Satrap of Saturn

SORQ Science fantasy in conception, dungeon fantasy in execution: the magics and beings of F20 worlds rejoice in a pseudo-scientific basis in "planes" and "planar energies," but in a universe with stars, planets, gravity, cells, photosynthesis, evolution. Intelligent, symbol-wielding beings find ways to interact with planar forces, through words of special meaning and spaces of efficacious aesthetics. The interior of the planet Sorq is the underworld. The planet is honeycombed with natural caverns, subterranean seas, the excavations of many eras of intelligent life, and less easily defined spaces. The underworld begins just beneath the surface of any city, and frequently irrupts into any landscape. Cities tend to rise upon hills and mountains of older construction: all the great nations and many smaller ones practice ritual purification and re-dedication of cities through razing and rebuilding every few centuries. The rubble of ordinary dwellings fill in around the ...

 I have a right to be in this war. I have a right to my voice, my space, my work, my striving and my own path to learn, to flower and fruit with wisdom, power, and beauty. And in this war, I have many comrades, some known to me, most unknown; I may have enemies beyond my dense self and the divisive whisperer, but those two are my only true opponents; most everyone else is a comrade, a prisoner of war (though walking about, paroled, sporting bling and shooting off selfhood) (lotta people walking around bleeding, broken limbs trailing, setting booby traps for the other veterans, blithely unaware this is a blast zone, quite certain what they live is healthy and we have always been at peace, thank you very much) These, as my first task, is to see and know they are neither of my two nemeses.

The Terhumene has at least as many "belter" and "stationer" populations as colonization of planets, and periods of widespread terraforming are a thing of the past, or the future in some other part of the galaxy: inhabitable planets sure are nice, but may be uncommon, always expensive to manufacture, and if there is a native biology, the interaction of alien biochemistries seems to me to be an insufficiently addressed problem in science fiction; and if there is not life, why is there free oxygen in the atmosphere? The history of life in space stations and spinning hollow asteroids, or dome cities or cavern ecologies on otherwise uninhabitable planets, is as ancient and familiar in the Diaspora as agriculture and cities seem to us, and as reliable. Colonizing a blue hypergiant, or a cluster of A stars with lots of dust and delicious star light but not any, as who should say, PLANETS, seems very natural for a civilization that thinks as little about the dangers of life...

Bzńdo , bzando , vghāannou , apzaan : The unfulfillable longing of one who gazes upon a star but a few light-years distant yet without slipstream links known or accessible within a lifetime of travel. Bzńdo , apzaan also for hssa , nge-pando , pvaantt : reckless, tragic, melancholic heroism in confrontation with death, between species competing for the same precious planetary ecologies, and other nemeses. New cultures and environments create new ideas and associations. What would it be like to be in a starfaring civilization, but to see brilliant and amazing sights in the sky that remain beyond your reach? And what bold, foolish, suicidal, daring, occasionally triumphant risks would people run in worlds where their cultural record and the dead hand of the past stretches so far beyond any individual, even any civilization? In some cultures, the obsession or unfullilable yearning would take the form of culturally-defined maladies, . To clarify bzando more, I'll be specific: you liv...

There are difficult transitions. I was in a PhD program when medical stuff happened, and kept happening. Consequences included being a stay at home parent for a couple of years, moving to a new state, divorce, terrible roommates, learning to live alone and rediscover who I am when I'm not in a dyad or a group. I learned something I never figured out as a grad student: how to write. Having kept notebooks and sketchbooks all my adult life, an obvious tactic in trying circumstances was pouring myself into writing and ideation for myself, with no expectations of relationship or audience. Just my own interests, concerns, resonances, my pleasure in, e.g., world-building, monsters, spaceships, the human condition. Iterate for some five years, and the result is the mound of notebookery in the images. There's a lot in there that nobody else need ever see, but too much for an alienated survival habit. The current wave of updates here are a step toward bringing my art and writing out for ...

[ Galactic civilization, the state of living in mass societies across the galaxy, follows from sophisticated praxis in two areas: space itself, the vacuum, the vastness, and the problems of living safely in the most unnatural environment conceivable for planetary organisms; and domestication, the transformation of more or less inimical planets into living spaces. The ancient word "terraforming" misconstrues the mature praxis as reproducing the planetary experience of the Terhumene species on the Cradle World... ] Mature galactic civilizations that practice Domestication of planets recognize that, while every planet is unique, there is a finite set of practicable planetary types, and a finite set of desirable worlds to live upon. Domestication, transforming non-life-supporting worlds into habitations for the species of the Terhumene*, is an ancient imperative of life in a galaxy so rich in worlds, so abundant in life, but where any existing xenobiology precludes a Terhumene bi...

Maricomorion & Marticore, Attys at Law, travel from magistrate to magistrate among the provinces of the Empire. Their brief is to enforce recognition of the ancient Hunting Rights granted their kind. The legal team of Maricomorion & Marticore accept payment of bloodwite in gold, kind, land, treasure, scrolls, and slaves: compensation for loss of hunt and meat. Intimidating, badgering, blandishing local courts and lords with musical bafflegab and a performance of confidence, the pair carry as props a mass of paperwork, precedent, ambiguously worded ukase and frankly irrelevant Imperial orders. M. and M., Esq., are the classiest of a number of manticore protection rackets and shake-down artists moving through the fringes of Imperial respectability. Felons, debtors, rebels and other undesirable elements disappear from the public record and into mouths lined with three rows of fangs. 

manticore (n.) fabulous monster mentioned by Ctesias with the body of a lion, head of a man, porcupine quills, and tail or sting of a scorpion, c. 1300, from Latin manticora, from Greek mantikhoras, corruption of martikhoras, perhaps from Iranian compound *mar-tiya-khvara "man-eater." The first element is represented by Old Persian maritya- "man," from PIE *mar-t-yo-, from *mer- "to die," thus "mortal, human;" from PIE root *mer- "to rub away, harm" (also "to die" and forming words referring to death and to beings subject to death). The second element is represented by Old Persian kvar- "to eat," from PIE root *swel- (1) "to eat, drink" (see swallow (v.)). (Early Middle Persian Merthykhuwar; Modern Persian Mardykhor) "man-eater" (from early Middle Persian مارتیا mardya "man" (as in human) and خوار khowr- "to eat"). E "manticore" < L. mantichora < G. μαρτιχώρα, m...

[For 13th Age and thematically related settings: add these to the set of iconic powers, swap them out for Icons you don't like. The Satrap, for one, does not like the Diabolist, the Orc Lord, the Crusader, the High Priestess...] Fallen Icons, Quiescent Icons, Icons not Dead but Dreaming Dream Demiurge: Artist and mythographer, architect of dream worlds. The Demiurge took a tax of dream from every sentient, built countless bubble dreamwolrds, many nested one in another, and a vast Oneiric Empire to contain the dreamworlds of all the minds of the world. Domains much attacked by cults of undead and by beings from other worlds. Did he retreat into indefinite prolongation of memory, die, and lose his power to another icon, or to some alien power? Or did he duplicate his mind and will in secret, and secreted his double away to return to activity among the temples and obelisks of his empire? A certain lich most puissant modestly denies being the Demiurge in retirement, but its phylactery ...

[yog-sothoth.com thread "101 adventure hooks" for X of Cthulhu or other weird horror games.] 268. A geophysicist asks permission to explore your property. He's been mapping gravitational and magnetic anomalies throughout the region and boy, does your place look weird. Also a good way to bring some party members together. 269. You're having some work done on the basement (house, business, church, anything). A workman disappears, then an animal. You knew about the 17th century crawlspace under the proper basement, but it appears there's yet another layer. 270. An engineer, scientist, or tinkerer dreams of a large, convoluted circuit diagram. Plug it in to some heavy juice and laissez les bon temps roulez! It's not just the neurasthenic artists suffering for their latent telepathy after all. 271. The monks at the temple of Bo Ran De are famous throughout Burma for their ongoing liturgy. At all hours, some portion of the brothers are inside the seventeen-sided cha...

[So. You like 13th Age, but don't care for its Icons? Try some from this series; I got... several.] THE LAST PHARAOH The Last Pharaoh is nemesis of the Lich King and the Theurgist both. The Pharaoh is high priest of a cult that seeks to annex the living world to their particular underworld, or to immamentize the underworld — they dream and burn for a world of the undead, a world of monuments, shrines, temples, and idols carven of every mountain and cliff. The appeal of such an apocalypse is limited. The cult — the Temple of Bone — rules a land far to the south where the transformation is nearly complete, and where living things are as uncommon as undead across the rest of the world. Bone Temple propagandists whisper to wizards and to priests of other dark forces. They offer the secret of mummification in exchange for loyalty, and this prize compares favorably with lichdom to some spellcasters; every lich must win the secret of the phylactery from a patron daemon, or violate the who...

♀ Chhaask ♀ [Gwueng-Tsho, Auwwmbuhrra, Bhak] ♀ Boreal Plateau in northern arctic region — some peaks break cloud layer. Chhaask is otherwise 98% blocked by cloud layer. The appearance of the sun or stars through breaks in the clouds surprises, shocks, and terrifies locals, much as solar eclipses stun and amaze inhabitants of planets with largish moons. The shape and opacity of sky-breaks present auspices more in line with tea leaves or the flight of birds than astrology. ♀ Vast plants create miniature biomes — interior lakes, swamps, vast animal-plant architectonics. Archivistes of the Platitudinous school speculate that the dominant Chhaaskite plants are constructs of the Hyadaean dynastics, made to order and then abandoned to adapt some many kilochiliads ago. These plants send light-harvesting plates above the cloud layer, buoyed with pockets and veins of hydrogen. Where plants can reach through clouds, they are first rooted at high altitude, or upon high structures such as the Old ...