provided us with a description of one. That said, it is an intriguing one...
I am not familiar with this plant that you describe, but it sounds interesting. A kind of root vegetable, it sounds like? One hardy enough to survive constant uprooting and re-planting? Very interesting.
These could be a good starting point for settled farming.
Here's an immediately actionable plan: Suggest to the people of Black Hook Bay that they acquire these hawk-tailed bulbs and plant them on and near the banks of the river. Pick up the seeds, cast them into the ground, and acquire more. Have the hawk-tailed bulbs grow in place until they struggle to grow - which probably means that they have exhausted the fertility-of-the-soil in the immediate area - then transplant them to another spot on the river bank. They can-
Wait. Wait. I just realized. I don't think you specified if people eat the hawk-tailed bulbs? Do they eat them? This is important. We need to know if these are suitable for eating for renewing the soil.
ChatGPT thinks it might be Wild Fennel or Wild Onion. Still, if she can give us more details about this plant and how it is used, we might be able to figure out what it is -- which might help us figure out where she is!
This is Knight speaking again. Black cat, I both agree and disagree with you. It is true that the people of Black Hook Bay are the most useful to Bianca as of now, and since Bianca can't be everywhere at once, it may be best to not spread herself between many tribes but instead just focus on a few specific tribes to advance in the beginning.
However, once Bianca is able to set up the Black Hook Bay with settled farming, better boats, writing, and with some of the other knowledge we have given to her, I do think it would be worthwhile to travel to other tribes and teach them the same things, as this would avoid making her own power reliant on just one tribe, and make her seem more impartial and above the petty disputes of mortals. It would be useful to already start building her image in preparation for when it is time to gain worshipers and become a god.
What I'm trying to say is that this issue should not be viewed as Bianca and Black Hook Bay fighting against all the other tribes, but rather Bianca over all the tribes of the area, which happen to be fighting for now, but will eventually all be one people under her power.
I really need to put together my sources on premodern aquaculture.
I know we're all really enthused with introducing sedentary plant-farming, myself included, but fish-farming is a more natural segue for the Black Hook Bay peoples.
Violence will not stop. Maybe for a season. Maybe even for a couple of decades. Maybe among some of the people, but not all. Not forever. We have seen this in our histories. The other sorceress we had develop a sort of special society, the Singers, who made songs of all the wisdom and learning and sung them to each other every day, ensuring that the words of knowledge stayed. They served their sorceress, who gave them artifacts of favor and more knowledge in return. They did not fight so much. This stable culture seems valuable, but hard to achieve. I don't know how, I'm not one who studies people and minds.
But I do fear that the best that can be done is to confine the violence to acceptable ways. Such as duels between single people to determine larger conflicts. If a group agrees that their best warrior falling in a duel means they would lose, only one person needs to die, not all. Or raids, say, where some food is stolen but people aren't necessarily killed. It's just that if one person refuses to fight, they become harmless. They can be stolen from or killed or made to work, and so someone who is not so pacifist will do so.
People who will not fight, do not survive. It's like the animal breeding. Fighty men can fuck a lot and have a lot of children. So over time, men become more fighty. But fighty men also die a lot. It's complicated, there are a huge number of things that change how much your children and children's children will grow. I'm just babbling uselessly at this point, I think.
Or perhaps you could use your own words to begin with.
First the steel tools and black powder.
Then, the gold mines.
Something I'm not sure about: 'soda ash' - does making this use the same process as lye used for soapmaking, just using specifically salt-water plants?
We actually know a process for directly synthesizing the active ingredient of soda ash at very high purity, but there are more important matters right now than a mastery of clear glass. The Solvay Process will be discussed at a later time, when there aren't any quite so pressing matters diverting our attention.
I mentioned shiny baubles because of possible way of giving them away in exchange for plant food, so I consider shiny baubles as somewhat useful to feed people, in fact. I know well that you cannot eat glass.
That would presume I had the words. I can do research, I can investigate, this is part of my investigation process. I am not an expert on everything. I can update drafts though, and rewrite things really well, as long as I have something even mediocre to start with!
I might conceivably be more sympathetic if you hadn't filled half a page with AI generated babble.
There are now two of you playing at 'prompt engineer'. You are at least not pretending to be some kind of medium or d(a)emon summoner (un?fortunately chatgpt does not yet have the ability to eat its users) but there is a distinct trajectory here and it is not headed towards the Place All Dogs Go To, if you get my drift.
Hello, this is Whisper of the Sand again. Since the other voices have already revealed to you the secrets of making boats and ropes, I will try to uncover the secret of making threads and weaving. I know that your tribe already knows how to make them, but I am not sure how good they are and whether they are suitable for weaving.
To create a thread, you will need nettle, which is a tall plant with elongated, parallel leaves that have pointed ends and serrated edges. The leaves are also covered with stinging hairs that cause an unpleasant "burn" when touched, which fades after a few hours.
The best raw material for nettle threads is dry plants. Cut the nettle at the base, remove the tops and small branches, and then thoroughly dry it. Properly dried plants should snap when broken, and the fibers should easily separate from the hard parts of the stem.
You need to thoroughly crush and break the dried stems to free the fibers from all unnecessary parts. During this process, a lot of dust and small waste is produced, so it is undesirable to do this indoors.
The result should be soft, strong nettle fibers. Cleaning the fibers from small stem fragments is achieved by rubbing - the resulting nettle mass is beaten with a smooth stick, first in the air, then laid on a flat surface and struck hard. After such processing, the resulting mass needs to be thoroughly shaken and kneaded in the hands to remove particles that bind the fibers. Pinch the bundle of crushed nettle with your fingers and start rubbing and kneading it between your hands. After this procedure, the thread preparations should become clean and soft.
Next, you will need a comb - a tool for aligning the fibers. Take a base from a piece of wood or bone the length of your palm and not thicker than a good knife. Using a knife or sharp stone, make marks on the flat side of the base, spacing them evenly to later cut the teeth. The teeth should not be too thin, otherwise, they will break, but also not too thick to easily pass through the fibers. Carefully cut between the marks to create the teeth. The teeth should be approximately the length of your finger phalanx. Make sure they are even and smooth to avoid tearing the fibers.
Using the comb, thoroughly comb and sort the fibers by length into short, medium, and long fibers. Only long preparations, called tow, are suitable for making nettle thread.
To form the thread, hold the tow conveniently with your left hand, and with your right hand, pull out individual fibers and twist them in one direction, winding the resulting thread onto any object, such as a smooth stick. To better form the thread, it is recommended to keep a container of water nearby to moisten your fingers during work.
This thread can be used not only for binding but also for weaving, that is, creating clothes and other similar items from plants rather than animal hides.
To create the simplest loom, you need to make two identical long combs about the size of your outstretched arm. The teeth of these combs should be spaced the width of your fingernail or less from each other. Then the ends of these two combs should be tied to sticks so that the teeth of the combs are parallel to each other. Make sure the construction is stable.
Next, wrap the nettle thread around one tooth and lead it to the opposite comb, hooking it onto another tooth and leading it down so that you get two parallel threads. Continue this depending on how long you want to make the fabric. Then secure the thread with a knot and use another spool of thread tied to a stick and a smooth flat piece of wood. Thread this stick under the tensioned thread on the loom through one thread so that one thread is above and two threads are below the stick.
Then attach the new spool thread to the outermost tensioned thread and thread the spool along the path of the separating stick so that ultimately this thread is clamped between the tensioned threads. Repeat this path back and forth, and with another smooth stick, align these threads so that they fit tighter together. In this way, passing the path between the two tensioned threads enough times, you will form a fabric that can be used for various purposes, such as wrapping wounds after boiling the fabric.
Now I have a question. What is the Winter of Magic? Why does it happen? How many Winters of Magic have there been? When will the next Winter of Magic be? Is it common for people to lose all knowledge and start living in tribes in the absence of gods, or is someone trying to bring them to this state? What would you do if you found your creator?
Seaweed is a plant that grows in the ocean. You can find it on the shore. It's very good to eat because it has many important substances that mortal body needs for health. Just gather the seaweed, wash it with water, and let it dry in the sun to eat later.
Seaweed looks like long, green or brown strips and can sometimes be very thin or thick. It might feel slippery and sometimes have little bubbles or bumps on it. You'll usually find it washed up on the shore or floating in the shallow water near the beach.
I heard that the taste of seaweed is bad, sadly, but it can allow people to survive for longer, when there are too few better plants. Just say that it may be foul tasting, but it's a medicine for some types of Undersuckling. It wouldn't work always, but may sometimes.
Besides, sometimes people learn to enjoy new weird taste with time. You can mix dry seaweed with fish or something, then it should taste more fishy and less seaweedy.
ChatGPT, HEAVILY modified, prompted with stone age level explanation.
be warned there are dangoues with seaweed such as super high potassium its only safe to eat seaweed once or twice a week or in small amounts due to its tend ice to absorb heavy metals from the waters around it.
...Wait a moment, if seaweed is dangerously high in Potassium, then maybe it can be used as the buried material to make Potassium Nitrate? Uncertain if this would work, admittedly.
Do her people know basket weaving yet? Baskets and other stick weaving can make things out of sticks, which you might have more of than other things. And they are usually lighter than pots, maybe even lighter than skins. I'm not sure. It can get really complicated even if the fundamental idea is just putting sticks over and under each other. It's much similar to cloth weaving. Just with sticks instead of fibers or hairs. You make a line of very thin flexible sticks all pointing the same way. I'm not sure how to find the best kinds of sticks. I think green ones that are soft, but get hard when they dry? Then, you lay down a stick so it touches all the other sticks. This is called perpendicular placement. Or across, I suppose. The perpendicular stick goes over the first of the other sticks, then under the second one, and over the third one, and so on. Then you lay down another perpendicular stick. It goes under the first one, over the next, and under the third... Over wherever the last one went under. In the end you will get a large square of sticks stuck tight to each other, each going over and then under and then over again. This is basic stick weaving. They will tend to come undone, the sticks falling away from each other, unless you push the ends that stick outinto the little gaps between sticks. There are ways to make them into good shapes like baskets (pot-shaped sticks for carrying fruits and things), and fish traps, but they're hard to explain. Mostly they need the 'guide' sticks that you put your over-under sticks on to be all sticking out from the same place, like a circle, that you get if you throw a rock into water.
It gets complicated, and hard to explain just in words. I'm sure you can figure it out by trying some things... It's not like you or your people are stupid.
Another thing. It's good for settlements keep track of time by marking and counting days and years. Each day, when the sun rises, they could make a mark on a big rock or piece of wood. By counting these marks, they could see how many days have passed.
If your world works like I think it works, there should be 365 days in most years, but 366 once after every 4 years. So after 365 marks for days, mark Year 2 and count days again from 1. Unless it's a Year 4 or Year 8 or similar, then after 366 marks.
Anyway. Counting days and number of years is useful because it helps to know when the seasons and events change, so they could better prepare for different weather, and it will be crucial for planting plants well. It also helps to plan for important activities, like hunting or gathering food, and allows to remember when things happened, like the last big rain. Using this way helps to stay ready for changes. Some fish movements also may happen every year around similar number of days.
Perhaps you could in fact declare that this Year is Year 400, not 1. So that people count years from around your first visit in the Bay. Then people always when counting years would think how great and eternal you are, for mortals even 400 is long.
I don't rember where I learned about the dangoues of eating seaweed I spent a while back trying to figure out a prefect aquaponics set up for food and seaweed got disqualified due to how much toxicns build up in it. WebMD is also saying its super high in positum and iodine to the point where it can become a promble. Baiscly Seaweed super high in nutrinets to the point where it casuses issues.
You asked: Tell me how to bring back animals that have fled a place.
The important thing to remember is that animals have to eat and fear being eaten too. You may have to discover these things again for each animal, but what plants does it like to eat? What things eat it? Where does it like to sleep and hide? Finding places with the things these animals like, or making them, can help make them return to a place. Though it might not often be worth it, if there is more effort in preparing a place for animals than the reward of hunting them. Maybe killing other predators? Slaying the hunting animals like bears is a dangerous thing, but they are eating and driving away animals people could hunt instead. Animals often have better noses than people do, I think, so keep in mind that their senses might not be like yours.
Too many animals is just as much a problem as too few. If there are so many, they will eat all the plants they like, and then in a few years they will all starve or flee somewhere else when their favorite plants are gone and there will be few or none for a time. I don't know what animals are near you. Sometimes there is little you can do to prevent the animals fleeing. If an animal likes trees without small bushes and scrub, you can take the scrub for burning and maybe more will come over time. If an animal likes a certain kind of flower, you can try throwing seeds of that flower around so more of them will grow later, and attract more animals, the same way you can throw around the seeds of plants that are good for people to eat. Though at that point you can just throw around people-food-plant seeds. This isn't quite farming. It's a lot faster and easier, and still does some good. It's only really farming if you are actively taking care of the plants like a child, carrying water to them and destroying other plants that are near.
...The seeds are baby plants, if nobody has clearly said that. I do not really understand what you do and don't know. It's probably easier to assume you know nothing in case I miss something important. Most seeds are small, hard pieces that the plant makes after the flowers on it go away, often even the part of a plant that is good to eat, like the hard center in a piece of fruit. Though some plants don't make seeds and use roots instead.
You asked: Tell me how to know without digging if there is iron below the ground where I cannot see.
Do you have any small rocks or pieces that are attracted to iron? These are lodestones, or natural magnets. If you do, this can sometimes detect a particular kind of iron bearing rock, the magnetite. If you strike iron pieces with the lodestone just right, they can sometimes become magnets, too. I think lodestones are made by lightning. Making little iron needles that are magnets can help you find your way without magic. If you paint one end and place it in a puddle or bowl of water, it will eventually point north and south no matter where you stand, because the world is one enormous but very weak magnet. It may sometimes point to big concentrations of magnetite rock instead, if they are close. Iron is also attracted to lodestones, so if bits of dust are stick to your lodestone when you wave it around in a rock, it might be an iron-bearing rock, but it is hard to tell. Iron can sometimes be found at the bottom of swamps and bogs and pulled up with long sticks, for reasons I do not understand.
For fishing my advice as your people spread across the water, and fish in lager area. Is after the food situation is stabilized is to designate a decent sized area where fishing is not allowed. The fish population in the area will return to pre fishing level, and the fish will spread out from the area increasing the fish in the area around it. You can also tell your people to look for the signs of fish fat with eggs, and throw them back into the water so to help keep the population up. You might even want to start throwing the largest fishes back into the water anyway, that will encourage the fish to grow larger by eliminating the bloodlines of the smaller fish.
This is Fox. I'm not trying to be the world's best prompt engineer (one who masters the art of getting the most useful advice from ChatGPT). I could get the output better and keep iterating, and make it better. But the advice and details is good enough to start, and useful except for the fact that it has some modern bits and a few bad assumptions here and there, which I am not trying especially hard to remove. I'm leaving it 'just okay' as an illustration. And I do offer my own advice, both before and unrelated to the tool's response and also, interpreting the tool's response, because I think illustrating the idea that some sorts of beings have a fundamentally different way of thinking with odd quirks and limitations is important!!
Now if everyone is absolutely unanimous that this is dishonorable than I'll stop and filter everything entirely into my own words, but I don't think it is.
...
Actually, maybe everyone is right. I've gone back and adjusted what Bianca will hear me say in that big post. Hooray for the techniques we have that let me do that, I guess!
Will it help? If the spark was in the fish, then most likely it is not ripe and it is useless to throw it into the water. In addition, as far as I understand, many species of fish need a certain place to spawn and not just throw them into the sea in a random place.
Asking people to leave food in the water when they are starving ain't gonna work. All these things have a very long timescale and fishery depletion is mostly an issue when you're catching tens of thousands at once, in deep water anyway...
72,312 words of player replies
151 page Google Doc
It may not have come up before, but I am a slow reader.
I wouldn't even be done READING this by Friday.
Code:
Following this update, I do not intend to accept content
written by large language models like ChatGPT or really
anyone other than players themselves. I might start
pushing for sources for anything elaborate, too.
Players will be on the honor system until the honor system
stops working.
If you have any questions about this policy, please PM
them to me.
I appreciate your understanding in this matter.
Code:
What I'm considering doing about this update:
1. Slogging through it - unlikely: I'm not that kind of
guy
2. Bianca gets the votes but otherwise just hears the
sound of a rotating potato - unlikely: I'm probably
not that kind of guy either
3. The first 4k words from each player pass - might not
happen: I'm not keen on the sorting process
4. The first 20k words period get in - maybe: I don't
like this one for the 'reserve early, edit lots'
strategy it calls for
5. I just drop the quest in frustration - ha ha no
6. Truncate Every post over some number of words - maybe:
I don't like this one for the 'post, post, post'
strategy it calls for
7. Give long post players 24 hours to submit revisions of
their long post under some number of characters -
maybe: I don't like this one for the way it's going to
put work on players that those players might find
frustrating or for how it kind of penalizes the
hardest workers
