Why Can't My Worshippers Understand What I'm Saying?: A Well Intentioned God Quest

[Shard]

[X]No further Interventions. Let the next Age pass and see what it has in store.

 

[Dreaming]

In case anyone was wondering, here is a slightly more in-depth look at what passes for the political and cultural structures of the current Lek-kego polities. These are, of course, liable to change immensely over the course of a single Age.

The Spur Clan
The Spur Clan is, ironically, perhaps the last remaining inheritor of the clan structure used by the original Beach Clans. The Clan is bound together in the name of mutual family and a shared communal sense. The focus is on protection and care, echoing the original Lek-kego family structure with the need for newborn and breeders to be cared for by their parents and partners. The Many must stoop to take care of the One because, in their eyes, there is no difference between the two. Breeders are respected for their 'sacrifice', giving up the strength of their bodies for the sake of others and some of them never regain their non-breeder forms, remaining in their vulnerable reproductive phase for multiple breeding cycles. As they were for the Beach Clans, these elder 'career' breeders have great social sway and an informal council of them manage the Clan. Social order is retained through strict family ties and a strong shaming culture, with shunning, infliction of pain and humiliation and occasional exile as the punishments of choice, though the Spur Clan is far more reticent to exile someone than the Beach Clans were. The drawback to these constant expectations of care and protection for the rest of the Clan is a pronounced lack of empathy for those outside the Spur Clan. Those in the Spur did not direct violence against the Remnant Clans but mostly because it wasn't useful. It was easier to let them starve for minerals fully in the power of the Spur Clan to give. Indeed, the structure of the Spur Clan is only really possible for the relative comfort and security they possessed.

The Spear Clan
Though directly descended from the Beach Clans and indeed, they would claim they are them, the Spear Clan has changed significantly from the clan structure that the Spur Clan still clings to. Much of this was driven by the advent of sudden prosperity, proper weapons and the ability to hunt and protect themselves from the sandswimmers. With the hunting warriors being so important and exciting, a martial culture has risen up and supplanted or transformed the old. Lek-kego are judged by their martial capability and as a result, the breeders have become a denigrated class to the point where the Spear Clan has had to start forcing people to take the reproductive form for a brief cycle before alternating with others. It is an imposed duty, not a blessing or anything any right-thinking Lek-kego would pursue as a goal in life. The concept of 'duty' itself is a new thing that started with them too, after the Spear Clan grew too big for the old familial bonds and social shunning of traditional Clanship to hold them together. The old rule has been discarded in favour of Chieftains, single figures who hold autocratic power over the Clan and keep it through a monopoly of force and the support of the warriors. Thanks to this and to the new idea of duty and that it is the duty of the One to put the needs of the Clan above their own, they have kept stability despite being easily the largest and most fractious polity. They have invented an extremely primitive concept of the state, enough to broadcast that it is more important than you personally. As a result they have constructed domes and fortresses from pooled public labour. Lately they have even taken to accepting foreign Lek-kego into the Clan but this question, of how to make use of those who were not Clan, resulted in the invention of slavery and the use of slaves for undignified tasks, most notably labour and breeding. But even with this recent influx, they are still just a little bit too large for what they are and the current regime is in need of further outside targets to maintain internal unity.

The Remnant Clans
These scattered Lek-kego aren't even really a polity anymore, having spent generations on the Spur trapped between the apathy of the Spur Clan and first the beasts of the Beach and then later, the slavers of the Spear Clan. Being a hodge-podge of different splinter-clans scraping a living out in an environment where there is rarely enough metal to breed or repair their shells hasn't really resulted in any particular unity or emergent political structure either. Or at least, not yet. It is possible that if they were to unify they would return to the ways of the old Beach Clans from whom they descend but this is unlikely. Right now they are a society of several different cohesive and separate family units and with nowhere near the ore required for breeding to mix those family units. The Spur Clan didn't particularly consider them people and even worse, the Spear Clan did and decided that people were valuable. They have barely any presence and only just avoided being completely wiped out by the merest brush of a miracle.

 

[Fezzes]

That was more precise than I'd imagined. But I guess Movement's imprecision is in what it moves, not how.

[X]Intervene further! Specify the Intervention and at what point in the Age it will occur. The specified Intervention cannot exceed more than 1 Miracle Point.
-[X][Earth][Creation] Make a near enough replica of bit torn off the other side of the Web to join those bits of the web up again. Make it in the shape of a really big Lek-kego just for fun.
--[X] Time: Right after the thing leaves

Just for something-resembling-neatness's sake. I don't expect it to win, but if it does it probably wouldn't need an update of its own, so it's not too much of a waste of time.

 

[Chopak]

[X]No further Interventions. Let the next Age pass and see what it has in store.

 

[persivle]

[X]No further Interventions. Let the next Age pass and see what it has in store.

ah the cosmic irony of saving your creations only to accedently inspire atheism, and more irony in the disappearance of those not of the clan exactly when the spear clan was becoming something close to expansionist. Next age we should use a spirit of dream to somehow communicate with one of the lek kego just to let them in on the joke, we could 'accedently' inspire a premitive HP lovecraft rabbling on and on about invicible things and the games they play with mere mortals as the pieces. Alternatively our chosen profit would take this at face value and say that the remnant clans had stolen paradise from a god that they didn't believe and the spur needed to find a way to take it from them, not quite as fun but hey, we want them to build things on the back of some fake ancient greatness and spite is one the best motivators out there.

 

[Dreaming]

Vote called.

 

[Jiven]

Ah, i am too late.

 

[the swarm]

I have a idea if this world ends we make a kind of hp love craft kind of thing where we have "invicible things and the games they play with mere mortals as the pieces." Having them do the work for us with a game of life

 

[TwistedJester]

[X]No further Interventions. Let the next Age pass and see what it has in store.

 

[Dreaming]

[NOTE: One interesting thing about these absurd little guys is that due to having their own naturally occurring induction forges, they're not really going to move up through an 'Iron Age' or so on. They are naturally metallurgic and don't have a lot of room to improve there, so it's less about how good they are at smithing and more about what materials are immediately available. As for how hot that must mean their internal forges can get? Well...you guys didn't vote for a scientific world.

[X]No further Interventions. Let the next Age pass and see what it has in store.

It is time to stay your hand once more. For the Lek-kego, the world has changed and the revelation of greater forces has been made. Do they know that they live in the palm of your hand? Thankfully they haven't figured out writing yet, not in a way that lasts, so this isn't going to go into any recorded histories. Perhaps one day Lek-kego will look back and laugh at the superstition that sprung up from a mere Web-quake. Or perhaps not. But the Age is over and you, having already broken the world once, have shattered theirs.
You can't wait to see what is in store for them in the...

The Age of Faith
​

All Lek-kego carry over the following Moods from the last Age: Xenophobic and Earthsplitter. Death From Above also carries over but only for the Spear Clan.
​

• The start of the Age is a time for readjustments and new beginning for all your scattered chosen peoples. Each of them is faced with a new world in the wake of the Earthsplitter's passage. As for how they adapt to this? It varies. The Spear Clan start off in a bad way, with their underground tunnels collapsed due to the changing river and the disturbed sand. Their domes and their fort still stands but there is not enough room in them to shelter everyone from the migrant-birds. The fliers will soon leave this section of the Web behind forever, finding new roosts in their migratory paths but until then, the weapons of the Spear Clan is not enough to save everyone. They are adopting a dualistic belief system with the Earthsplitter near the center, the vile ruler and breaker of earth who is opposed by the spirits of the bird-things that punish them so greatly even now. The world is a battleground between forces that are evil and forces that must be respected, the priests say, desperate to stay atop the changing society. Meanwhile for the Spur Clan, hiding away atop their mountain in their newfound marsh fed from a waterfall right off the edge of the Central Face itself, they are unsure how to take this newfound bounty. They did not know of the Spear Clan's plans for them but they see a land of plenty and most importantly, the absence of both the bird-worshippers and the birds. As if suspecting some sort of trap, they start to tentatively expand outside of their mines and re-settle parts of the mountain's surface, though they are yet to leave the Spur. But even so, their gratitude towards the Earthsplitter gives rise to a new belief system enshrining it as some sort of patron deity. It delivered them from evil, scourged their enemies and cleared the skies. They already possessed a rudimentary belief system populating the world with gods (and fairly accurately so) but they place the Earthsplitter above all others as their own. And then meanwhile once more, gaze upon the Remnant Clans in their new home. It doesn't take them long for them to recognise the bounty of the tungsten-carbide beneath their feet and though eating it provides them little in the way of magnetic minerals to pull into their shell, its quality as a metal for crafting is quickly noticed by these living forges. Before long, they are beginning to replicate the weapons they witnessed from the Spear Clan but in far greater quality. This only strengthens their faith in this Promised Land, won for them by their parents from the jaws of certain death at the hands of the gods. But they must be ready, lest the gods come again. You gain the experiential Aspect, Faith, for future use. The following Mood is instituted but only for the Spear Clan: Dualism (this world is a battle between good and evil!). The Following Mood is instituted but only for the Spur Clan: Henotheism (There may be many gods but there is one who favours us and to which we owe a great debt of gratitude. The Following Mood is instituted but only for the Remnant Clans: Maltheism (There are divine forces out there and they are our enemy. We will need to fend them off!). The following Mood, Death From Above, is no longer occurring. ​
• The Remnant Clans are quick to copy what they saw from the Spear Clan, forging spears and lighter weapons from tungsten. Though there is no way to compare, these new weapons put the frightening contraptions of the Spear Clan to shame. But once again, the existence of weapons capable of bypassing a shell means that it is now actually practical for Lek-kego to easily kill Lek-kego. Feuds and arguments between the disparate family groups and splinter-clans with these new weapons leads to rising bloodshed. They don't have to fight over mining spots just yet but the water of the solitary island in this ocean of tungsten...now that is valuable. In order to forge tungsten the Lek-kego must become even more vulnerable to overheating themselves to death and the only source of water is an incredibly precious resource. The shield is invented, a small piece of metal harder than anything in a Lek-kego shell that is carried in either a fore-pincer to ward off spear jousts or in one of the side-legs to protect against flanking. ​
• The Spear Clan, already unbalanced and poised to fall, causes the first real war between Lek-kego. A civil war. It's nothing special or unique really, just a rising force consisting of the outer fringes, the disenfranchised, the unsheltered and some of the slaves. The war is brief but bloody and the Spear Clan retains control, the rebels unable to contest their domes while having no safe ground of their own. The empty shells of rebel leaders joins the bird skull in the middle of the great fort. But even so, this prompts a reordering of the Spear Clan as they take massive amounts of slaves from the defeated splinters, propping up their failing slave economy with enough slaves from their own people that they now actually have a breeding population of slaves, slaves from birth. A proper underclass now forms and with the resulting stigma, some select members of the 'higher caste' Clanners start taking reproductive forms of their own will. Using only the slaves as breeders now feels distasteful now that they are dogmatically lesser. This dilutes the martial culture somewhat. ​
• Explorers sent out by the Spear Clan discover some of the bare patches in the ruined beach, where the Earthsplitter had thrown so much sand aside that the bare steel skin of the filament beneath is exposed. They don't know what this motherlode of steel beneath the sand is or what it implies but this, along the continued absence of the migrant-birds, seems to be a boon from the Bird Gods! As an iron-alloy, steel directly contributes to breeding, shell repair and those that ingest it have much harder shells than their iron cousins. It quickly becomes a mark of status to have personally consumed so much steel to have its visible gleam in the outer layers of your shell and many would-be social climbers quickly find that it can be faked through a powdering of metallic dust. Having been hammered by the effects of the civil war, the Spear Clan is now back and better than ever before! With the first of the flightless titans being brought down by steel caltrops laid in the ground before them and then sliced apart while it bellows on the ground, a new golden age is surely here for the children of the Spear! A second fort is built, this time around a collection of the butchered beast's massive skeleton. The following Mood is instituted for the Spear Clan: Rising Tide (The more steel we have, the more children we can make. The more children we make, the more we can rule.) ​
• The Spur Clan spends a lot of its ensuing generations procrastinating. Well, they wouldn't see it that way. But their population is exactly the right size for the minerals they are still extracting from within the mountain, so why go any further? Reports from scouts that confirm that the marsh, while mineral-rich, is filled with serpentine and insectoid dangers so it seems that their choice is the right one. Without further expansion of minerals, they won't breed faster and so their population remains at a happy (and somewhat stagnant) equilibrium. Instead they focus on thought and art and religion. And eventually, during their strange searches in the depths of their mines for any sign of the Earthsplitter, they entice a small pebble-spirit into being! They have as of yet no way to speak to them or tame them but glimpses of these creatures inspire new thought and the idea of 'servitors', lesser things that might serve their patron deity. The pantheon is expanded and offerings of scrap metal are left for particular unique spirits and spirit-sightings, many of the Lek-kego giving them names and stories. ​
• As inter-family violence continues to rise in the duels over water for the Remnant Clans, a lone smith finally devises a means to protect oneself from their deadly weapons. A second shell, one crafted from tungsten, that you can wear over your old one! This is not a new idea but before now, nobody had been able to figure out how to forge continuous plate. The smith is immediately killed by the first Lek-kego they share this information with. Some time later, that Lek-kego and their immediate family rides out in gleaming tungsten plate-mail and, wrapped in their invincibility, claims control of the island on the edge of the roaming Shard. If the other families want water, they must do what this family says and in addition, will have to pay them a regular tithe of raw ore in exchange for not being murdered. And as long as they do that, they will be left mostly to their own devices, despite technically all being subordinate to the armour-plated Lek-kego. This also prompts the Remnant Clans to figure out mathematics enough to qualify percentages and weights for tithe-related purposes. ​
• The big ol' flightless idiots of the beach are now, as far as you can tell, entirely extinct. The Spear Clan killed them and those they didn't kill, they pushed further and further from their hunting ground until there was nothing for them to eat. The Spear Clan is still surging thanks to their influx of steel and no bottom has been found to their steel-patches yet! In an effort to stop social dissolution in the face of no outside enemy, it is deemed necessary to put down uprisings from the underclass and to manufacture them when they do not come of their own accord. They have formed what could be a called an actual organised military system and, along with it as a sort of side-effect, an attempt at a centrally regulated and defined written language and number system. Such things are necessary for their newfound size and organisation.​
• An exile pushed from Spur Clan holdings finds their way down to the hostile marsh in a spiritual quest to find the Earthsplitter. They don't. Instead however, they find a puddle spirit that the exile actually manages to hold communion with! The first spirit pact of a sort is made in response to the exile's life being threatened by a marsh serpent. With puddle in tow, the exile returns to the Spur and is welcomed back both in awe and fear. The old priests either voluntarily retire or are put to death and the former exile becomes both their new high priest and the founding figure of a new religious movement. It is possible not just to venerate the spirits but to use them. ​
• The rule of the Remnant 'knights', a name you'd given them from an old memory, is starting to feel a little shaky. They couldn't keep the secrets of armour plating for more than a generation but thanks to their massive mineral advantage as a result of their tithes, none of their vassal families can make platemail as good or in the same amounts as they can. Still, it's been several generations since then and the people are starting to get rowdier and rowdier. By sheer luck however, a pair of knights find a wandering puff-of-air spirit incorporating itself and, after some work, eviscerate it since spirits are bound by your will to not harm your chosen people. They cart the remains back to the island as proof of what they'd been taught to fear for generations: The gods were invading once more! And suddenly those tithes paid aren't just in exchange for the water, it's also in exchange for protection from the evil spirits that are definitely out there. ​
• The Spear Clan, somewhat winding down from their boom, receive reports from their scouts who have taken advantage of the now tame beach to travel to the furthest expanse of the sands and back. They bring wild tales of a place where the black sand ends and in its place is an endless plain of steel. They have found the filament itself. This inspires a few revelations in the Spear Clan. Firstly, it is now apparent to them that this world is a made thing. Something put this there. The steel is worked. Were there Lek-kego before them? Was it the Bird Gods, despite them having nothing to do with steel before? Secondly, news of this faraway bounty only increases its economic rise and large expeditions are sent forth as a form of immigration and as a societal pressure valve, the Clan eager to send as many members of its ever-swelling populace far away to this metal wonderland that is, for now, too distant for the main bulk of the Clan to mine regularly. They will not be Clan but they will be of the Clan and they will surely stay loyal. Another golden age is declared but someone in the Spear Clan does this every generation no matter what happens and so it is ignored. ​

Well, that was a little more subdued than the first Age but it makes sense. Identities have been formed and faiths forged. Each of your Lek-kego children are deforming to the shape provided by their environment and in turn, shaping the environment to themselves. There are resources in abundance and, for most of them, no enemies save themselves.
Does this please you?


[ ]Do not Intervene. Let the next Age pass.

[ ]Intervene! Specify the Intervention and at what point in the Age you would like it to happen and change History. You can make multiple Interventions in a single vote.

 

[Dreaming]

Incidentally, I'm retiring Moods after this. They're just signifiers and in order to do them properly I'd have to make one for every single thing with a lasting effect which...I don't want to do. It's not like they have any sort of mechanical effect anyway. And now that they've split into multiple separate populations book-keeping Moods would be an ever-increasing amount of work for literally no benefit.

 

[Walter]

I want our rock frembs to talk over long distances, so the Spears don't fragment and the Spear/Spur rivalry can begin. I don't have a good way to do that but will support anyone who comes up with one.

[X][Spirit] Create Monsters.

They need worthy adversaries.

Just before they go extinct, bind wicked spirits to a flightless bird, and to a sand swimmer and one of the flying birds as well.

Empower these new demigods to torment and assail the people, though not to wipe them all out.

 

[Dreaming]

I want our rock frembs to talk over long distances, so the Spears don't fragment and the Spear/Spur rivalry can begin. I don't have a good way to do that but will support anyone who comes up with one.

[X] [Life][Spirit] Create Monsters.

They need worthy adversaries.

Just before they go extinct, bind wicked spirits to a flightless bird, and to a sand swimmer and one of the flying birds as well.

Empower these new demigods to torment and assail the people, though not to wipe them all out.

Click to shrink...

This is a valid thing to do but it'd just be a pure Spirit Pact. You don't have Life Aspect currently.

 

[Walter]

Gotcha, removed mention of that useless aspect that we don't have and don't need.

 

[Frankite316]

[X]Do not Intervene. Let the next Age pass.

 

[Jiven]

I actually want to create Lovecraftian spirits to oppose the Remnant Knights.

 

[Walter]

Yes do this.

 

[Fezzes]

I'm... okay with this. I'm okay with all of it, really. I'm content to let things develop.

 

[veekie]

[X]Intervene!
-[X] [Earth][Creation] Create a large mass of assorted crystals and gemstones, with a cap of solid chromium in the swamp near the Spur Clan, clearly visible but not reachable without venturing through the swamp.
-[X] An exile pushed from Spur Clan holdings finds their way down to the hostile marsh in a spiritual quest to find the Earthsplitter. They don't. Instead however, they find a puddle spirit that the exile actually manages to hold communion with! The first spirit pact of a sort is made in response to the exile's life being threatened by a marsh serpent. With puddle in tow, the exile returns to the Spur and is welcomed back both in awe and fear. The old priests either voluntarily retire or are put to death and the former exile becomes both their new high priest and the founding figure of a new religion. It is possible not just to venerate the spirits but to use them.

Lets give the Spur clans some incentive not to just turtle. But not just dump metal for pop explosions. We have Spear for that

 

[LunarTinker]

[X]Intervene!
-[X] [Earth][Creation] Create a large mass of assorted crystals and gemstones, with a cap of solid chromium in the swamp near the Spur Clan, clearly visible but not reachable without venturing through the swamp.
-[X] An exile pushed from Spur Clan holdings finds their way down to the hostile marsh in a spiritual quest to find the Earthsplitter. They don't. Instead however, they find a puddle spirit that the exile actually manages to hold communion with! The first spirit pact of a sort is made in response to the exile's life being threatened by a marsh serpent. With puddle in tow, the exile returns to the Spur and is welcomed back both in awe and fear. The old priests either voluntarily retire or are put to death and the former exile becomes both their new high priest and the founding figure of a new religion. It is possible not just to venerate the spirits but to use them.

A nice idea.

 

[Flairina]

Hmm... assuming the evolution of socities continues at its current rate, it's likely the spear clan will win out when they inevitably come into contact with the spur clan ages down the road. Granted it'll probably be many, MANY ages before then, but the basic spirits are only likely to be so much help. I like the spur's greater focus on community and spirituality, but i say we give them some sort of boon to help them out down the road and to develop further. After all, they do worship us, and the other clans are against us anyways, so I see no reason not to reinforce this. Probably something spirit related... hmm. Would a greater spirit be able to impart a continual blessing to the people of some fashion?

EDIT: Ah, ninja ed by crystal idea. The mountain will take forever to run out of resources with how small they are, but it will run out one day, so maybe they should try to expand their lands a little... still, not sure this is how to go about it. Will those crystals/gems actually help the spur? I'm not entirely familiar with metallurgy.

 

[Star]

I'm for giving everyone equal chance instead favouring one civ over another

[X]Do not Intervene. Let the next Age pass.

 

[Dreaming]

Will those crystals/gems actually help the spur? I'm not entirely familiar with metallurgy.

Click to shrink...

Anything magnetic (aka anything that contains iron, nickle, cobalt or as-of-yet-unmade materials) can be used as a resource for shell maintenance and breeding. Iron in particular is essential for breeding, though some of that can be recouped by digesting the dead. Metal that isn't magnetic isn't applied to their shell or to make new Lek-kego but can be forged into a variety of stuff because the Lek-kego are the kind of people who figure out how to work tungsten before they invent the wheel.
Some gemstones/crystals have their use, especially in this world. There isn't a shortage of crystal however, it's absolutely everywhere as a result of shoddy design. It's just that most of it is fairly deep underground. The Spur has a crystal core but they haven't reached it yet.

EDIT: I should note that breeding isn't always as super-pressing for Lek-kego as it would be for most species. Since they have no technical upper limit to their age and since all their actual biological energy needs are met from magnasynthesis (from Spin-Apart's magnetic field) and the heat of their own internal forges, they don't actually need mineral consumption to stay alive, just to breed and repair their shells from the continual erosion, rust and chip-damage it suffers.
That said, not being able to repair a shell for a length of time is basically a death sentence at their current level. No Lek-kego has yet survived their first moult.

 

[We Just Write]

Actually, if we want to force Spur Clan to explore and expand, why don't we turn the Spur into an active volcano, thus meaning they can't stay there anymore?

 

[Chopak]

Is the space between the clans full of air or is it airless void?