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
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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)
Huh! I've been rereading (well, skimming) the previous iteration of this, and 4 is pretty darn good for a new skill: @LoserThree, I take it new skills start at half of their root skill? Or perhaps derived from her doing so well on this first attempt in a case where underlying talent is one of the only sources of variance, was my first guess. But on second thought the 8/2=4 relation is right there, and neatly mirrors the doubled # successes needed—though come to think of it, why does she unlock it on her first psuedo-successful check? I recall that Blind Artificer needing four fails for Mechanics, though of course that was different in several ways, a less intuitive skill with no Astute Cacophony involvement etc.
This bodes well! For Bianca's personal power, at least, not to mention the more symbolic/just-plain-awesome value of the first (e: completely blanked on meteoric iron, oops, this is why I don't contribute to what Bianca hears), ahem, probably the first magic iron weapon, blue-blacked against rust.
Huh! I've been rereading (well, skimming) the previous iteration of this, and 4 is pretty darn good for a new skill: @LoserThree, I take it new skills start at half of their root skill? Or perhaps derived from her doing so well on this first attempt in a case where underlying talent is one of the only sources of variance, was my first guess. But on second thought the 8/2=4 relation is right there, and neatly mirrors the doubled # successes needed—though come to think of it, why does she unlock it on her first psuedo-successful check? I recall that Blind Artificer needing four fails for Mechanics, though of course that was different in several ways, a less intuitive skill with no Astute Cacophony involvement etc.
Which reminds me,
'add' instead of 'at'?
Edit: The post has been edited!
This bodes well! For Bianca's personal power, at least, not to mention the more symbolic/just-plain-awesome value of the first iron weapon, blue-blacked against rust.
And the Black Knife is not the first iron weapon. Bianca knew of iron from meteoric examples she encountered in the care of people while she wandered the world. Some of those are worked into weapons.
The Black Knife isn't even technically the first iron weapon Bianca forged from her ore deposit. She made plenty of lesser knives while working things out. Most of those were recycled but some even still exist. The people of Black Hook Bay are using them.
It's probably the first magic iron weapon.
Thanks for the catch. I've fixed 'add.'
Abilities open at half their root stat, rounded down.
And abilities mostly open after ten minus their root stat unskilled, 'on screen' tests. There's also practice. And one character can supply another with a test through use of the Instruction ability (so long as the have the ability to be tested). And and sometimes those unskilled tests will count towards advancing the root stat, but that's never going to happen for Bianca's Perception.
Bianca made two Munitions tests, the first for potassium nitrite, the second for gunpowder.
What with all the abilities opening off it, Perception 8 is looking kind of game-breaky. Despite Bianca being the in-setting equivalent of a high order angel -- and despite how she'd have been even stronger in a later start -- I am considering that I may have made bad mistakes while burning (the Burning Wheel character creation process) her up. It's not yet clear.
If I think her stats need to be lower for Doyalist reasons I can start chucking rocks at those stats. And that might happen anyway depending on the trouble she gets into, like rolling 0 successes on a Munitions test. That'll lower some stats.
Uh oh bois. We better make super use of that perception while it lasts.
now is the time to traditionally register what topics you plan to talk about next turn so that we don't have 5 people saying the exact same advice.
I'm going to focus on Geology and perhaps the making of maps. With a little sidequest into the physics of steel tempering & alloying effects if I'm feeling inspired. Of course, all plans can change if I find something particularly juicy to respond to in the next story post.
L: We're planning on:
- Advocating for a standardized set of weights and measures (centigrade temperatures please). Will include instructions for producing a bimetallic strip.
- Math Class for Bianca
- Moar Medical Stuffs
- Seafaring. Particularly how to make stronger hulled and better waterproofed boats, along with how to tack upwind.
Use of alcohol on open wounds is, by the way, not well-advised.
"general antiseptics should only be used to clean infected skin wounds. In contrast, open or deep wounds should not use antiseptics during care. This is because although antiseptics can kill harmful bacteria, they can also damage surrounding healthy tissue."
C: We've just looked that up, and it seems to be a bit more complicated than that. While it does slow healing, it does a damn good job at preventing the wound from getting infected. In this context, preventing infection is absolutely crucial, and better methods for doing so will not be available for quite some time.
E: We might also toss in some advice on building better houses.
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?
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 takes 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 us 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 outbursts 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-rulable.
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 leather 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 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.
Making any sort of law code is obviously naive and stupid at this stage; I had hopes that pre-Winter Magical World had some such culture that Bianca could remember, but evidently not. But we must think carefully, maybe re-create Singers from the previous quest, or something. She needs SOME sort of VERY BASIC servants and "order" among the Bay mortals.
At least as long as these mortals are alive, THEY MAY SOON DIE while killing also others around and then collapsing into disorder, imo.
THIS FOOD SITUATION IS A SOON APPROACHING CATASTROPHE. ALL OTHER DEVICES BEYOND SURVIVAL OF THE BAY MORTALS SHOULD ENJOY LESSER PRIORITY IMO.
It's a very different culture than ours, but they are still biologically modern humans, with modern brain hardware, just like all humans nowdays.
Bianca could raise children in belief that they should serve Bianca, for example, and as adults not all but many would still believe that this is their natural main task, not anything else. Not saying that Bianca should, her own understanding of mortal children is lacking, and it would take much time.
[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.
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 kill all involved in a way that will not wake the god.
Disrupting the ritual is guaranteed at least, letting a mystery
ritual go off near by seems risky. Also potential followers
with domesticated animal and a shot of God juice.
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.
